What is T32?

This T32 was a project designed by the United States army. And the initial idea about this tank popped as a need for a successor to a previously built tank, the M4A3E2 Sherman “Jumbo”. Even though this tank has a long production history and so many plans and suggestions behind its production, this was not used in any of the wars that the US army has faced. This tank was just a prototype.

Origin

The place of origin of the T32 is the United States. And this was built as a post-war development tank. The first T32 tank was produced in the year of 1945. And this was built as a heavy tank. This was a tier 8 one. They built this tank with a battling rate of 7.3 (AB / RB / SB). This T 32 has so much in common with the previously built tank, M 26.

History

The tank T32 has a very long and contended history. Let us make it as short as possible and take a look. Even though the M 26 was showing great performances, the armies found that it had difficulties facing the heavy German beasts such as Tiger ll.

What made them build T32?

This battling failure was a downfall for the US armies. So, they decided to find a solution. And as result, the T 29 was produced. But it wasn’t enough. They needed something far more advanced than that. They need something with more ammunition and transmission. As a result, they produced this new T32 tank.

The production history of T32

This T32 took nearly one year to design. Even though this tank was designed with some serious capabilities, this tank was never gone under mass production. There were only four of these tanks built. They produced this T 32 tank from 1945 to 1946.

Variants

There were two variants for this tank, T 32. They were the T 32 (2) and the T 32 E 1 (2). And that was it. It was a shame that they could not use this tank in the wars.

General information on T32

There are several things we can talk about under general information. They are the armor, the crew, the dimension, the mass, and the other modules. Let us take a look.

Armor

When we talk about armor type, there were two types. The cast homogeneous armor and the rolled homogeneous armor. Cast homogeneous armor can be seen on the front glacis, cupola, turret, and gun mantlet. And the rolled homogeneous armor can be seen on the hull sides, turret, cupola, rear, and roof. Now let us take a look at the thickness of the armor.

The thickness of the armor

We can talk about the thickness of armor under three categories: the hull armor, the turret armor, and the cupola. Let us take them one by one.

The hull armor

The hull armor of the T 32 was 127 mm thick on the front, 76.2 mm thick on the sides, and about 50.8 mm thick on the rear. Or the back. And the roof of the hull armor was about 38.1 mm thick.

The turret

The turret was about 298.4 mm thick from the front and the gun mantlet was about 298.4 mm thick. The sides of the turret were about 152. 4 – 196 mm thick and the rear was about 152.4 mm thick. The roof of the turret was about 25.4 mm thick.

Cupola

The overall thickness of the conical cupola was about 152.4 mm and the roof of the cupola was about 152.2 mm thick from the outer ring and the center of the cupola was about 25.4 mm thick.

Dimensions

The length of the body was about 35.55 ft with the gun and without the weapon, it was about 23.20 ft long. The width of the tank was about 12.36 ft and the height was about 9.23 ft or 2.81 m. the total mass of the tank was about 120 000 lbs. or 54 431 kg.

Crew

As you can see, the T 32 was not an enormous tank. So, there were only two crew members. Even though it was designed to put five crew members, the interior space was an issue. So the commander and the driver had to take care of everything.

Modules

Finally, let us look at the modules and their specifications of the T 32. Let us take them one by one.

Guns

T 32 had only two guns. The first one was the 90 mm Gun T15E2.

90 mm Gun T15E2

This had a penetration of 170/258/45 mm and a damaging power of 240/240/320 hp. The rounds per minute of the fire rate were 7.89 and the dispersion was about 0.38. The aiming time of this gun was 2.3 seconds and this gun weighed 2050 kg.

105 mm Gun T5E1/45

This is the second gun of the tank. This had a penetration of 208/245/53 mm and a damaging power of 320/320/420 hp. The rounds per minute of the fire rate were 6.38 and the dispersion was about 0.4. The aiming time of this gun was 2.1 seconds and this gun weighed 2400 kg.

Engines

There were three engine types in this tank. Take a look at the table.

Engine	Chance of fire on impact	Weight	Engine power
Continental AV-1790-3	20 %	569 kg	800 hp
GMC Allison V1710-E32	20%	556 kg	760 hp
Ford GAZ	20 %	556 kg	720 hp