M47 Patton tank: Facts and fun

The 6th Cavalry Museum in Fort Oglethorpe is the proud keeper of a 1950s M47 Patton tank that is currently being restored.

Here are some interesting things about the museum’s tank and about M47 Pattons in general.

♦ The M47 at the museum is number 6900 of 8,576 M47 Pattons produced during the 1950s.

♦ The museum’s M47 weighs 49 tons, is nearly 28 feet long, 11.5 feet wide and almost 11 feet tall.

♦ Clearance underneath the tank is 18 inches, just enough for the escape hatches to open.

♦ By the end of the 1950s, M47s had been declared obsolete by the U.S. military and were being sold off to other countries.

♦ Countries that ended up with between 30 and 2,480 M47s each (some bought directly from the U.S. and some bought from countries that purchased them from the U.S.) include: Austria, Belgium, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Korea, Sudan, Spain, Turkey, West Germany and Yugoslavia.

♦ The M47 at the 6th Cavalry Museum seems to have been sold to Spain — the signage inside the tank is all in Spanish.

♦ Japan bought one M47 and Switzerland bought two, both for the purpose of evaluating them.

♦ In various wars, Pakistan used M47s against India, Jordan against Israel, Turkey against Cyprus and later against guerrillas within Turkey, Iran against Iraq, Croatia against the Serbs, France against Egypt and Somalia during a civil war.

♦ Arnold Schwarzenegger drove an M47 when he was in the Austrian Army. He later bought the exact tank he drove and began using it to raise funds for charity.

♦ M47s were used to depict German Tiger tanks in the 1965 film “Battle of the Bulge” about the famous World War II battle in Europe.

♦ Marietta resident and former tank commander George Adler, who is volunteering his services restoring the 6th Cavalry Museum’s M47 Patton, recommends the 2014 movie “Fury” as a way to gain an accurate idea of how tanks work and what it’s like to be part of a tank crew.

George Adler The lights and optics on the M47 Patton tank at the 6th Cavalry Museum in Fort Oglethorpe were badly damaged by desert conditions (left), says George Adler, who replaced them (right) as part of the restoration he is doing on the tank.