I have NEVER seen those larger American half tracks before.

Its a bit of a pointless comparison as the SdKfz 7 and M3 were built for very different purposes. One is an armored troop transport, the other a heavy artillery prime mover. Comparing the M3 to the SdKfz 251 would have been more sensible

How did they manage to drive so quietly?

Quality vs ‘good enough’ quantity. The Germans had no chance of competing on the latter; they had some successes with the former, but got thrashed by the latter when their enemies got experience.

Notice how quickly the crew firing at the building at the end of the video operates the gun. You can see true professionalism and excellent teamwork. I believe they are combat veterans. The loader deserves a medal.

Fascinating.  Imagine being in the building at the end, on the receiving end of all that! Omg!

German halftracks mostly steered with the front wheels AND the tracks (turning the steering wheel or in case of the Kettenkrad (sd.Kfz 2) the handlebar also activated the break on the curve inner track). That gave them fairly good steering even if the front achsle did not have that much weight on it as in the sd.Kfz 8 (I believe) shown here.
And the interlaced roadwheels gave a pretty good and comfortable ride. Repairing that however was the pits (although  not as bad as on the Tiger and King Tiger).
Somewhat overengineered and thus pretty good when in working order but too complicated to produce and to repair and thus not produced in the necessary numbers. Like all German engineering in WWII.

Half tracks. My beloved

i know ive seen this before but for the life of my cant find it anymore

In the video of the US Army convoy passing on the road, quite a few of those halftracks have armored shields for their machine gunners—and they have a lot of machine guns.

1:55  that halftrack is rocking & rolling!    :face-green-smiling:

That Hanomag is a BEAST! 😂 I want one!

Apparently extreme wet on clay confuses! Arrival and departure angles dependant on available traction

The M3 having both front wheel drive along with tracks, which the Germans didn't, and the front roller pretty much made it able to get over or through just about anything.

If you all want a hoot,  search and find  footage of  Jeep  testing. Pulling trailers and artillary, jumping over hills, the entire rig  in the air.       Friend of my father   had at least one  half track in our small home town, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Seeing German equipment in US hands reminds me of a paper I read many years ago. Most of it was written by a machinist helper.  He wrote about the day he and others were assigned the job of retrieving German equipment for evaluation. Orders were to locate when possible operational equipment, and field repair broken / damaged units and drive it back to base of operations. He wrote they leaned real fast that was a bad idea. U.S. troops would fire at will at anything with German markings. He wrote on about the many ways he and his crew would cover / mark equipment with hopes of not getting shot at. He wrote how being under fire by friendly forces was the scariest times. For their efforts the crew was shipped back to the states with the equipment they repaired and recovered to be part of a team to disassemble so engineers could evaluate any weak points.

I'll take the one we can make tens of thousands of and overwhelm the enemy with.

...it's easy to conclude that the Sdkfz 7 it's a much modern machine than all the US ones.

Halftracks didn't have the best off road capability vs. a fully tracked vehicle. That's why IFV's today have full tracks.
However they served well in WW2, especially in the American Army as the GI's figured out a ton of uses for them. The old saying "It Beats Walking" applys.

Amazing film! True history gold