The commander and gunner were seated on the right side of the turret the loader on the left. Six return rollers were employed, but these were hard to see on the later model tanks since skirt armor for protection against high-explosive, antitank projectiles covered most of the tread.

The engine and transmission drove the rear sprockets.Ī Horst-mann-type suspension system was used, in which three units on a side each hold two road wheels on one set of concentric springs. The engine compartment was in the rear and separated from the other two compartments by a fireproof wall. The driver's compartment was in front the fighting compartment was in the center. The Centurion Main Battle Tank's hull was divided into the usual three compartments. For more information about tanks and the military, see: To learn more about the Centurion Main Battle Tank's equipment, continue to the next page. The United States purchased Centurions and gave them to Denmark and the Netherlands under the Military Aid Program. Egypt, Iraq, and Israel bought Centurions and used them against one another in the 19 Arab-Israeli wars. The Centurion was perhaps the first tank to face itself in a shooting war. It was adopted by Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and other nations. The Centurion 3 Main Battle Tank was a commercial, as well as a military, success. It could penetrate twice as much armor as the 88mm gun. This new round was called an armor-piercing, discarding sabot (APDS) round, and it left the muzzle of the 20 pounder at 4,800 feet per second. The Centurion 3 fired a new round that used a narrow diameter, finned, solid steel spike, or arrow, that was wrapped in a light metal jacket to give it the same diameter as the bore. But strangely enough, neither the tank's design nor even its gun design, was responsible for this. Both guns had muzzle velocities very close to 3,340 feet per second.Įven so, the Centurion 3 Main Battle Tank was the most heavily armed tank of its category in the immediate postwar years. The up-rated Panther, which had design work completed but never entered production, was to be equipped with the 88mm gun used on the Tiger II.

When the Centurion Mark (Mk) 3 (not to be confused with either the World War I Marks or the Matildas of World War II) was developed, it was equipped with an 83.4mm, or 20-pounder, gun.

The Centurion was powered by a 600-horsepower Rolls Royce Merlin Meteor V-12 engine the Panther D used a 642-horsepower V-12 Maybach engine.Įven the next-generation Centurion seemed a shadow of the Panther. The Panther D was armed with a 75mm gun with a muzzle velocity of 3,070 feet per second. It was equipped with a 17-pounder 76.5mm gun that had a muzzle velocity of 2,950 feet per second. The Centurion Main Battle Tank weighed 42.5 tons, the Panther Model D, 43. In fact, it compared well with the Nazi German Panzerkampfwagen V Panther, which had entered service two years earlier. At first the Centurion, as the new tank was named, did not represent much, if any improvement over medium tanks then available.

Russian centurion armor