now this is a Centurion mark 3 so it's not the first one it's one of them
developments of it if you like it is actually an old prototype originally it
was built as the crocodile flamethrower attached to the Centurion the whole idea
was daft it didn't work but it still got some of the fittings on the front which
related that but we're showing it it was a typical mark through some sort of tank
that was used in Korea the Centurion was probably the best of all British tanks
they appeared during the war to begin with at least the design appeared during the
war and they have came out at the end of the war but it was only by the time of
the Korean War the Suez Crisis that they really came into their own there's two
or three things about them they're fitted with the rolls-royce meteor
engine in the back and the meteor which had been developed earlier for the
Cromwell tank was a magnificent engine it was over 600 horsepower at a time we
got up to the Centurion which was more than enough to push the tank along
though the driver has got a manual control is to do manual gearshift and
the clutch and all the old driving techniques so is a very physical tank
for the crew to operate normally takes a crew of four that's a driver front and
three men all in the turrets the gamma the loader and the tank commander so
it's four men altogether now in addition to the rolls-royce engine it's driving
into a merit ground transmission so it steers beautifully it really is a nice
handy vehicle to drive it's got some horsemen style suspension with fairly
large road wheels you'll notice on British tanks and it's still the same
today we still go for this outside attached suspension you'll never find a
British tank there are there are other vehicles in the family really
but in tanks property I'll never find them with torsion bars they're just not
made not for British service anyway they've always got an outside attached
suspension in this case as I say it's a horseman type as horizontal coil springs
operating against the her arms with the wheels on the ends the
Centurion it's typical of British tanks of the time its rear engined of course
front fighting compartment and in this case fitted with the 20 pound began that
that's what we called it in it was actually eighty three point four
millimeters I think is the overall caliber of it and it was an excellent
gun far better even than the old wartime 17 pounder and quite capable knocking
out pretty well anything it came up against so it was a very effective
weapon in that sense one of the things that made the tank so effective that and
the crew they tended to be trained so well but a Centurion driver was
something of a specialist and you'll find that even from the fitters point of
view knowledge of the meteora engine ganger in the war was already an
advantage when it came to looking after these tanks after the war they could do
a lot of maintenance without some a lot of these extra retraining the house
slightly boat-shaped it was designed to resist mind blast to some extent and
it's all a welded construction naturally so they really are an effective tank the
turret however is a casting it's got a top plate which is welded into place and
then the all-around Tsar casting he's got a traditional type of mantlet
underneath that canvas cover over it coaxial machinegun
the bezel and the early tanks later changing to a browning and really an
effective weapon you'll notice there's no howl machine gun the centurion didn't
normally mount one because they had one man in the front the driver only they
had no place for an assistant driver which would have probably solved the
flames were a problem if they had but they didn't have one so they had the one
man sitting there and he had no use for machine gun he had his hands full
driving the tank so that's the Centurion probably one of the finest tanks has
been really ever been produced they've served all around the world
and they still they still are ancillary roles in the Middle East and so on in
South Africa they've been really successful and that's one of the best
things you sell at any tank I don't think any tank that anyone's produced
has ever come quite close to the Centurion for that broadness of them
abuse worldwide
you