The M26 spent a long time in development and came as a response for the need for a heavily armed - and armoured - weapons system to compete with the German gun systems of the Panther and Tiger.

It is named after World War One General John Pershing who led the American Expeditionary Force in WWI and it first reached the battlefield in Feb 1945. The M26 saw very little action in WWII but it saw much more in the Korean war and was credited with destroying half of all T34’s destroyed in that war.