M26 Pershing: Lesley McNair's Doctrine, the Zebra Mission and Cologne

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The M26 Pershing grew out of T20 series prototypes begun in 1942 to fix the Sherman's tall layout, which came from a radial aircraft engine in the rear driving a front sprocket through a shaft under the turret. Engineers adopted the Ford GAN V8, cut down from a failed V12 aircraft engine, and moved the transmission to the rear. A General Electric diesel-electric version, the T23, ran to more than 250 prototypes but never saw combat. The bigger obstacle was General Lesley McNair of Army Ground Forces, whose tank destroyer doctrine held that tanks should not fight tanks. General Jacob Devers went around him to George Marshall to authorize 250 T26 tanks in late 1943, but deployment waited until the Battle of the Bulge, when Panthers and Tiger IIs devastated American armor.

In early 1945 Major General Gladeon Barnes led the Zebra Mission, taking 20 T26E3s to Europe. At Elsdorf a Tiger ambushed the Pershing Fireball from 100 yards, killing its gunner and loader, yet it was repaired within days. On March 6, 1945, near Cologne Cathedral, the Pershing Eagle 7 with gunner Corporal Clarence Smoyer knocked out a Panther in a duel filmed by a Signal Corps cameraman. Five years later, Pershings pulled from storage and display stands overmatched North Korean T-34-85s, but their engines overheated on Korean hills, and the tank was rebuilt into the M46 Patton.

• Torsion bar suspension kept the hull steady enough for Smoyer to fire on the move.
• The single T26E4 Super Pershing carried a 90 mm gun 73 calibers long, more than 21 feet.
• Crews welded plate from a destroyed Panther onto its turret, adding about five tons.
• At Remagen the 42-ton tanks were too heavy for the Ludendorff Bridge and waited five days for barges.
• At Chinju a platoon of three overheated Pershings had to be destroyed by their crews with thermite grenades.