Evolved from slow, lumbering, and malfunctioning origins, the modern Main Battle Tank can cross long distances rapidly and engage targets at ranges unimaginable to soldiers and commanders in World War I trenches.

But these monstrous metal warriors would be nothing without their clunky forebears.

Getting Into the Fight

British Mark 1 tank, Sept. 25, 1916. Ernest Brooks Getty Images

Much like the beginning of its sidearms and rifles, the early U.S. tank owes much to the French and British. When the U.S. entered World War 1 in April 1917, they had little idea of the tank’s potential. The British had only debuted their heavy tanks in September 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, and it would be another six months before these tanks delivered an impressive breakthrough at the Battle of Cambrai.

Most American military observers were unimpressed but some officers felt differently. Even before the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France, General Pershing took a liking to the tank. Seeing the metal monster in action, Pershing ordered the formation of an American tank corps before the end of 1917.

In the spirit of cooperation, Britain and France shared tank designs, and the U.S. were interested in combining the British heavy and French light tank doctrines into one force, using them to punch through an enemy’s frontline.

Two men, who would go on to become major figures during the next world war, began fitting this new battlefield beast into the U.S. army’s ranks. In France Captain George Patton worked hard to assemble the U.S. Tank Corps, while in the U.S., Captain Dwight Eisenhower helped create the U.S. Tank Service.



George S. Patton standing next to a FT tank, summer 1918. Army

Patton pushed hard for his assignment to the Tank Corps and was eventually ordered to establish a light tank school to train the first generation of American tankers. Patton and his men began training with the French Renault FT. The FT was a two-man light tank, the first to incorporate a turret which could rotate 360-degrees, armed with a 37mm cannon. Designed to be supported by infantry, the FT reached top speeds at around 6mph. It wasn’t blazing fast, but it could provide mobile firepower wherever, whenever.

Patton admired the FT’s speed, mobility, maneuverability, and its ability to knock over small trees. Patton also shaped the Army’s tank strategy, writing a highly detailed report on how to best deploy tanks.

In December 1917, Colonel Samuel Rockenbach was placed in command of the still tankless U.S. Tank Corps. Rockenbach and Patton faced a massive challenge getting the Corps into action.

“Unless I get some tanks soon I will go crazy for I have done nothing of any use since November and it is getting on my nerves,” writes an impatient Patton in a letter to his wife.

A tank corps without tanks, Patton’s men instead trained with wooden mock-ups, learning how to work their guns in the FT’s confined turret. When the first tanks finally arrived, the tank crews quickly got to grips with their new vehicles.

American troops going to the battle line in the Forest of Argonne, Sept. 26, 1918. Defense Department

The roar of the tank’s engine made communication impossible, so the tank’s commander/gunner had to communicate with the driver through a system of kicks to signal stop, reverse, left, and right. By March 1918, Patton had trained his first batch of tank crews, and with his recent promotion to Lt. Colonel, he formed the 1st Light Tank Battalion, and he was eager to see action, writing to his wife:

“I am getting ashamed of myself when I think of all the fine fighting and how little I have had to do with it!”

Back in the U.S., the Tank Service’s mission was to train a much larger force to help with the planned 1919 offensives. Like the Tank Corps in France, the Tank Service the gear needed for training. The war ended before Eisenhower and his men saw action.

"Remember you are the first American tanks. You must establish the fact that American tanks do not surrender!"

Following the FT design, the Army needed thousands of tanks. While Ford developed the M1918, a 3-ton light tank, the FT was the first tank to be manufactured in America. The M1917, as it became known, didn’t reach France before peace broke out in Europe, so U.S. troops used French-made Renault FTs to finish out the war.

These tanks saw action for the first time during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in September 1918. Patton, now commanding the 1st Tank Brigade, led 144 tanks into battle.

Before the battle, he told his men:



“No tank is to be surrendered or abandoned to the enemy. If you are left alone in the midst of the enemy keep shooting. If your gun is disabled use your pistols and squash the enemy with your tracks…If your motor is stalled and your gun broken still the infantry cannot hurt you. You hang on [and] help will come. In any case remember you are the first American tanks. You must establish the fact that American tanks do not surrender! As long as one tank is able to move it must go forward. Its presence will save the lives of hundreds of infantry and kill many Germans. Finally, this is our big chance. Make it worthwhile.”

