Cobra King

On this day in history - December 26, 1944 - Army Lt. Charles Boggess was in command of a 38 ton Jumbo Sherman tank named Cobra King. Boggess replaced the tank's previous commander - Charles Trover - who had been killed by a sniper three days earlier as he was standing in the turret. 

The much-depleted elements of 37^th Tank Battalion and the 53^rd Armored Infantry Battalion C Companies were the tip of the spear of General George Patton’s Third Army offensive to punch thru German lines and relieve the besieged defenders of Bastogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge.

Running at full-speed with guns blazing, four miles and 25 minutes later Cobra King linked-up with the 101^st Airborne.

Later, this tank, and a different crew, continued the push into Germany. It was during Patton’s controversial and failed mission to rescue allied POWs from a prison camp Cobra King took a round that penetrated its armor. The resulting fire took it out of action permanently.

Following the war the tank was recovered from the battlefield and served as the ‘Gate Guard’ at McKee Barracks in Crailsheim, Germany where we lived in the 1950s.

Following an exterior restoration on August 3, 2017, Cobra King was installed at the new National Museum of the United States Army at Fort Belvoir outside of Washington, DC.