US Numbering

[PershingLover]

How are US tanks numbered?

For example, US 308932, do the numbers mean anything, any patterns to follow?

Coming up with numbers for a tank.

[Tiger6]

Short answer: see the spotters quide here http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/
They list serial numbers as far as know for Production of each model by factory, I think the book "Son of Sherman" goes in even deeper if you want to get really geeky.

Long answer, the serial number of any ww2 US vehicle is derived primarily from its function (no, I don't have a handy link to explain how this works).

Edit:
Starter for 10, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... rld_War_II

Pershings: https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/S ... ecords.htm

[Tiger6]

https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/t ... umbers.htm

[Wildboar44]

How are US tanks numbered?

For example, US 308932, do the numbers mean anything, any patterns to follow?

Coming up with numbers for a tank.

The number series you are enquiring about are called “Registration Numbers”. I believe this number was allocated by the US War Department to keep an inventory of vehicles. It would be similar to an asset number given by a large company to keep an eye on computers / printers etc.

The first two number are vehicle designation, 30 means tanks and special vehicles based on tank hulls, 40 means self-propelled gun carriages, tracked and half-tracked vehicles and 60 are Armoured cars. Your example above would be US WD vehicle 8932, how these last asset numbers were allocated I could not find out. They eventually went up to 8 digit ie 30******.

Pre 1943 these number were painted light blue and often had a pre-fix W, after this date they deleted the pre-fix and changed to white and US Marine Corp were painted yellow.

If you follow Tiger6’s US Auto Industry link and drill down on the M26/T26 production it list Registration numbers against actual production dates by Pershing manufacturer.

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