THE CHALLENGER IS BACK!
Hello, welcome to Bovington Tank Museum in England.
We are here today to have a look at this beauty:
the Centurion.
How it came about.
And how it became one of the most successful tanks…
…following the last World War.
INSIDE THE TANKS RICHARD "THE CHALLENGER" CUTLAND
INSIDE THE CENTURION
By early 1943,
about half-way through the war,
British tanks were in a bad way...
...chronically unreliable,
under-gunned and mostly weakly armoured;
with the notable exception of the Churchill.
But by this time the British…
…had at least the right ingredients.
They just weren't all on the same tank.
There was a really exceptional gun:
the 17 pounder,
originally a towed artillery gun,
and a match for the German 88.
There was also a path for a reliable engine…
…in the Rolls Royce Meteor,
fitted to the Comet and previously the Cromwell.
And, most important,
there was now the combat experience…
…to help design a really viable tank.
Attempts had been made to squeeze the 17-pounder gun…
…into existing tanks, like the Sherman Firefly.
Cromwell and Comet went a step further…
…with the Meteor engine,
and the Comet had a good gun with a version of the 17-pounder.
But both had thin unsloped armour which made them vulnerable.
So, in October 1943,
the specification was issued for a totally new tank:
to combine the 17 pounder gun…
…with the Rolls Royce Meteor engine…
…and around 80 mm of sloped frontal armour.
It carried the snappy title of "A41 Cruiser Tank".
But there was a problem.
British industry then focused on building existing tanks…
…to replace the ones lost in Normandy.
So prototype manufacture…
…did not actually start until January 1945.
And the first prototype,
now called Centurion,
was delivered in April.
Early trials went so well…
…that mass production was ordered straight away…
…and six prototypes were shipped out to Germany…
…for tests under active service conditions.
Although they never saw combat in WW2.
BORN WINNER
This is the Centurion Mk 1,
weighing in at 45 tons.
You can immediately see…
…that the hull shape was unlike all earlier British designs,
with, at last, sloped frontal armour.
Up top it's got the 17-pounder,
at the back it's got the Rolls Royce Meteor engine.
What's not to like?
ARMOUR
In the armour department,
this new tank was much better protected than its predecessors:
There’s over 150 mm on the turret…
…and over 76 mm here on the front.
This doesn't seem very much,
and it was in fact no more than the Comet,
which you can see over here,
remember that it is now quite steeply sloped,
effectively making it 94 mm.
FIREPOWER
Our very British way of describing guns at the time…
…needs a bit of translation!
This 17-pounder…
…translates into 76.2 mm.
This may not sound that big,
but it was as good as the German 75 mm of the Panther,
and had a higher muzzle velocity than the German 88 mm,
with a similarly flat trajectory.
With a standard armour-piercing round,
it could penetrate 150 mm of armour at 1000 metres.
With the newly-arriving discarding sabot,
the APDS round,
…this went up to a whopping 233 mm at the same range.
More than enough to see off any likely opposition at the time.
It was a visibly big improvement…
…over the 75 that British tankers had been using.
Secondary armament was unusual:
Instead of a co-axial machine gun,
the Mark 1 Centurion had a 20 mm Polsten cannon;
a simplified version of the Oerlikon.
This was for use on targets…
…that didn’t call for the big gun,
like trucks, armoured cars and infantry.
There was no hull machine gun,
soon to be the case on all modern tanks.
ENGINE
Under here is the famous Rolls Royce Meteor engine:
Now we can’t see this one,
but we can do better.
This cutaway gives us a great view of the engine:
A V12, pushing out around 650 bhp.
It was a de-rated variant of the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engine…
…which had famously powered planes like the Spitfire, Hurricane,
Lancaster bomber, and many more.
SUSPENSION
The new Centurion did not use the same Christie suspension…
…that had worked for the Cromwell and Comet.
Because the projected 45 ton weight of the new tank…
…would have been too heavy.
Instead it used something called the Horstmann system…
…which actually dated back to 1922.
But this development of the principle was so good…
…it would even go on to feature in later British tanks like the Chieftain.
It basically consisted of three bogies…
…each carrying two wheels, which were sprung.
This allowed greater wheel travel than earlier bogie systems,
which greatly improved cross-country performance.
In common with earlier British cruiser tanks,
the drive sprocket is at the rear.
DEVELOPMENT
This is a Mk III.
There were a number of improvements, but mostly to the firepower.
It now had a totally new cast turret…
…with the 20 pounder, or 83.5 mm gun,
which had a fully stabilised gun control system…
…for accurate firing on the move.
