#21 — M26 Pershing: America's Answer to the Tiger, One Year Late
The M26 Pershing's 90mm M3 gun could penetrate 120mm of armor at 1,000 meters — finally giving American tankers a weapon that could kill Panthers and Tigers from the front. In February 1945, a Pershing from the 3rd Armored Division famously dueled a Tiger I in Cologne, destroying it with a flanking shot captured on film by a combat cameraman.
The Pershing was America's first heavy tank, and its development was plagued by bureaucratic infighting. Army Ground Forces chief General Lesley McNair opposed heavy tanks, insisting that tank destroyers should handle enemy armor. His doctrine cost American tankers their lives in undergunned Shermans for two years. Only 2,212 Pershings were built, and just 310 reached Europe before V-E Day. In Korea, Pershings proved decisive — at the Battle of the Naktong Bulge in 1950, M26s destroyed North Korean T-34/85s in the first tank-on-tank engagements of the war. The Pershing's lineage runs directly through the M46, M47, and M48 Patton series, making it the ancestor of America's entire Cold War armored warfare program.
