Look at the T28 Super Heavy Tank and you'll probably think it looks like a giant, metal turtle. Honestly, that’s not far off. It is one of the most polarizing pieces of military hardware ever built by the United States. It was massive. It was slow. It was essentially a mobile fortress designed for a very specific, very bloody job that, luckily, never needed doing.
We’re talking about a vehicle that weighed 95 tons. For context, a modern M1 Abrams weighs around 70 tons. This thing was a monster. But why did the U.S. Army think they needed a tank that moved at a snail’s pace and couldn’t even fit on most bridges? The answer lies in the terror of the Siegfried Line.
What the T28 Super Heavy Tank Was Actually For
Most people assume this was just a "bigger is better" response to German Tiger tanks. That’s not quite right. By 1943, the Allies were looking at the massive concrete fortifications of the German Westwall, or the Siegfried Line. They expected a nightmare. They needed something that could take a point-blank hit from an 88mm anti-tank gun and keep rolling, all while blasting holes in bunkers with a massive cannon.
Originally, the Army called it the T28. Then they realized it didn't have a turret, so they renamed it the 105 mm Gun Motor Carriage T95. Then, in a final fit of identity crisis, they changed it back to the Super Heavy Tank T28 in 1946. It was a tank destroyer, a self-propelled gun, and a heavy tank all rolled into one confusing package.
It was designed to be invincible from the front. The armor on the hull front was 12 inches thick. To put that in perspective, the legendary Tiger I had about 4 inches. You could have thrown almost anything the Wehrmacht had at the front of a T28 and it would have basically just scratched the paint.
The Logistics of a 95-Ton Headache
Building a tank this big creates immediate, practical problems. You can't just drive a 95-ton vehicle down a dirt road in France without sinking into the earth. The engineers solved this by giving it four sets of tracks instead of two.
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It looked wild.
When it needed to travel by rail or cross a narrower path, the outer sets of tracks could be removed and bolted together to be towed behind the tank. It took the crew hours of back-breaking labor to do this. Imagine being a tanker in 1945, exhausted and covered in mud, having to disassemble your own tank's legs just to get it onto a train. It was a logistical nightmare.
The engine was another sticking point. Despite the massive weight, the T28 used a Ford GAF V-8 engine. This was the same engine used in the much lighter M26 Pershing.
It produced about 500 horsepower.
That’s not a lot when you’re trying to move 190,000 pounds.
Top speed? About 8 miles per hour. A brisk human jog could outpace the T28. If the terrain was even slightly muddy or uphill, that speed dropped even further. It was less of a "charge into battle" vehicle and more of a "gradually loom toward the enemy" vehicle.
Why It Never Fired a Shot in Anger
By the time the first two prototypes were actually ready in late 1945, the world had changed. The Siegfried Line had been breached by conventional means—mostly through grit, air power, and standard artillery. Then the focus shifted to the invasion of Japan.
Planners thought the T28 might be useful for cracking the coastal defenses of the Japanese home islands. But then the atomic bombs were dropped, the war ended, and the T28 was suddenly a relic before it ever saw a battlefield.
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One of the two prototypes was heavily damaged by an engine fire during testing at Yuma Proving Ground and was scrapped. The other one just... disappeared.
The Mystery of the "Lost" Tank
For decades, military historians thought the remaining T28 was gone forever. Then, in 1974, a hunter was walking through the woods at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He stumbled across a massive, rusted hull overgrown with weeds and bushes.
It was the last T28.
Nobody is quite sure how it ended up abandoned in a field for nearly 30 years. It’s one of those weird bureaucratic mishaps where a 95-ton tank simply falls through the cracks of paperwork. Today, that surviving tank has been restored and sits at the National Museum of the United States Army. If you ever see it in person, the scale of it is genuinely unsettling. It feels less like a vehicle and more like a geological event.
Was It a Failure?
From a technical standpoint, the T28 Super Heavy Tank was a dead end. It was too heavy for the infrastructure of the 1940s. It was underpowered. Its lack of a turret made it incredibly vulnerable to infantry attacks from the side or rear. If a T28 got tracked in an open field, it was basically just a very expensive pillbox.
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However, it taught the U.S. military a lot about heavy suspension and the limits of armor. It paved the way for the T29 and T30 heavy tank programs, which eventually informed the design of the M103 during the Cold War.
In the world of armored warfare, the T28 represents the absolute limit of what was possible before we realized that mobility is often more important than sheer thickness of steel. It was a specialist tool for a job that didn't exist by the time the tool was finished.
Actionable Insights for History and Armor Enthusiasts
If you're looking to dive deeper into the reality of heavy armor or even visit the T28 yourself, here is how to handle the history:
- Visit the Source: The only surviving T28 is currently located at the National Museum of the United States Army at Fort Belvoir. Check their "outside armor" exhibits, as the vehicle's size often dictates where it can be displayed.
- Study the Suspension: If you’re a mechanical nerd, look up the T28’s "Double Track" system drawings. It remains one of the most unique solutions to ground pressure issues in AFV history.
- Compare the Peers: To understand the T28 better, look into the British Tortoise (A39) or the German Jagdtiger. These were the T28's contemporaries, and they all suffered from the same "too big to function" syndrome.
- Context Matters: When discussing the T28, always remember it was a breakthrough vehicle, not a maneuver tank. It was never meant to duel with T-34s or Panthers in a field; it was meant to sit in front of a bunker and take hits until the bunker was gone.
The T28 Super Heavy Tank remains a fascinating "what if" of history. It is a monument to a specific moment in time when the U.S. military was willing to try anything, no matter how heavy or slow, to save the lives of the infantrymen tasked with storming the gates of Germany.