The M68 is an American 105 mm tank gun. It uses British-designed L7 gun tube and cartridges with an
American-designed mount, breech assembly and recoil mechanism.
Front view of a M68E1 gun on an American M60A3 main battle tank during a military exercise in Nuremberg, 1986.
The Royal Ordnance L7, officially designated Gun, 105 mm, Tank, L7, is the basic model of the United Kingdom's most successful tank gun. It is a 105 mm L/52 rifled design by the Royal Ordnance Factories, intended for use in armoured fighting vehicles, replacing the older QF 20-pounder (84 mm) gun mounted on the British Centurion tank. The successful L7 gun has been fitted on many armoured vehicles, including the Centurion, the German Leopard 1 and, in an altered design, as the M68 gun in several variants of the US M48 Patton and M60.
An L7 mounted on a Centurion Mark 5
Model of L7 gun barrel cut to show rifling inside, on display at the Deutsches Panzermuseum
62 caliber ZPL-94 on a Type 88A tank