7.5 cm FK 7M85

The 7.5 cm Feldkanone 7M85 (7.5 cm FK 7M85) was a field gun used by Germany in World War II.

Design
The FK 7M85 was designed to a requirement issued in 1944 for a dual-purpose anti-tank and artillery gun that could be produced quickly. The gun, cradle and recoil system from the 7.5 cm PaK 40 anti-tank gun was adapted to the 10.5 cm leFH 18/40 carriage. Interestingly the leFH 18/40 carriage had been itself adapted from the PaK 40 so this design essentially returned the gun to its original carriage, albeit modified with an extra 20° of elevation.

Nomenclature
In 1944–45 the Germans changed their system of artillery designations from the old "year" system. Each weapon was to have a number showing their caliber group, a letter denoting ammunition group, and the last two digits were from the weapon drawing number. In this case 7 denoted 75 mm caliber using the M group of ammunition. The shells were all to be designated as M with a 4-digit number, the first three were the drawing number and the last was the shell's category from the following list: