The 7.5 cm Feldkanone 7M85 (7.5 cm FK 7M85) was a field gun used by Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

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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

PaK 40

The 7.5 cm PaK 40 was a German 7.5 centimetre anti-tank gun developed in 1939-1941 by Rheinmetall and used during the Second World War...

 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 1944-5 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:

#	Shell type	#	Shell type
1	high explosive	5	gas
2	hollow charge anti-tank	7	incendiary
3	armor-piercing	8	leaflet
4	high explosive, high capacity	9	practice
5	smoke	10	proof projectile