From the beginning of the Second world war in the United States of America closely followed the fighting in Europe and I must say, doing generally the right conclusions from the experience of others. In particular, did not go unnoticed and the first evidence of the use by German forces self-propelled artillery. In 1940 the Americans launched work on the creation of artillery systems of similar purpose. As in the case of self-propelled tank destroyers (“modelist-Konstruktor” No. 1, 2002), the first versions of ACS, armed with field howitzers, was established on the basis of half-track armored personnel carrier M3. On the first set, the swinging part 75-mm mountain howitzer M1A1 on the second — 105-mm field howitzer М2А1. These machines received the designation T30 T19 NMS and NMS, respectively. The abbreviation NMS stands for Howitzer Motor Carriage, which literally means “the engine crew howitzer”, but in the semantic — self-propelled howitzer.
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