![]() ![]() To learn more about historical tanks, check out: Patton Medium Tank's equipment, continue to the next page. This also allowed the driver to be seated in the center front of the hull.įor more on the M-48 General George S. The usual hull-mounted machine gun was eliminated in favor of more ammunition storage for the main gun. The turret was a one-piece casting, the front wall of which was 4.3 inches thick. The M-48 had a cast-and-welded hull with an escape hatch built into the floor. The M-48 was a tank fully capable of standing up to the T-54 series of Soviet tanks. But problems or no, the Army had accomplished its purpose. Once this was accomplished, most complaints and problems faded away. Virtually all the early models had to be rebuilt to later configurations. Many of the problems came back to haunt the tank and its crews, earning the M-48 a reputation as a badly designed tank. Army's haste to get the M-48 into production, problems were overlooked or ignored. The fall of Nationalist China, the disappearance of eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain, communist insurgencies in Malaya and the Philippines, and the invasion of South Korea by North Korea had many military planners convinced that war with the Soviet Union was only a matter of months away.Īll M-48 Patton models except the final M-48A5 were equipped with the 90mm main gun, which fires a large selection of ammunition types. The Cold War, begun in earnest with the Berlin Blockade in 1948, gave every appearance of turning hot in the early 1950s. The first M-48 tank came off the assembly line in July 1952. Even before the first prototypes were finished in March 1952, production contracts were awarded to Fisher Body Division of General Motors and to the Ford Motor Company. The new tank was given the developmental designation T-48, based on the earlier T-42.ĭesign work began in December and was completed one year later. They were told to do so as quickly as possible. In 1950 the Detroit Tank Arsenal and the Chrysler Corporation were each awarded contracts to develop a new medium tank armed with a 90mm gun. ![]()
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