"A Medium Tank with a Heavy Burden" Topic

"The heaviest American tank at the start of the Second World War was the Medium Tank M2. It looked like an anachronism compared to other tanks in the same class, and so it was quickly replaced by the Medium Tank M3. The M3 was also a temporary measure, and even having completed the Medium Tank M4 the American tank designers were not resting on their laurels. Work on the Sherman's successor began as the tank was just being put into production. The Medium Tank T26E1 was meant to replace the Sherman, but after a number of changes in its development cycle it entered production in a completely different weight class.

The number of experimental tanks multiplied. Since it wasn't clear how well the idea of an automatic gearbox is going to work out, the army decided to play it safe and also build the Medium Tank T22 using components already tried and tested in the Sherman tank as well as the Medium Tank T23 with an electric transmission that showed itself well in the Heavy Tank T1E1. Each tank had three types of armament. The basic tank would get a 76 mm M1 gun, E1 variants were equipped with a 75 mm gun and an autoloader, E2 variants received the 3" M7 gun from the GMC M10. There was also an E3 variant. These tanks had the 76 mm gun but also a torsion bar suspension…"

Main page

link

Armand

i'm lost but that is just me; were any of the a one these Super Sherman, the only remaining one I believe being in
Bovington tank museum.

Is this the one whose turret ended up being used on later Shermans?

Yes the T23 turret with 76mm gun was. Most of the article is about the T26 though with the 90mm gun.

Thanks

Armand

A major reason that the US lagged behind in developing and deploying a heavy tank was that General Leslie McNair, the head of US Army Ground Forces, saw no need for one and felt that transporting them to Europe would be a waste of badly needed shipping capacity. I suspect that his death (by friendly fire) while observing Operation Cobra may be why the US got any heavy tanks to Europe at all (albeit only a few).

Thanks also…

Armand