It turns out that the United States did build a monster tank during World War II. The ninety-five-ton T28 would have been the heaviest tank in American history.
When it comes to tanks, America can only hope that size isn’t everything.
During World War II, Germany had its armored giants, such as the seventy-ton King Tiger, the 188-ton Maus or the never-built P.1000, a thousand-ton behemoth that waddled across the line between ambition and insanity. For their part, the Soviets fielded regiments of fifty-six-ton JS-2 heavy tanks.
Against those, the America’s thirty-ton M-4 Sherman seemed downright puny. For various reasons, such as ease of production and transportation overseas, the United States chose not to build heavy tanks during the Second World War. Even today’s M-1 Abrams weighs in at sixty to seventy tons, far less than the Maus.