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With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. Army found itself without a suitable tank to counter the huge number of vehicles in the Soviet inventory. The Army launched a two-pronged program to begin correcting this major deficiency: the first prong was the development of the M47, which was a stop-gap solution; the second was to develop the M47's successor, which became the M48 Patton tank.
Design work began in 1950, and by 1953 the M48 had entered series production. It had a large cast hull and rounded glacis, with a large cast turret with a bustle overhang.It followed a conventional layout for U.S. vehicles, with the driver at the front of the hull, and the commander, gunner, and loader in the turret; there was no hull gunner (nor did subsequent U.S. designs incorporate hull gunners after the M47). The M48 was initially armed with a 90mm main gun fitted with a T-shaped blast deflector and a bore evacuator. Fire control comprised a coincident rangefinder, ballistic drive, and ballistic computer. Secondary armament comprised a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun and a .50 caliber machine gun that could be fired from within the comander's rotating cupola. An infrared/white light searchlight could be mounted over the main gun, and the driver's position was equipped with night vision gear.The suspension comprised six small road wheels, a front idler, three track return rollers, and a rear sprocket driven by an 810hp Continental air-cooled gasoline engine.A total of 11,703 M48 tanks were produced in the M48A1 through M48A5 series. The Bundeswehr fielded 1,492 M48A2C tanks, equipping them with a German-made searchlight that provided both infrared and visible light capability. When the Leopard 1 was introduced, the M48s were reassigned to the Territorial Army, with 650 of them being upgraded to M48A2GA2 standards.The M48A2GA2 was the result of a German modernization program undertaken at Wegmann facilities. These upgrades gave the M48 significantly increased capabilities: - The main gun was upgraded to the 105mm L7, which was equipped with a thermal sleeve
- Passive low-light TV aiming and observation camera
- An improved anti-aircraft machine gun mount for the commander
- Ballistic computer
Variants included the M67 flamethrower tank and the M48 Armored Vehicle-Launched Bridge (AVLB); the M48 also served as the basis for the M88 Armored Recovery Vehicle and the Keiler mine clearing vehicle.Finally, the M48 also served as the basis for what eventually became the M60 MBT.
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