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M-46 GENERAL PATTON

M-46 GENERAL PATTON

Personal Experiences:

The M-46 was my first combat tank in Korea, assigned to Tank Co 31st infantry, 7th Infantry  Div and later Co E, 2nd Medium Tank Bn, 40th Armor.  The tank was a “barefoot” tank with no frills or modern conveniences. The turret had power traverse, but everything else was manual. Range finders and computers were non-existent on tanks and range came through the tank commander’s estimation of range, with correction and target hit were via BOT=Burst On Target.   This is placing the point where your round struck in your gun sight onto the target and firing a second round.

The ol’ 46 had a lot of spunk and could climb around the Korea hillsides a lot faster than the older Pershing or Sherman. Refueling was a mess, as the M-46 had smaller fuel filler inlets which allowed the gas to be poured in slow.  This was very frustrating, trying to gas up and get moving, yet man-handling 55 gallon drums with a flex hose and trying to keep the gas from bubbling back over the mufflers and into the engine compartment.  This was no better refueling with a zillion 5 gal Jerry  cans. (Divide 230 gallons of gas into how many heavy 5 gallon gas cans??)  And “Keep quiet…wanna give away our position?”  (Right…as is they didn’t know who and where we were anyway). This problem was vastly improved with the M-47 with had filler inlets about 3 times the size.

Removing the engine transmission “power pack” was not difficult, requiring removal of the bolts holding the deck armor plate (half of them rounded off or stripped!)while another crew member disconnected the U-joints at the final drives and another unplugging the connections in front and accelerator linkage.  Four bolts had to be removed from the bottom and two from the transmission mounts. A good crew could have in unbuckled and the engine pulled in 30-45 minutes under good conditions…(ie; not minus 30 and someone shooting at you.)

Firepower was very good as the 90mm gun was very accurate and had a big punch when it hit.  It was more than a match for our counterpart, the T-34/85. The Russian 85mm was as good as our 90mm, but they NKA and Chinese tankers were very poor gunners. The gun was easy to maintain and very easy to load. The rounds averaged 24 (HE) to 38 lbs (HVAP-T) and stowed 90mm ammo was accessible. With a good loader, the M-46 could put out some very devastating fire.  What was not nice in Korea, is that some units used the M-26 and M-46 as artillery. With a tank sitting back with the rear end in a dug out ditch and that 90mm gun sticking almost straight up, it was NOT a fun job loading that 90mm. Thankfully, artillery fires HE and WP(smoke) which are the lighter rounds.

Maneuverability was very good with the M-46 with easy handling just by manipulating that wobble stick and kicking the accelerator with the right foot and left foot on the brake bar.  Even in snow and ice with steel combat track, she did pretty well.  I have run over a mine and been shot at with everything in the ’46 and feel that it protected my crew and me very well. The mine took off 2 road wheels and 8 track blocks, but as soon as the maintenance guys replaced the torsion bar, swing arm and wheels, we buckled up the track (once we changed our drawers) and were moving the same day.

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