At Saint-Mihiel many of Patton’s tanks got bogged down in sodden French soil, but enough pushed on to help capture several key positions. 2nd Lt. Paul Haimbaugh summarized his experience of fighting in a tank as getting “shot-up, put out a half dozen machine-gun nests; clean up another sunken road with machine guns placed every ten feet along it.”



During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive Patton insisted on leading from the front, he was wounded in the thigh and the war ended soon after, much to Patton’s disappointment.

Taming the New Beast of the Battlefield

M2 tank during the Guadalcanal Campaign, 1942. U.S. Defense Department

After World War 1 military spending declined immensely. While American tanks proved their worth during the fighting, the Tank Corps shrank from 20,000 men in November 1918, to just under 300 by 1919. By 1920 the Tank Corps was no longer an independent branch of the Army, and America stopped most experimentation and development tanks as the M1917 slowly became obsolete.

Contrary to how Patton had seen tanks as the new cavalry, the Army instead focused on linking them to the infantry. With funding for new tanks drying up, Patton transferred back to the cavalry in despair, while Eisenhower took a staff job a year later.

Fitters assemble an M2A4 tank at a British depot, 1941. U.S. National Archives

Between wars, American tank development puttered along, only producing two light tank designs, the M1 and M2. These light tanks weighed less than 15 tons with the machine gun-armed M1 being originally called a ‘combat car.’ The M2, armed with a 37mm gun and several .30-caliber machine guns, had slightly better armor and its 250-horsepower engine reached speeds of 35mph.

Throughout the 1930s, the M2 eventually evolved into the M2A4, a tank with thicker armor and better weaponry, which eventually saw action during the Guadalcanal campaign. By 1939 the U.S. was building a heavier version of the M2 light tank, unimaginatively called the M2 medium tank. Just over 100 of these thanks were built before another world war shifted production to other medium tanks.

As the world once again descended into conflict, the Army realized the potential of the tank. Eventually, it would be America’s industrial capacity that would overwhelm Nazi Germany, an enemy that wielded tank warfare with deadly efficiency during the Blitzkrieg.

The American Tank and a World at War

American M3 Lee medium tank and its crew at Fort Knox, Kentucky, 1942. Universal History Archive Getty Images

In December 1941, the U.S. officially entered the single greatest armed conflict in human history. During the war, American factories would produce tens of thousands of tanks, which would gain legendary status.

A year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Lend-Lease agreements supplied Britain and the Soviet Union with over $50 billion (nearly $700 billion today) worth of war material including aircraft, warships, vehicles, and tanks. Seeming to make up for lost time, the U.S. made a staggering 90,000 tanks from 1939 to 1945.

The first American tanks saw action not with U.S. soldiers at all, but with the British. Nearly 200 M3 Stuart light tanks took part in Operation Crusader in North Africa. But the tanks failed to penetrate German armor. Instead, they were re-deployed in the Pacific where no Japanese armor would challenge them.

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It would be the M3 Lee, a medium tank, that would eventually supply the British in North Africa. Receiving nearly 3,000 of the new tanks, the British deployed the M3 Lee in May 1942.

Designed only two years earlier, the M3 Lee was really a stopgap measure. While the Lee was liked for its powerful 75mm main gun, its 51mm frontal armor it was too tall, making it an easy target. Another big issue was its archaic sponson-mounted main gun, which was reminiscent of the tanks of World War 1, and it performed poorly in rough country.

Although the Lee remained in service throughout the war, it was the M4 Sherman, an all-round medium tank, that would become a legend on the battlefield. The Sherman, designed in 1940 to address the Lee’s shortcomings, coming with a 75mm gun as standard it had a five man crew.

Despite the cramped conditions, the M4 evolved rapidly throughout the war with six tank variants and a dozen specialized vehicles like mine exploders, duplex drive amphibious Shermans, rocket launching tanks, flamethrower tanks, and tank recovery vehicles.

