Type: Medium Tank
Nation: USA
Period: Cold War
Location: Park Vojaške Zgodovine, Pivka, Slovenia
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the US Army realised that they would need modern tanks as quickly as possible. The M46 Patton was nothing more than an upgraded (but outdated) World War 2 era M26 Pershing and the experimental T42 medium prototype was by no means ready for production. A stopgap solution was created by mounting T42’s turret on a modified M46 chassis and calling it M47. Interestingly, despite the “Korean tank panic”, M47s were never used in active combat by the United States. The majority of American tanks deployed in Korea were M26s, M46s and M4A3 Shermans.
As you can see, M47 still carries a bow machine gun. This standard World War 2 feature was eliminated on the M48, which replaced the M47 from 1953 onwards. Therefore the M47 was the last American tank to be crewed by five men.
This particular vehicle is one of the 319 M47s that were given to Yugoslavia in the 1950s to defend their country against a Soviet invasion that never came. About forty years later, some of these M47s were used on the Croatian side during the Croatian War of Independence.
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2 responses to “90 mm Gun Tank M47 Patton II”
[…] War 2, Germany was permitted to have an army again. The new Bundeswehr initially received American M47s and M48s, but development of an indigenous tank program already started in the following […]
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[…] instead of weight. A light tank was to be armed with a 76 mm gun, a medium with a 90 mm (M46, M47 and eventually M48 Patton) and a heavy tank with a 120 mm (which would become the M103). With its […]
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