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Armor/AFV: Modern - USA
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M48A4 Turret???
bots1141
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Pennsylvania, United States
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Posted: Tuesday, September 08, 2020 - 10:11 PM UTC
What turret would the M48A4 have had? The last few years wikipedia has said that it would have been the M60A0, the M60A1, and now the T95E4 which would be the T96 turret. Also, what hall would it have been? Thank you!
RobinNilsson
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Posted: Tuesday, September 08, 2020 - 10:43 PM UTC
My opinion, based on being a tight fisted bastard:
Re-use available turrets.
This brings us to which turrets would have been available in larger numbers?
The initial production of M60A2's put new turrets on existing M60A1 hulls -> the turrets from those M60A1's would now be available for re-use.

I would go for the turret from an M60A1.

The T95E4 turrets were not produced in large numbers and their development eventually led to the T95E7 turret which was further developed into the M60A1 turret.
Bypassing the M60A1 turret and reaching back to a less developed version(T95E4) makes no sense at all to me.
mkp
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Posted: Tuesday, September 08, 2020 - 11:46 PM UTC
No the plan was to upgrade M60A0 to M60A2 and the available M60A0 turrets should go to make M48A4. One or two were built, but with the problems of the M60A2 the rebuilding of the M48A4 was canceled. Squadron Signal armor book no. 22 has a few pictures of the M48A4.
I've heard somewhere Israel converted some M48A2/3 to M48A4 with usable turrets of destroyed M60 chassis, but as I said this could be a rumor.
Frenchy
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Posted: Wednesday, September 09, 2020 - 01:19 AM UTC
M48A1E3 (a.k.a. M48A4) :




H.P.
RobinNilsson
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Posted: Wednesday, September 09, 2020 - 01:50 AM UTC
Shillelagh turrets were placed on M60 hulls and the result was labeled M60A1E1, Shillelagh turrets mounted on M60A1 hulls were labaled M60A1E2. Both types were later standardised as M60A2, regardless of the hull.
The M60A0 turret has a strong resemblance to the M48 turret but they are not the same, there is an M60 kit by Dragon but I still think that it would be better to use some M60A1 instead.
"As the M60A1 hull became available in 1966, it was decided to upgrade these prototype vehicles to the M60A1 hull standard. Vehicles using the M60A1 hull and chassis received the M60A1E2 designation, and were used to develop the Type B compact turret and the XM81E13 gun variant.[78] The M60A1E2 finalized the turret design with the use of a compact turret which reduced exposed frontal area by 40% compared to the M60A1 and continued development of the M51 Missile Guidance System (M51MGS).[76] These were later standardized as the M60A2." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_tank

Initial plans are initial plans and thus subject to revisions and changes.
The turrets on the M60A1 are better than those on the M60 and since some of the reason for the M48A4 was to provide tanks for training without having to use the M60A1's I think it makes sense to use the M60A1 turrets.
The production of te M60A1 started in 1962, M60A2 in 1973. The M60A1 was produced in much larger numbers than the M60A0 so I would assume that the M60A1 was more common in active units. The M60A3 entered production in 1979 so the M60A1 was active in parallell with the M60A2. Providing training for the most common turret makes more sense than picking the M60A0 turret.

Edit: the above was written while H.P. was busy finding images. Since the M48A4 never was more than a prototype I would still go with the M60A1 turret

Frenchy
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Posted: Wednesday, September 09, 2020 - 02:18 AM UTC
On a side note, at least one of the two ex-M48A4 hulls was later fitted with the XM66D turret :


More info here

H.P.
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