That’s extremely cool looking although, like Old Wombat said, you have to wonder about the interior space. I guess you have to compare it to other low slung tanks of the same era like the M24, M18 tank destroyer or even the M26. Other considerations are how much ammo and equipment you could store and whether the existing turret basket could be modified to fit.
Obviously, the IDF didn’t pursue it past the prototype stage. Possibly, it just didn’t work too well or possibly, the availability of more modern tanks like the Centurion and M48 made them feel it wasn’t necessary. Then again, there’s the extensive work to create the M51 and the various Sherman-based SPGs, so who knows?
I don't think it's unworkable, but it was probably an unworkable
conversion. The main thing driving the Sherman's height was the radial engine in the M4, M4A1, and M4A6, coupled with a front-mounted transmission. The drive train had to run through the fighting compartment and the turret basket was above that, so that's why it was so tall, relatively. The M10 and M36 had the drive shaft in the same place, but they refused to use the radial engines (instead sticking with the twin 6 cylinder diesels or the Ford V-8) and opted not to use a turret basket, so they had lower overall heights.
Cousins to the M4 tank were the T20 series. They achieved a lower silhouette while still using most of the same components as the Sherman a different way. They kept the turret basket, but moved the transmission to the back of the vehicle and again opted against the very big radials. Finally, the M18 Hellcat (although largely unrelated to the Sherman) stuck with the giant radial
and the front-mounted transmission, but again opted against a turret basket (like the M10 and M36). While not as short as the T20 series, it was a good deal lower than the Sherman.
There's more than one way to achieve this, it just depends on your priorities and what components you have to work with. You can see that with Chrysler's proposed 90mm Sherman. They again abandoned the radial and changed the orientation of the drive shaft to keep the turret basket and front mounted transmission, but still achieve a lower overall height.
So, if you designed it that way from the start, you could build it so that it was workable (albeit with a few trade-offs), but if you're trying to convert an existing Sherman, you may have a hard time finding places for everything. Almost all of the above solutions got wider. That's not obvious in the cutaways, obviously, but that's not something that happened with the "chopped" IDF Sherman. It was just a new loss as far as volume was concerned. It also may have worked alright, but just not been worth the conversion cost. I bet a cutaway of the IDF Sherman would have done something similar to the Chrysler redesign, though.
Cheers,
Logan