American Defense Secretary Robert McNamara decided to do something no one had ever tried before or since he got the West Germans to agree to jointly develop this “super-tank” with the United States. defense planners concluded what was needed was a tank so advanced that it would keep us ahead of the Russians for a full generation, not just a couple years. As a result, they both needed a heavy tank that could move fast, fire a very large round and withstand as much as it could dish out.īut at the time, the U.S. The American and West German armies faced exactly the same threat in exactly the same theater of operation. The West wasn’t to know until years later that the Soviet tanks were so cramped as to greatly reduce the efficiency of the crew, and that the autoloader for the main gun had a nasty habit of loading the extremities of unwary gunners into the cannon’s breech. In actuality, the typical “capability inflation” of Cold War-era Soviet weapon systems was in full effect. and West Germany had only just fielded two new heavy tanks, the M60 and Leopard I, but already it appeared that the new Russian tank would soon have the advantage over them. By the early 1960s, with the Cold War now well into its second decade, Western intelligence learned the Soviets were preparing a vastly improved version of their T-62 main battle tank with upgraded armor, three-man crew and an autoloading main gun.
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