The Tank That Fought Five Wars For Five Different Armies

September 1980. The Iran-Iraq War has been running for a week. Iranian M60A1s are facing Iraqi T-62s on a front that has no spare parts, no American instructors, no manufacturer support. The embargo is total. The M60A1s fight anyway. For eight years. That's one chapter. There are four others. The M60 Patton fought in Vietnam. It fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, where Israeli M60 losses in the Sinai directly produced two of the most important developments in tank design history — Blazer explosive reactive armor and the Merkava program. It fought for Iran through eight years of war with no spare parts. It fought for Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the 1991 Gulf War. And it fought for Turkey in Syria in 2016 in a version modernized by Israel. Five wars. Five different armies. The same basic platform, wearing different flags, maintained by mechanics who spoke different languages, fighting enemies the original designers never imagined. Along the way it also produced the M60A2 Starship — the gun-missile disaster that the US Army called the future of tank combat and quietly retired in embarrassment. That story is in here too. Subscribe if this is the kind of military history you're here for. One second. Costs nothing. CHAPTERS 0:00 — Iran 1980. Eight years with no spare parts. 1:30 — What the M60 was designed to do 3:00 — The M60A2 Starship — the great disaster 5:00 — Yom Kippur 1973 — the losses that changed tank design 6:45 — Blazer ERA — the Israeli innovation born from M60 failures 8:15 — Iran-Iraq War — keeping it running without help 10:00 — Gulf War 1991 — Saudi and Egyptian M60A3s 11:30 — Turkey in Syria — the M60T variant 13:00 — Egypt's 1,700 M60s — the largest fleet left 14:15 — Five wars. Five armies. The same tank. SOURCES — Iranian Armed Forces M60A1 operational records Iran-Iraq War — Israeli Defence Force Magach operational records 1973-1982 — US Army M60A2 programme after-action analysis — Saudi Arabian National Guard Gulf War records 1991 — Turkish Armed Forces M60T Syria operational assessment