"Post war Pershing availability" Topic

The new Battlefront Pershing set looks interesting, and for once BF tank prices are not horrendously out of line. Just badly….
What are the numbers on the availability of them for a WWIII or Weird War or Red Star/White Star etc game?
I assume that of tensions are high for a while that there would be some on hand.

Was the "Super Pershing" variant an ad hoc produced in limited numbers or did it become standard?

Depends what you mean by "Super Pershing" – the T26E4 variant with the extra-long 90mm gun was a wartime conversion, but only a couple of dozen made, and only one saw action. The basic M26 remained standard until 1948, when they started converting some to M46s, and the rest got a more a limited upgrade as M26A1s, basically fitting the 90mm M3A1 to replace the older M3 model 90mm gun, but otherwise not changing much. The BF model is basically all good until 1948, when the upgraded stuff starts appearing.

(Production numbers were about 2000 M26s, of which 800 were later turned into M46s, and the rest M26A1s. There were a few minor variants, but only a couple of dozen of each built, including the long 90mm Super Pershing, and a couple of hundred 105mm howitzer armed ones, that were renamed as M45s later.)

They were one of the major tanks in the 1950's, so…..

Fought in Korea until the US Army figured out that the M4 variants were more reliable and better on hills.

Not a lot of T-34/85s around after the first few months, so the M4 was a dependable weapon system.

Dan

"The M26 saw service in the Korean War. When the war began in June 1950, the four American infantry divisions on occupation duty in Japan had no medium tanks at all, having only one active tank company (equipped with M24 Chaffee light tanks) each. When these divisions were sent to Korea at the end of June 1950, they soon found that the 75mm gun on the M24 could not penetrate the armor of North Korean T-34 tanks, which had no difficulty penetrating the M24's thin armor. Three M26 Pershing tanks were found in poor condition in a Tokyo ordnance depot. They were hastily brought back into operation with missing fanbelts improvised. These three M26s were formed into a provisional tank platoon commanded by Lieutenant Samuel Fowler and sent to Korea in mid-July. When used to defend the town of Chinju, the tanks soon overheated when the substitute fan belts stretched and the cooling fans stopped working, and so the only three American medium tanks in Korea were lost"

TMP link