Arnold Schwarzenegger has a tank. We don't mean a propane tank, either. We mean a Korean War-era U.S. M47 Patton tank, as reported on Sunday.
In his spare time, in fact, the former California governor spends time smashing cars with it. As seen in the video below, he showed off his tank and flattened not just any car, but a Mercedes.
The flattening was entertainment for a press event at Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio in Los Angeles, Calif. to promote his upcoming film “The Last Stand.”
The M47 Patton was, Wikipedia notes, "an American medium tank and the second tank to be named after General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army during World War II and one of the earliest American advocates of tanks in battle. It was a further development of the M46 Patton tank."
More detail on the M47 Patton:
the M46 was a stopgap correction to the mobility and reliability problems of the M26 Pershing. It was planned that the M46 would be replaced by the T42 medium tank, but after fighting erupted in Korea, the Army decided it needed the new tank sooner than planned.
It was decided to create a second stopgap tank, the M47, which addressed various problems of the M46. The turret of the T42 was mounted on the hull of the M46, with the hybrid tank then named the M47 Patton.
Its main gun was an M36 90 mm gun with an M12 optical rangefinder fitted. Its secondary armament consisted of two .30cal Browning machine guns, one in the bow of the hull and one coaxial machine gun in the turret, and a .50cal Browning M2 on a pintle mount on the turret roof. The M47 was the last American-designed tank to include a bow machine gun.
The M47 Patton was the model driven by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he served in the Austrian Army when he was 18.
His new film, and his first starring role since he left the California governorship, “The Last Stand,” premieres on Jan. 17, 2013, less than two weeks from now.
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