Just to show you how little I know about tanks, I had no idea that the US had an operational heavy tank until the introduction of the M1 Abrams. While the Germans had the Tiger and the Soviets had the KV series and later the IS series of heavy tanks, the US, it seemed, decided it was better to have many medium tanks rather than a few heavies. And there are reasons for this. Heavy tanks are expensive to build, not terribly fast, weighed a great deal so even transporting them could be an issue, were not able to use many extant bridges, and when they got stuck, they were difficult to get un-stuck.

However, there was a real need for one in the later years of the war when it was seen how easily medium tanks were defeated by the bigger German heavies. With the Cold War underway, it was pretty obvious that the US Army's tanks would be rather powerless against the bigger Soviet heavies.

The US Marines also wanted a heavy tank. They would send their mediums ashore in the first wave, and follow them up with the big guns. In fact, it is pretty much the USMC that caused the M-103, as it became to be known, to see the light of day. The Army tried to talk the Marines into the M-60, but the USMC found those tanks to be unacceptable for their use. They wanted the big gun and the heavy armor.

The Army realized that it would probably need a heavy and so somewhat reluctantly, and through the usual trials and tribulations of development, saw to it that the M-103 made it into production. Production was quite small for a tank with only about 300 units being built, 220 of them for the Fleet Marine Force. Even the initial production tanks had defects and while some deficiencies were taken care of on line, others had to be fixed post production. The USMC found the initial M-103 to be totally unacceptable so their tanks sat in storage for years until the fixes were made and eventually produced the M-103A1.

One of the major glitches in the original M-103 was that the floor did not rotate with the turret. While the Army accepted this and eventually sent its heavies to Europe, the USMC did not. Eventually they were delivered. The troops loved them. They were just what was needed for the mission. In fact, when training with them, they had to be very careful of how they were fired so that rounds would not ricochet into nearby towns. It had a super flat trajectory, a very high muzzle velocity and heavy ammunition to go with its 120mm gun.

Though never used in combat, they served a long and productive life. The US Army even borrowed several M-103A1s for use in Europe and the Marines had all their extant M-103A1s even further modified with diesel engines and other upgrades. However, by the early 1970's they had pretty well lived out their career and the USMC was forced to accept a tank they did not want, the M-60.

The author gives a full background, the story of the long development of this tank (which was never given a name), and its eventual use and modifications. It makes for a most interesting history of this big, Cold War tank and is a book that deserves a place on the shelf of any armor enthusiast.

April 2013

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