Early Cold War

United Kingdom · MBT

The first true main battle tank: it ended the split between cruiser and infantry tanks and stayed relevant for fifty years.

Gun17-pdr, then 20-pdr, then L7 105 mm

Soviet Union · MBT

The first true Soviet main battle tank: a compact hull, a cast hemispherical turret and a 100 mm gun that set the pattern for every Soviet tank that followed.

Gun100 mm D-10T

Soviet Union · MBT

The most-produced tank in history: small, cheap, low and still fighting in conflicts today.

Gun100 mm D-10T2S

United States · Medium

The American Cold War workhorse, with a distinctive cast elliptical hull and turret.

Gun90 mm M41, 105 mm L7 in M48A5

France · Light

An air-portable light tank with an oscillating turret and autoloader that let three men fire twelve rounds fast.

Gun75 mm SA 50, later 90 mm or 105 mm

United States · Light

Fast post-war reconnaissance light tank exported across the world.

Gun76 mm M32

Soviet Union · Light

Amphibious Soviet light tank that could swim rivers under its own power.

Gun76.2 mm D-56T

Soviet Union · Heavy

The last Soviet heavy tank in production, developed from the IS series.

Gun122 mm M-62-T2

United Kingdom · Heavy

British heavy tank built to kill IS-3s at long range, retired as soon as Centurion could do the job.

Gun120 mm L1

United States · Heavy

America's last heavy tank - a 120 mm gun with two loaders, built to stop Soviet IS-3s in Germany.

Gun120 mm M58

Soviet Union · Heavy

The pike-nosed heavy whose appearance in the 1945 Berlin victory parade drove a decade of Western tank design.

Gun122 mm D-25T

China · MBT

China's licence-built T-54A, produced in roughly ten thousand examples and exported across Asia and Africa.

Gun100 mm Type 59 rifled

Poland · Medium

Poland's first home-built tank after 1945: a licensed T-34-85 produced at Labedy through the 1950s, with Polish detail changes and a long second life as a training and film vehicle.

Gun85 mm ZiS-S-53

Poland · Medium

The Soviet T-54A built under licence at Labedy from 1956, the vehicle that took Poland from wartime T-34s into the modern main battle tank era.

Gun100 mm D-10TG with bore evacuator and vertical stabiliser

Soviet Union · Medium

The transitional Soviet medium tank between the T-34 and the T-54, whose transverse engine and torsion-bar suspension became the template for every postwar Soviet tank.

Gun85 mm ZiS-S-53

Soviet Union · Heavy

A heavily armoured development of the IS-2 and IS-3 line, so slow and unreliable that the whole fleet was sent to the Far East and quietly retired.

Gun122 mm D-25T

United States · Medium

The M26 Pershing rebuilt with a proper engine and cross-drive transmission, and the tank that gave the Patton family its name and its first war in Korea.

Gun90 mm M3A1 with bore evacuator

United States · Medium

A stopgap built in enormous numbers: the M46 hull with a new turret rushed into production for Korea, then handed out across NATO in their thousands.

Gun90 mm M36 with bore evacuator

United Kingdom · Tank Destroyer

Surplus Cromwell hulls fitted with a big two-man turret and the Centurion's 20-pounder gun, a cheap way to put a modern anti-tank weapon into Territorial Army units.

Gun20-pounder (84 mm) QF

Sweden · Medium

Sweden's wartime Strv m/42 rebuilt with a new high-elevation turret, designed to fire from behind Swedish hills and forest crests.

Gun75 mm kanon strv 74 with high elevation

Soviet Union · Tank Destroyer

An air-portable assault gun built on the PT-76 chassis for Soviet airborne divisions, replacing the parachute-dropped ASU-57.

Gun85 mm D-70

United States · Tank Destroyer

A 90 mm anti-tank gun on a tracked, completely unarmoured air-droppable chassis, issued to US airborne units and used in Vietnam.

Gun90 mm M54

United States · Tank Destroyer

Six recoilless rifles bolted to a light tracked chassis. A US Marine Corps oddity that turned out to be a devastating bunker-buster in Vietnam.

GunSix 106 mm M40 recoilless rifles

Japan · Medium

Japan's first postwar domestic tank, deliberately built small and light enough for Japanese railways, roads and bridges.

Gun90 mm Type 61

France · Heavy

Prototypes only. France's postwar heavy tank, notable for its oscillating autoloading turret - the idea that later worked brilliantly on the small AMX-13.

Gun100 mm or 120 mm in an oscillating turret with autoloader

China · Light

A scaled-down Type 59 built for the paddy fields, mountains and weak bridges of southern China, and widely exported to south-east Asia and Africa.

Gun85 mm Type 62-85TC

United States · Tank Destroyer

An open-topped 155 mm howitzer on M41 light tank running gear, the standard NATO medium self-propelled gun of the 1950s.

Gun1 x 155 mm M45 howitzer

Sweden · Medium

Sweden Centurion Mk 3, bought in 1953 and modified with Swedish radios, sights and stowage.

Gun1 x 20-pdr (83.4 mm)

France · Light

An eight-wheeled reconnaissance vehicle with an oscillating turret and a driver at each end - listed here as a wheeled scout, not a tank.

Gun1 x 75 mm SA49 or 90 mm F2

United States · Light

Twin 40 mm Bofors on M41 running gear, built for air defence and used in Vietnam as a devastating ground-fire weapon.

Gun2 x 40 mm Bofors L/60 in an open turret

Japan · Tank Destroyer

A tiny tracked vehicle with two 106 mm recoilless rifles on a lifting mount, designed to ambush tanks from Japanese hillsides.

Gun2 x 106 mm M40 recoilless rifles

United Kingdom · Tank Destroyer

A Centurion carrying the largest tank gun ever built, the 183 mm L4, in a thin-walled turret. One prototype, never adopted.

Gun1 x 183 mm L4 gun

Soviet Union · Heavy

A four-tracked nuclear-battlefield heavy tank with a saucer-shaped hull, designed to be unflippable by a blast wave. One built.

Gun1 x 130 mm M-65

Soviet Union · Heavy

Prototype only, and the heaviest and most powerful Soviet tank ever actually built and run.

Gun130 mm S-70

Soviet Union · Tank Destroyer

Prototype only. A heavy casemate tank destroyer on the T-10 chassis, built as the last of the Soviet heavy assault guns.

Gun152 mm M-64

Soviet Union · Tank Destroyer

A casemate tank destroyer on the T-54 chassis, the last Soviet vehicle of its type to enter service.

Gun122 mm D-49 (M-62T)

Soviet Union · Light

Self-propelled anti-aircraft gun, not a tank: twin 57 mm cannon in an open turret on a lightened T-54 chassis.

GunTwin 57 mm S-68A automatic cannon

Soviet Union · Medium

Prototype only, and the design ancestor of the T-64.

Gun100 mm D-54TS

Soviet Union · Tank Destroyer

An air-droppable open-topped tank destroyer, light enough to be delivered by glider or parachute platform to airborne divisions.

Gun57 mm Ch-51

Soviet Union · Medium

Prototype only. Nizhny Tagil's rival to Object 430, withdrawn by its own designer as too complicated to maintain.

Gun100 mm D-54TS