The Tank Museum
Published 10 Oct 2025M46, M47, M48 and M60. They saw action in Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf and held the line in the Cold War. For almost 40 years the US produced a succession of good tanks — but they never seemed to be good enough for the top brass.
Time after time, designers sought a perfection that seemed to lay out of reach until the arrival of the step-changing M1 Abrams.
Up till then, you have what can be called “The Patton” family: a series of closely related tanks that are only intended to be temporary until the next big thing arrived …
This is the story of the “Patton” family of tanks; tanks that the US tried and failed to replace time after time, yet which despite this ended up becoming the armoured backbone of the Free World during the Cold War.
In this film, Tank Museum Historian, James Donaldson, walks us through the progression of US tanks from the M26 Pershing right up to the M1 Abrams. Commonly known as The Patton Family, this group of tanks were good… but never quite good enough. Always meant to be a stopgap, the Pattons persisted where their prospective replacements failed, leading them to become the vehicles that endured the Cold War around the globe.
00:00 | Introduction
00:58 | From Pershing to Patton
03:50 | Replacing the M46
06:25 | A Third Patton
10:01 | Yet Another Stopgap
12:44 | Irreplaceable?
This video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé.
This video features archive material courtesy of the US Army Armor and Cavalry Collection.
Marine Corps History Division footage courtesy of the University of South Carolina’s United State Marine Corps Film Repository. To learn more about this project visit http://library.sc.edu/marinecorpsThis video features:
M46 Model by KojfDiscord: https://skfb.ly/pvYqz
M47 Model by GM3DScan: https://skfb.ly/otuLM
M48 Model by Muhamad Mirza Arrafi: https://skfb.ly/ptpMD
M60 Model by xlisov – https://skfb.ly/pApHM
M1 Abrams Model by Artem Goyko: https://skfb.ly/6xvLS
Warehouse Model by Hephaestus Studio: https://fab.com/s/df7de11341f8Want to learn more about the Patton Family of tanks? Here are some of the sources we used to make this film:
Abrams. A History of the American Main Battle Tank, Volume 2. Richard Hunnicutt. 1990
Elvis – Word for Word. Jerry Osborne. 2000
History of the Shillelagh Missile System 1958-1982. Elizabeth J, DeLong, James C. Barnhart, Mary T. Cagle. 1984
M26/M46 Pershing Tank 1943-53 Osprey New Vanguard 35. Steven J. Zaloga. 2000
M47 and M48 Patton Tanks Osprey New Vanguard 31. Steven J. Zaloga. 1999
M551 Sheridan: US Airmobile Tanks 1941-2001 Osprey New Vanguard 153. Steven J. Zaloga. 2011
M60 Main Battle Tank 1960-1991 Osprey New Vanguard 85. Richard Laythrop and John McDonald. 2003
Patton. A History of the American Main Battle Tank, Volume 1. Richard Hunnicutt. 1984
US Battle Tanks 1946-2025. Steven J Zaloga. 2025
E2015.4864 Comparative Fuel Economy Test on T42 and M4A3 Tanks. US Department of the Army. 6th July 1953Support The Tank Museum!
Friends: https://tankmuseum.org/support-us/fri…
Online Shop: https://tankmuseumshop.org/#tankmuseum
February 9, 2026
Keeping Up with the Pattons
Comments Off on Keeping Up with the Pattons
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
