Yes. Very poor writing on my part. I blame posting right before going to bed.
The Marines acquired tanks from the Army rather than continue to develop special-purpose tanks developed for the USMC, such as the CTL-3:
Well, I learned something interesting from this thread. The standard Army Man set when I was a kid came with plastic tanks. Seeing the descriptions and pictures of tank destroyers got me interested enough to look them up. They appear to be Pershing tanks.
But the amusing part is that I didn’t know how they were built and just guessed by physical appearance, so I had all my tanks with the turret backwards and driving in reverse.
I wonder if you had a different set than I had. The ones I played with were M48 Patton tanks.
Interesting. Given that I’m trying to ID by memory from google tank images, you’re probably correct.
The important part is I drove them backwards.
Me too.
The M48 was an evolutionary development of the M26 Pershing. The Pershing was upgraded to the M46, wich led to the M47, and then the M48.
And then the M60.
That Pershing had legs.
Though the Army insists that though developed from the M48, the M60 is not part of the Patton tank family, only the M46, M47, and M48s were Pattons. That of course has never stopped everyone and their mother from calling them Pattons anyway.
Irony: during the big tank battle in Tunisia in the film Patton, the good general was ordering around tanks named after himself.
The Army neglected to assign any “dead general” name to the M60, in defiance of decades of custom, so tradition-minded watchers of such things filled in the gap based on rational considerations such as a clear continuation of design heritage.
The Army was right but the Army was very wrong.