U.S. Sherman tank in Iwo Jima with flamethrower, March 1945. U.S. Defense Department

Not only was the M4 versatile it was well suited for mass production with nearly 50,000 made between 1942 and 1945. It also helped that the Sherman proved to be a very reliable and easy to maintain in the field, a feature that quickly endeared the tank to its crews. The M4 went on to become the armored spearhead in North Africa, Italy, the Pacific, and Europe.

Patton, a military man intimately familiar with U.S. tanks, put them to good use. He led the Third Army during its breakout from the Normandy beachhead and its dash across France. Pushing his men hard and his tanks even harder, he reportedly once said that “my men can eat their belts, but my tanks have gotta have gas.”

But despite its immeasurable benefits compared to the M3 Lee, the Sherman was still incredibly noisy, making navigation difficult. Freeman Barber, a radio operator, recalled decades later that they “tied a rope to the driver and steered him like a horse…pull left to go left, right to go right, pull back to stop, and kick him in the back to go forward.”

“My men can eat their belts, but my tanks have gotta have gas.” - General George S. Patton

Its armor was also unevenly distributed with Barber saying how German shells “ripped right through us. Ours just bounced off the panzers.” Its weapons stowage was also a problem because a well-placed enemy shell could ignite it, causing the tank to burn and explode. This unfortunate side effect eventually earned the Sherman tank a nickname by the German army—"Tommy cooker."

The problem problem was fixed stowing the ammunition in "wet storage" with water jackets protecting the shells.

American tanks in the hands of Allied tank crews were instrumental in driving back the Wehrmacht, liberating Western Europe and cutting a swathe through the island chains of the Pacific. While not the most technically advanced thanks on the battlefield, they were able to take on the enemy.

The Cold War Heats Up

1st Marine Division with the M46 Patton tank in North Korea, 1950. USMC

Despite its shortcomings, the Sherman remained in service during the Korean War alongside newer tanks including the M26 Pershing, which briefly saw action at the end of World War II, and the M46 Patton. The Patton, the first in a family of tanks named after the legendary General Patton, it boasted a larger 90mm gun, thicker armor, and a more powerful V12 engine.

During the early phases of the war, American tanks went up against Soviet-supplied North Korean T-34s. But these were quickly dealt with and tank battles became few and far between. Instead, tanks increasingly acted as infantry support. In this role the Pershing, with its unreliable transmission, was eventually replaced by the M46.

“We fired a dozen rounds of canister in two minutes...I had never fired so many 90mm rounds in such rapid succession.”

Throughout the Cold War most of America’s tanks were deployed in Western Europe, facing down the threat of a massive Soviet armored offensive. But in the mid 1960s the Cold War began to heat up in southeast Asia and some American tanks found themselves fighting in Vietnam.

With the lessons learned in Korea, the Army developed new tanks, the M47 and M48 Pattons. While the M47 never saw action with the Army, it was widely exported to America’s NATO allies before a further improved M48 was introduced in 1952. The M48 became the workhorse tank of the Vietnam war along with the M551 Sheridan light tank.

While American tanks in Vietnam found themselves supporting the infantry, the fighting was no less hard, as Oone Marine Corps recalled: “we fired a dozen rounds of canister in two minutes...the heat and smoke inside the turret became intense; I had never fired so many 90mm rounds in such rapid succession.”

M60A1 tank in West Germany, 1982. U.S. Army

At one point the enemy got so close they climbed on top of the tank, and the fighting was so desperate they had to call for another tank to ‘scratch their back’. Firing a 90mm beehive anti-personnel round directly at the besieged tank, sending 4,400 metal darts washing over the hull.

In 1961, the U.S. introduced the M60, ushering in a new concept, the Main Battle Tank (MBT). The Army envisaged the MBT as a universal tank that was maneuverable, packed a punch, and was well-armored yet light. Using new lighter composite armor, more efficient engines, and improved suspension, the MBT combined the firepower and protection of a heavy tank with the mobility of a medium tank. The M60 wasn’t deployed to Vietnam, instead, the U.S. sent its newest tank to West Germany.

