M48A5 Korea, Early '80s

My next build is an M48A5 in Korea during the early '80s. The Korea-based M48A5s had a .50 cal mounted on the Urdan cupola, as opposed to an M60D as on stateside M48A5 tanks had.

Here is an example of what I am building, minus the dozer blade.

A few unique features of the Korea M48A5s were added smoke grenade dischargers and storage boxes and the aforementioned .50 cal and its mount. The mount is taken from an M551 Sheridan. Here is a better image of it.

I am still waiting on the Sheridan mount to arrive. I found the sprue that contains it (C sprue) from the new Tamiya M551 on eBay. It should arrive later this week.

To build it, I started with the left over hull from the Dragon M48 AVLB kit. You may remember I used the bridge parts on a Takom CM-11 hull to make my M60 AVLB (long before Dragon announced their M60 AVLB). I swapped out the upper hull for one left over from one of the many M48 multi-kits so I would have a 5 return roller hull as that is what M48A5s were built on. The turret is also left over from the Takom CM-11 kit. They married together quite well. The gun pintles and smoke launchers and their storage boxes are also from the Takom kit. I used the D Vision metal 105mm M68 barrel on it in the Takom mantlet with baffles cut from the D Vision resin mantlet. I didn’t use the D Vision mantlet as it didn’t fit well and the kit one looked much better. It looks like a copy of the Tamiya M48A3 chunky mantlet. The search light is from the old Legend M48A3 update set, modified with a Dragon mount.

Here it is so far.

I used the Def Model sprockets with mud release holes molded in them. They fit the rest of the Dragon sprocket parts perfectly.

These are the guns. The .50 cal is from the Takom CM-11 kit and the M60D is from Dragon’s Vietnam Helicopter crew set. The M60 mount is from an Academy HMMWV, I think.

More to come once I get the Sheridan .50 cal mount in.

Very cool! Is the .50 mount off a Sheridan or a M113 cupola?

Thanks Stik. The .50 cal mount is from an M551 Sheridan.

Oh very cool! Love seeing all these M48 and M60s around the forum lately. I’m getting a real education on Cold War armour.

Looks good, I have fond memories of this tank and shot my first gunnery on one.

This is going to be awesome! Following with alacrity.

Thanks guys. It has been fun so far.

I had a surprise when I got home tonight. The M551 C sprue containing the gun mount piece was supposed to come in on Fri. It was at my door today though. Here it is installed and the actual to compare it to.

I fixed the M60D as well. I had the bipod legs too far back.

I hope to get some paint on it by the weekend.

Really, really cool!

I’m getting itchy!

Thanks Mike. I’m glad you are enjoying it.

Cool! Looking forward to seeing her with paint.

Dang it, I do so love a good kit bash.

Is it just me, or does the Urdan cupola and the M551 MG mount look a whole lot like the original Chrysler cupola on the M48?

Its not just you…

Thanks for checking in guys. The original Chrysler cupola was similar to the Urdan cupola. Here is the Chrysler cupola. It was supposed to allow the gun to be fired remotely from inside the turret, but wasn’t very effective. The enclosed M1 cupola was preferred and accepted over it.

The Urdan seems to be the next iteration and more streemlined. It abandoned the under cover firing though for a free .50 cal.

Looking sweet!

The scissor mount for the TC’s M60D was deadly if your fingers were near the mount when it was lowered or collasped.

Hmmm very interesting. Just starting to think I know a little about different versions of the M4 Sherman and all this about M48 and M60s just blows my mind…

The M48A5 is a very late tank, even later than the early M60A1 tanks. There was a vacuum formed when the M60A2 with it’s gun/missile launcher failed and the tank was removed from Active Army service. It was never fielded to the Reserve Component.

Those tanks were replaced by the later M60A1 RISE/Passive tanks in the Active Army. Those tanks were intended to round out the USAR and ARNG tank battalions. So now there is a shortage of medium tanks.

So older M48A3 tanks were upgunned and upgraded to M60A1 fire control standards and called the M48A5. The tanks were fielded to a few National Guard divisions, 49th AD, 50th AD and 40th Infantry Division, perhaps some more. The Regular Army used them in Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division.

As the Regular Army transitioned to the M60A3TTS, it freed up M60A1 tanks and those tanks went into the USAR and ARNG to replace the plain M60s and M48A5s. The two tank battalions in Korea went straight to the M60A3TTS. The battalions liked the loader’s M60D the M48A5 had and cut the mounts off the tanks and placed them on the M60A3TTS.

So during a time in the late 1980s, the Total Army Armor Force used M60, M60A1, M48A5, M60A3TTS, M1IP and M1A1 tanks, with a lone M551A1 Sheridan battalion. I worked for the Directorate of the Total Army Armor Force at Fort Knox for a few months in 1991 and remember one of my tasks was trying to determine which version of tank each battalion used. It was a very big spreadsheet.

As a post note, the failure of the M60A2 led to the cancellation of the proposed M48A4. If the M60A2 was successful, older straight M60 tanks were to be converted into M60A2 tanks by removing the original style turret. Those original style M60 turrets were then going to be mated to M48A3 hulls thus creating the M48A4.

Ditto on Gamera’s post. This is really interesting stuff. Glad there are so many people around who really know about this firsthand.

There were also two types of M48A5’s. Block one was all M48A3 with the addition of top loading air filters and the 105MM main gun. Block two had the urdan style of cupola. Also, due to the October war, all the M60A1 (AOS) tanks the were fielded in 1973 were sent to Israel. I did not draw my M60A1(AOS) tank until the summer of 1975 in W.Germany. Because of the high volume of wrecked and destroyed tanks, in the October war, the US Army had depleted any reserve war stock. Thus the M48A5 was born. One a side note, getting ready to build an M48A4.

Ok, so now I am curious about the Taiwanese M48H variant. I know that it is not a US tank, but it seems like something of a step backwards. M48 turret with the 105mm gun on a M60 hull. Anybody know the story of why?