M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank
The M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank was fielded in 1951, equipped with a long barrel 76mm main gun, an improvement on the M24 Chaffee tank. In development it was known as the Light Tank T37, designed to be air-transportable and highly mobile but with a powerful main gun as a counter to the massed armor of the Soviet Red Army. It was also intended to be a platform for other armored vehicles that would share the chassis and engine (see M42 Duster). As development concluded in 1949, the tank was redesignated the T41E1 and finally standardized as M41. Other variants were produced up to the M41A3.
1950s photo of an M41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank on a rail car, for shipment to the 705th Tank Battalion, 102d Infantry Division.
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Today in WW II: 11 Sep 1944 Following Operation DRAGOON, US Seventh Army links up with Patton's Third Army west of Dijon, France, creating a solid wall of Allied forces stretching from Antwerp, Holland to the Swiss border. More ↓
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11 Sep 1944 First into Germany: At 1805 a 5th Armored Division patrol reached the Our River, then waded across, moving from Luxembourg into Germany near Stalzemburg, on the Siegfried Line.
Visit the Olive-Drab.com World War II Timeline for day-by-day events 1939-1945! See also WW2 Books.
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M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank
The M41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank was named for Gen. Walton Harris Walker, commander of the 8th Army in Korea, who was killed in Korea in a jeep accident just before Christmas 1950. Walton had been nicknamed "Patton's Bulldog" for his service in Gen. Patton's Third Army during WW II, so the name was applied to the new tank.
ARVN M41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank advances on enemy position in Saigon, May 1960.
M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank. Photo: Courtesy of Frank Suha.
M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank at Pate Museum of Transportation. Photo: Courtesy of Bob Pettit.
M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank at Pate Museum of Transportation, 8 June 2005. Photo: Courtesy of Bob Pettit.
M-41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank and M-42 Gun Motor Carriage. Photo: Courtesy of Paul Kopsick.
M41 Walker Bulldog Light Tank, 1st Armored Division Museum, Baumholder, Germany.
