The T2 Medium Tank was an American design that replaced three prototype medium tank designs started in the 1920s for an experiment conducted by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

. The T2 tank never saw combat nor left prototype stages and due to lack of funds was not mass-produced with only one built in 1930 by

Rock Island Arsenal The Rock Island Arsenal comprises , located on Arsenal Island, originally known as Rock Island, on the Mississippi River between the cities of Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. It lies within the state of Illinois. Rock Island ...

. Its legacy, however, was the M2 light tank, developed into the M2 medium, and onto the M3 Lee and

M4 Sherman } The M4 Sherman, officially Medium Tank, M4, was the most widely used medium tank by the United States and Western Allies in World War II. The M4 Sherman proved to be reliable, relatively cheap to produce, and available in great numbers. It ...

medium tanks.

Design

Following the testing of the Medium Tank M1921 two new medium tank projects were approved in 1926, one of which was for a lighter 15 ton tank design. The first design, armed with a gun in the hull front and a smaller gun in the turret, did not progress due to lack of funding and instead the Light Tank T1E1 was used as a basis. The design of the T2 was largely inspired by the British

Vickers Medium Mark II The Vickers Medium Mark II was a British tank built by Vickers in the Inter-war period. The Medium Mark II, derived from the Vickers Medium Mark I, was developed to replace the last of the Medium Mark Cs still in use. Production and rebuilding ...

and was later developed into the M2 light tank. When the T2 Medium Tank was built, its weight had to be reduced drastically because the US War Department had set a maximum weight of 15 tons. The T2 weighed only 14 tons when it was combat-loaded. The secondary armament was a 0.5 inch (12.7mm) machine gun and a 0.3 inch (7.62mm) machine gun at the front of the hull on the right; these were later replaced with a single 30 cal machine gun. The primary armament was a 47mm semi-automatic gun mounted on the turret and it initially had an additional 37mm cannon placed on the hull but that was abandoned in 1931. Only one T2 was produced; it is currently on display at Fort Lee,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

.http://preservedtanks.com/Types.aspx?TypeCategoryId=1210

References

*Rickard, J (13 May 2016)
Medium Tank T2
{{US tanks, style=wide Interwar tanks of the United States Medium tanks of the United States Abandoned military projects of the United States Trial and research tanks of the United States