Remembering an old friend...
The M-47 PATTON

Foreword

I'm sure that everybody who has served in a fighting unit of any Army, in war or peace, would agree with me when I speak of the emotional attachment between a soldier and his combat vehicle or system, either a gun or an aircraft or, as in the case of armoured troops, his tank.

This page is dedicated to the tank I rode during the 15 months spent (some 30 years ago...) serving as Tank 2nd Lieutenant.

Once upon a time...

During the early 50's, a new AFV was selected by the Italian Army to replace the obsolete M4-Sherman and M26-Pershing which had represented, till then, the backbone of the post-war Italian Tank Corps.

The new AFV, which was maintained on line from 1954 to 1989, was the M-47 PATTON.

Here is a photo of my M-47 platoon crossing a ditch during a drill session

M-47 at a glance

The M-47 was a medium tank, heavily armored, with a receding profile (according to the standards of those days...) and an excellent, for a 44 tons vehicle, specific pressure ratio (i.e. ratio between tank's weight and the ground touching surface of the crawler track) of about .935, not far from the 1.0 ratio which was considered as the optimum.
In spite of its pretended "receding profile", the M-47 main defect was represented by its body's overall dimensions. Being sized 7.091 x 2.960 x 3.510 meters, it was hard to find adequate protections (walls, bushes, boulders, etc.) to hide the tank or terrain for a sound "turret down" or "body down" positioning.

Armour

Turret
Turret was moulded in a single block of special steel. It could be traversed either manually or by using an oil-electrodynamical system which enabled a 4-per-minute rotation.
Turret inside was slightly overcrowded...since in a limited space there were :

• 3 crew members (Commander, gunner and gun server/radio operator)
• all aiming and firing equipment (see below)
• 1 AN/GRC 3-4 radio (located in the rear)
• 11 shells
• the 90/50 M-36 breech (see below)

Armament
Primary armament was represented by a 90/50 gun (T-119E1 for the first models, later replaced by the M-36 model) while the secondary one was represented by a .30 (M-1919 A4 model) machine gun, paired off to the gun and operated by the gunner, and by a .50 (M-2 HB model) installed on the top of the turret for air defense
An additional .30 machine gun was installed on the forehead of the early M-47 and operated by the second pilot. Both additional machine gun and second pilot were later removed.

Ammunition
M-47 was equipped with 70 shells, stoved into the turret (11) and into the powder-magazine below it (59).
There were 11 shell types :

• AP-T (Armour Piercing) velocity : 1,000 yds/sec
• HVAP-T (Hyper Velocity Armour Piercing) velocity : 1,350 yds/sec
• HVAP-DS-T (Hyper Velocity Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot) velocity : 1,350 yds/sec
• APC-T (Armour Piercing Capped) velocity : 920 yds/sec
• HEAT-T (High Explosive Anti Tank) velocity : 950 yds/sec
• HE (High Explosive) velocity : 915 yds/sec
• WP (White Phosphorous) velocity : 915 yds/sec
• HE Marker (High Explosive)
• TP and HVTP-T (Target Practice and Hyper Velocity Target Practice)
• Blank Charge

Combat supplies included : #32 HE,#21 APC-T or HEAT,#10 HVAP and #7 WP.

Engine
The M-47 was powered by a Continental AV-1790-5B, 12 cylinders, 29361 cm3, 820 HP, gasoline propelled, air cooled engine.
Sparking plugs were activated by a 4-magnets booster which could be replaced, in case of failure, by an auxiliary generator Wisconsin TFT.
With a full tank (882 liters), the M-47 had an autonomy of some km 128 (average gasoline consumption about 7 liters for 1 km!).
Power was transmitted from engine to driving wheels (one for each crawler track) through an Allison G.M. shifting and steering unit, called Cross-Drive, which encompassed gear box, differential unit and braking system. The shifting and steering unit was controlled by the pilot through a single leverage, as shown herebelow.

A couple of anedoctes...with a morale

Beware of what you are asking. You might get it!
One day, in the training field, we were attending a "Fast-In-Fast-Out" session : the crew, at a tank commander's order, had to jump into the tank and then leave it as fastest as possible (this kind of exercise could be very helpful...in case of need).
Well, at a certain point one of my colleagues, in a moment of excitement, instead of ordering "Out!!", cried "Emergency!!".
The istructor grinned and confirmed :"OK...emergency".
You should know that in case of emergency, the crew must leave the tank crawling through a trap door located under pilot's feet. This means that the turret had to be traversed at 45° in order to give access, through its floor, to the pilot's compartment and to the famous trap door.
Easy to say ... less to do! Specially if your tank is parked (like it was on that day) in the middle of huge puddle of mud and water one-foot deep!!

It can be dangerous to leave something unaccomplished!
One day, I was commanding my platoon for the first time in a gun drill with real shells.
The early part of the session was a tremendous success. At the first salvo, five guns fired in unison and five targets, 1600 yards away, blew up in unison.
I was tasting the experience, when the server came out paleface and said: "There is a shell blocked into the barrel!". A thrill of fear freezed my backbone! The problem was that the server, upon loading the gun, had not used the necessary decision and, by pushing the shell for just a half of its lenght into the barrel, had released the breech-block which had materially buckled the shell case.
I admit that the first though which crossed my mind was to call for an emergency exit (see above), but then I realized that the best thing to do would have been completing the job.
Do you know how porcupines make love ?...VEEEERY CAREFULLY!!!
Well, by adopting the same approach I reopened the breech-block and accompained the shell into the barrel. Fortunately the damaged shell case slided into the gun.
When the shot was fired, my sight of relief could have moved a vessel for one mile!