M1 Abrams Tank

Michael Green

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473834231
• eBook ISBN: 9781473866508
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This pictorial history of the legendary M1 Abrams Tank illustrates its versatility and advancement from the Cold War Era to the present day.

The M1 Abrams has proved itself to be the finest main battle tank in the world since its introduction into US Army service in 1981. It combines the ultimate balance between firepower, mobility and protection as demonstrated by its superior performance during the two Gulf Wars and in Afghanistan. It routed the Soviet equipment of Saddam Hussein's army and today remains the yardstick by which friends' and foes' MBTs are judged.
As military expert Michael Green demonstrates in this illustrated history, the M1's versatility, and its continual modernization of weaponry armor and engineering, guarantees that it will remain the US Army's spearpoint for years to come. With its comprehensive collection of images and authoritative text, this volume is an ideal resource for information on M1 Abrams Tank design and combat operations.

Chapter One

Background History

The US Army Armor Branch and the inventory of tanks that it employed during the Second World War had not earned a sterling reputation, despite the bravery of the tankers that had engaged the Axis with them. US Army General George S. Patton, Jr., who had commanded the famous Third Army during its tank-led advance across Western Europe between July 1944 and May 1945, admitted upon the conclusion of the Second World War: ‘I don’t have to tell you who won the war, you know our artillery did.’

The blame for the poor wartime performance of American tanks cannot be laid on the engineers that had been tasked with their design and development. The vehicles they had been asked to come up with were shaped by a doctrine envisioned by the US Army’s senior leadership of that time in which tanks were weapons of deep attack (exploitation) and infantry support systems, not meant as tank-versus-tank combat vehicles. The latter role was to be performed by specially-designed vehicles referred to as ‘tank destroyers.’ Combat would show that the doctrine of tank destroyers was badly flawed.

It took until the closing months of the war in Europe before the US Army tankers finally received a small number of a vehicle optimized for the destruction of enemy tanks. That vehicle was the M26 Pershing tank, originally labeled as a heavy tank, and then postwar as a medium tank. It was armed with a 90mm main gun, derived from an anti-aircraft gun design. Postwar there was a slightly improved M26A1 Pershing medium tank fielded.

With the Empire of Japan finally conceding defeat in September 1945, prompted by the American military use of the atomic bombs in August 1945, the civilian leadership of the American government believed that with its monopoly on nuclear weapons the chances of future land wars had greatly decreased. They therefore saw no reason to fund the next generation of postwar tanks. The US Army was therefore pushed into modernizing its existing tank fleet, beginning in 1948, with what money was available. This resulted in the conversion of the bulk of its fleet of approximately 2,200 M26/M26A1 Pershing medium tanks into the improved M46 Patton medium tank, as a stopgap measure.

Game Changers

The belief by the civilian leadership of the American government of the unlikely occurrence of any more land wars began changing with two major events. These included the Soviet Union exploding its first atomic bomb in August 1949, which brought a quick end to the country’s monopoly of nuclear weapons. That was followed in the summer of 1950, when North Korea, a communist client state, attacked South Korea, an American client state. These became the opening acts in what historians refer to as the Cold War, which lasted from 1946 until 1991.

The North Korean Army spearheaded its invasion of South Korea in the summer of 1950 with approximately 150 Soviet-supplied T34-85 medium tanks, which quickly brushed aside the American trained and equipped South Korean Army, as well as US Army units armed with the M24 Chaffee light tank sent to assist them. This dramatic turn of events convinced all concerned that the same thing could happen in Western Europe, but on a much larger scale, if the tank-heavy Soviet Army or client state armies assembled in Eastern Europe were to attack.

The American Response

As a countermove to the success the North Korean tanks enjoyed early on in the Korean War (1950–53), the American Congress opened its purse strings and authorized the funding of the next generation of tanks for the US Army. They would be in theory superior to their more numerous Soviet-designed and built counterparts they would encounter in the opening stages of a Third World War in Western Europe.

Unfortunately, due to the long lead time involved in the design and development of a new tank, the US Army was forced to make do with another stopgap vehicle. It consisted of the turret from an experimental medium tank fitted with a new and advanced fire-control system mounted on the chassis of the existing M46 Patton medium tank. This combination of tank components was standardized in 1952 as the M47 Patton medium tank. It was rushed into production for service in Western Europe, without the normal testing process being completed beforehand.

The speed with which the M47 tank was ordered into production by the US Army, and the lack of testing, not surprisingly led to an almost unending series of teething problems that would seriously compromise the tank’s effectiveness throughout its service life. There were 8,576 units of the M47 tank built, with production ending in 1953. Having quickly soured on the M47 tank, the US Army provided the majority of them to its new NATO allies in the 1950s in an attempt to standardize weapons systems. The US Army now pinned all its hopes on its replacement, the M48 Patton medium tank, standardized in 1953.

Last of the Patton Tanks

Despite the numerous design problems encountered by rushing the M47 tank into service, the US Army was still under the perceived threat that at any minute the Soviet Army, and its untold thousands of tanks, would cross from Eastern Europe into Western Europe, and it decided to rush the M48 tank into service without any prior testing. As with the M47 tank, this decision proved to be a serious mistake. The first production version of the M48 tank was deemed by the American Government Accounting Office (GAO), now known as the Government Accountability Office, as not even being fit as a training vehicle.

By 1959, when production of the M48 tank series had ended, approximately 12,000 units in various versions had been constructed. It took until 1963, with the introduction of an upgraded model of the vehicle labeled the M48A3 tank, for the design to mature and the machine to become a reliable workhorse. By this time however, the tank’s 90mm main gun was obsolete against many of the Soviet tanks then in service, the most common being the T-54 medium tanks, armed with a 100mm main gun.

The T-54 medium tank began entering widespread service with the Soviet Army and many of its client states in the early 1950s. It was complemented, beginning in 1958, by an upgraded version designated the T-55 tank. Production of the T-54 tank series, including license-built copies, continued until 1959. Production of the T-55 tank series lasted until 1981. The approximate number of T-54/T-55 series tanks is estimated anywhere between 86,000 to 100,000 units, making them the most-produced tanks in history.

The American Answer to the T-54/T-55 Medium Tank

In order to field a tank quickly, and in large numbers, armed with a main gun large enough to penetrate the frontal armor array of the Soviet T-54/T-55 tank series, the US Army took a single M48A2 tank in very early 1959 as an experiment and armed it with an American version of a brand new British-developed 105mm tank gun, designated the L7. The British Army had adopted the weapon in 1959 for mounting in their Centurion Mark 7 tank. The modified American-built copy of the tank gun was designated the M68.

The design and development of the L7 105mm British tank gun had been initiated by a chance event during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Somebody drove a captured Soviet Army T-54 tank onto the grounds of the British Embassy, located in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Before returnin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Notes to the Reader
• Chapter One: Abrams Background History
• Chapter Two: M1 through M1A1 Abrams Tanks
• Chapter Three: M1A2 Abrams Tanks
• Chapter Four: Marine Corps Abrams Tanks
• Chapter Five: Firepower Close-Up
• Chapter Six: Specialized Vehicles and Accessory Kits