TANK STABILISER DEMONSTRATES ITS EFFICIENCY
The British Centurion Tank…
…acknowledged to be one of the finest in the world…
…is seen demonstrating something other tanks haven't got:
Automatic gun stabilisation.
This means that the gunner can maintain the sights on a pre-selected target…
…no matter how the vehicle moves and turns or bumps over rough ground.
It would be impossible to fire accurately in such conditions…
…without the stabiliser.
But with it? Well, the picture gives the answer to that one.
ULTIMATE GUN
The Centurion story started well,
but there was no indication then…
…how successful it would turn out to be.
In all there were 13 Marks of Centurion…
…and this is the Mark 10,
pretty much its ultimate form.
It still looks like its predecessors,
but there is a lot of changes,
some visible, some under the skin.
The big difference is this:
the 105 mm L7 gun,
one of the best tank guns of the Cold War era.
Also fitted to many other tanks…
…like Germany’s Leopard 1…
…and even the early Abrams.
Notice the fume extractor half way along the barrel.
And here's the round it fired: Big enough?
Now this gun could ultimately penetrate…
…up to 400 mm of armour…
…out to ranges of 3000 metres.
Enough to take out the new generation of Soviet tanks…
…like the IS series and even the T55…
…and later arrivals.
Some countries that adopted the Centurion…
…also adapted it:
Like the Swedish variant of the Mark 10,
called the Stridsvagn 105C,
distinguished by the additional armour…
…that had been added to the front glacis and the turret.
INSIDE
Here on the right of the turret…
…is the commander's position.
All around him he's got episcopes…
…giving him a very good 360 degree view.
When he's inside the turret,
he's also got a number of controls.
He's got turret traverse…
…and also the radio controls…
…which are to my right at the moment.
In front of the commander sits the gunner.
Who has the usual traverse and elevation controls…
…and also the gun sight directly in front of him.
Over to the left in the turret we find the loader's position.
The back of the turret was used for storage,
mainly the .30 caliber ammunition…
…and the smoke grenades.
Up front, on his own, is the driver;
and he has all the usual controls.
Down there is the clutch,
the brake and the accelerator pedals…
…and the gear lever is in the center.
The steering levers are further forward on each side.
And that lever on the right is the handbrake.
The Museum has got this fantastic cutaway of the Centurion,
it's actually been sliced in half.
And it gives us a really good representation…
…of the close confinement the crew worked under.
Across the right hand side of the tank…
…in the uppermost position, we've got the commander.
He is fully closed down…
…i.e. his hatch is closed at the moment.
Directly in front of him, and you can see how close they're sitting,
we've got the gunner's position and all the optical equipment in front of there.
The gunner's position is the same as nowadays on vehicles,
worst position on the tank, no room whatsoever and quite uncomfortable.
In front of those two we've got the driver…
…which you can't see at the moment.
If we move across to the left hand side here…
…we've got the loader's position.
Straightaway you can see that the loader's got the most room in the turret…
…he's got the ability to stand up and stretch his legs a little bit.
It's a great cutaway here…
…and it clearly shows the radio installation he's got behind him…
…and at the moment the loader's in the process…
…of loading a round into the breech.
MARK 10 IN THE ARENA
FV4202
The Centurion arrived too late to see action in World War 2,
but it made up for this afterwards.
First in Korea, then Vietnam,
India, The Middle East and Africa.
Given that this tank was conceived in 1943,
…its operational life was incredible:
there are still updated Centurions in service throughout the world today.
But there was only so far that this,
essentially World War 2 design could go.
Change was needed to match the Soviet trend…
…towards bigger guns and heavier tanks;
particularly the IS heavy tank series.
The 105 mm L7 met the need for a long time,
but even that was not going to last forever.
In its current form, the Centurion's turret could not mount bigger guns.
So, as part of the development work…
…to find a successor to the Centurion,
new turret designs were trialled. Come with me.
This is the Vehicle Conservation Center…
…and it's cram-packed with interesting vehicles.
This is the FV4202 prototype.
The chassis is standard Centurion but the turret is new.
As you can see, it's wider…
…with a more pronounced slope on the front and the sides.
And there is no mantlet,
in the style of the modern main battle tank.
The prototype had a 120 mm gun.
However, this, fitted at the moment,
is a 105, just for display purposes.
This is the turret that would be mounted on Britain's new Chieftain,
considered in its time the best main battle tank in the world.
Chieftain would also carry over many elements…
…of the Centurion's tried and tested chassis and suspension,
but, finally, with a Diesel or multi-fuel engine.
But that's another story.
Our thanks to the Tank Museum theTANKchannel.com