Packing a 105mm gun, armor up to 10 inches thick, and a 750 brake-horsepower engine, the M60 could travel up to 30mph and only required a crew of four. The Army fielded three major variants with the last, the M60A3, meeting a similar fate as the M48—rendered obsolete in the 1990s by the M1 Abrams.

Enter the M1

US Marine in an M1 Abrams tank, February 2, 2011. Dmitry Kostyukov Getty Images

Development of a new Main Battle Tank to replace the aging M60 Patton began in the 1970s, and after a decade of research and development the M1 Abrams was born.

Boasting new lighter composite armor, a 105mm (later 120mm) gun,and a top road speed of 45mph the M1 was designed to match the formidable new Soviet T-80 MBT. The Abrams has a four man crew and could be fitted with explosive reactive armor that can destroys warheads.

The 1990 Gulf War saw the Abrams go into action for the first time alongside the older M60 Patton. One of the new technologies built into the Abrams was GPS. It was an invaluable tool during the Gulf campaign, making it much simpler for U.S. forces to navigate the vast distances of the Iraqi deserts.

M1 Abrams tank firing its main cannon during the Gulf War, 1991. Time Life Pictures/US Army Getty Images

The Gulf War saw the last great tank battles of the 20th century. On the February 26th, 1991, at the Battle of 73 Eastings, the superior technology and training of the M1 Abrams and its crews came to the fore as Captain H.R. McMaster seized the initiative and led a 9-tank troop straight at the heart of an elite Iraqi armored division. It wasn’t long before McMaster’s troops were joined by several more and the American M1A1s pushed through the Iraqi lines.

McMaster later recalled the battle, describing how his troop of tanks cut “a five kilometer-wide swath of destruction through the enemy’s defense...we had the advantage and had to finish the battle rapidly.”

Inside the tanks, the Abrams’ gun stabilization system kept the 120mm M256A1 smoothbore gun on target, allowing the gunners to pour armor-piercing rounds with depleted uranium penetrators, and M830 high-explosive anti-tank rounds onto the Iraqi tanks.

Iraqi forces lost 186 tanks while the U.S. lost only four.

Once the enemy frontline was broken McMaster used his tanks’ speed and maneuverability to swing around and attack the Iraqi reserves. “More of the enemy came into view. We drove our tanks into the center of the [Iraqi] position and destroyed many of the enemy vehicles from the rear.”

The day after the battle at 73 Eastings, the 1st Armored Division clashed with several Iraqi armored divisions at Medina Ridge, this would be the last major tank battle of Operation Desert Storm. Iraqi forces lost 186 tanks while the U.S. lost only four.

U.S. M1 Abrams tanks enter Baghdad in 2003. USAF

Since then, the M1 Abrams has been upgraded and deployed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. U.S. tanks also played a key role in the fall of Baghdad with M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams spearheading the attack on the city’s airport. Some M1s were equipped with the Tank Urban Survival Kit (TUSK) to improve the tank’s protection against infantry anti-tank weapons during the close urban fighting and during the occupation phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The new M1A2 Abrams SEP v3 battle tank, at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, is the latest and greatest U.S. tank. It was delivered to the Army on Oct. 4, 2017. U.S. Army

Since 2003, the U.S. has increasingly fought insurgent forces that don't have tanks, and tanks are unsuited to counter-insurgency operations like those in Afghanistan. It's like having a hammer but needing a scalpel.

However, Russia and China continue to develop their own tank arsenals with Russia’s high-tech new T-14 Armata and China’s VT4.

In October 2017, the U.S. Army received the first of its new enhanced M1A2s which have improvements to counter IEDs, better communications, and enhanced power generation systems.

New technologies like railguns, drones and ultralight armour will be the key to creating an incrementally better tank than the Abrams, but this is some years away.

While the U.S. was quick to realize the tank’s potential, they have not always been at the forefront of tank development. Lagging behind during the interwar period, it was only America’s impressive industrial capacity that enabled them to catch up and gain an edge.

But since V-E Day in 1945, the U.S. has led the way, developing some of the most successful tanks of the Cold War along with the modern and formidable M1 Abrams.

With all the advanced tools of modern warfare, the tank still remains the U.S. military’s armored spearhead on the ground—just as it had been a century earlier on the trench-laden fields of France.