Designed by the
Knuckey Truck Company with series production by the Pacific Car and Foundry
Company, the "40-ton Tank Transporter Truck Trailer M25" – dubbed the 'Dragon
Wagon' by enthusiasts – was the largest wheeled vehicle fielded by the US Army
during World War II. The M25 consisted of the M26 tractor and M15 trailer.
Designed to recover disabled tanks and other heavy armoured vehicles from
forward areas, the M26 featured a large and heavily armoured cab to protect the
crew. Field use, however, indicated that typically this vehicle was not used in
recovery operations during the heat of battle, so the later-production M26A1
eschewed the armoured cab in favour of reduced weight and increased reliability.
As US
tanks evolved and became larger and heavier, an upgraded version of the trailer,
the M15A1, was introduced to accommodate them. During the 1950s the M15A1 was
further modified to the M15A2 standard, which featured a 24-volt lighting
system. As such, these veteran trailers saw service thorough the Vietnam
War and into the 1970s. The M26 and M26A1 remained in the US Army inventory well
beyond the end of WWII – even being employed by NASA to move the Saturn V
rockets that launched man to the moon in the 1960s. This Walk Around examines
the armoured and soft-skin versions of this massive vehicle, and its trailers,
through hundreds of colour photos and some of the finest restored examples in
existence. The reader is visually taken over, under, and through these vehicles
from front bumper to loading ramp.
