your first tank

hi everyone,

Can you remember what the first real tank was that you actually saw ?
Mine was when I was very young (10 or so) on a visit to the Overloon warmuseum in Holland.

It is the M4 Sherman tank on display there.
I thought i was the meanest badass piece of machine i ever saw and could not under stand how they could destroy it.

I think they gave it a nice lick of paint because it looks "newer" then i can remember.

cheerio

Type 59....................

Chieftain at the Military Vehicles Experimental Establishment (MVEE). Lots of other stuff there in the years after.

Have seen the Leos as well as M60A3s a couple of times in our yearly parades here. Unfortunately I served in the navy and not the military which is too bad since conscripts do get to be tank crews here in Greece. I have friends that have served as Drivers, Loaders and gunners (Commanders are only career military).

Ummm, I think it was one of the modern Leopards.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to go and see a lot of war museums since I'm the only one with quite the interest for tanks and warfare in my family and group of friends.

I think it might have been a M48 or something... way back when.

Probably in Germany in the 80s. My parents had friends who were teachers in a school for the children of the troops stationed there and we went to visit them a couple of times. You couldn't go around a corner without bumping into a tank column. Don't remember which ones they might have been though. That interest didn't come till much later and I'm still pretty much exclusively interested in WWII stuff.

I might have seen some when I was a tiny kid, but i'm pretty sure the first one was around the age of 10 when one of the local régiments du train (which is a logistic regiment) exposed some "machinery".
The thing is I was born and grew up in an area that basically was on the front of WWI. It's common there to find old shells (found some myself), hand-grenades, various equipment, even bones (which is a big problem IMO, since they're much less taken care of now than they used to be. I heard cases of local contractors or cultivators just dumping them. There's a British show about the identification of such bones of WWI soldiers, if you can find it on Youtube)... And I had the occasion to visit a load of museums and memorials at that time, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a tank (though I've seen cars and planes plenty) then since there weren't many in WWI.

my father was in the army so grew up around military camps, saw a lot of tanks but have no idea what they were. the only one i can name from those days would be the scorpion because we'd see them driving on the roads

I think it was T-34, as a little child at "day open" on military training ground. Can't be sure if it was it, but I'm sure that I've seen and climbed up on T-34(-85 I think) as an adult in my GF's hometown. There's one standing in the park, facing west as a symbol of doubtful "help" from our doubtful "friends", Soviet army, for our country

I'm ashamed to say I haven't even seen a tank IRL

I was growing up in a town with a large US garrison nearby. So the first tanks I ever saw was a column of M48 Pattons driving through our town during a maneuver. Pretty impressive show for a little boy.

It was an M4 sherman

T-90. Woke me up from my slumber in our car as it crossed the road.

Tiger I at Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset England.
If your going to see a first tank make it a classic!