The Centurion was the primary British Army main battle tank of the post- World War II period. Introduced in 1945, it is widely considered to be one of the most successful post-war tank designs, remaining in production into the 1960s, and seeing combat into the 1980s. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] The chassis was adapted for several other roles, and these variants have remained in service. It was a very popular tank with good armour, mobility, and a powerful main armament.

Both the Centurion and the T-54/55 saw action in the same month of November 1956 when the Soviet army crushed the Hungarian Revolution and an AngloFrench force made an amphibious landing at Port Said to occupy the Suez Canal Zone. Here, Centurion Mk 5s of B Squadron, 6th Royal Tank Regiment, patrol the streets of Port Said after the ceasefire. The Mk 5 was essentially the same as the Mk 3 but had a .30-calibre Browning coaxial machine gun in place of the Besa. Roislien, Hanne Eggen (2013). "Religion and Military Conscription: The Case of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)". Armed Forces & Society. 39 (3): 213–232. doi: 10.1177/0095327X12449429. S2CID 144226866. The Israelis also got two Cromwell tanks from sympathizers at a arms depot in the Haifa port area, which would form the basis of the Israeli Armored Corps. Dunstan, S., Sarson, P. (2003). Centurion Universal Tank 1943–2003. Osprey. pp. 40. ISBN 0-671-00974-5. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link)A pair of T-55s and a BMP-1 Infantry Fighting Vehicle lie abandoned on the Golan Heights where some 867 Syrian tanks were lost in the fighting out of a total force of 1,400. Many intact T-54/55 tanks were captured by the Israelis and they were modified for service with the Israeli Armored Corps as the Tiran. According to Israeli sources, no BMP-1s managed to cross the Purple Line in the northern sector so this suggests these vehicles were lost to the 188th Barak Brigade. (United Nations) Subvariants indicate upgrades received by Sho't Kal tanks during their operational life, including a new turret rotating mechanism, a new gun stabilizer, a new fire-control system and preparations for the installation of the Blazer Reactive armour. OVERLEAF On the night of 6 October and long into the next day, Lieutenant Zvi ‘Zvika’ Greengold fought one of the most remarkable individual tank battles in the annals of armoured warfare. Unattached to any particular unit as he was on a company commander’s course at the Armored School, he hitchhiked to Nafakh at the outbreak of war where he took command a pair of Shot Cals and set off down the Tapline Road at 2100 hours in the dark with absolutely no knowledge of the whereabouts of the enemy. For the next 20 hours using the callsign ‘Force Zvika’ to disguise the size of his unit, he fought to stem the advance of the Syrian 51st Armoured Brigade, mainly on his own but occasionally with other tanks. Singlehandedly, he destroyed some 40 Syrian tanks but claims only 20 while having to change tanks six times due to battle damage. Although wounded, he fought on and disrupted the final Syrian assault on the IDF headquarters at Nafakh. Burnt and bloodied, the 21year old Lt Zvi ‘Zvika’ Greengold finally climbed down from his Shot Cal and collapsed saying simply – ‘I can’t anymore.’ For his extraordinary gallantry, Lt Zvi Greengold was awarded the Medal of Valor. In 1943, the Directorate of Tank Design, under Sir Claude Gibb, was asked to produce a new design for a heavy cruiser tank under the General Staff designation A41. After a series of fairly mediocre designs in the A series in the past, and bearing in mind the threat posed by the German 88 mm gun, the War Office demanded a major revision of the design requirements, specifically: increased durability and reliability, the ability to withstand a direct hit from the German 88mm gun and providing greater protection against mines. Initially in September 1943 the A41 tank was to weigh no more than 40 long tons (45 short tons; 41t), the limit for existing Mark I and Mark II transport trailers and for a Bailey bridge of 80ft (24m) span. The British railway loading gauge required that the width should not exceed 10ft 8in (3.25m) and the optimum width was 10ft 3in (3.12m), [15] but, critically, for the new tank this restriction had been lifted by the War Office under pressure from the Department of Tank Design. A high top speed was not important, while agility was to be equal to that of the Comet. A high reverse speed was specified, as during the fighting in southern Italy, Allied tanks were trapped in narrow sunken roads by the German Army. The modified production gearbox had a two-speed reverse, with the higher reverse speed similar to second gear. [16] [17] Yoav Gelber (1 January 2006). Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Sussex Academic Press. p.138. ISBN 978-1-84519-075-0 . Retrieved 14 July 2013. A war between Israel and the Arab States broke out immediately, and the Arab armies invaded Palestine.

Before Israel gained independence in 1948, neither Israel nor the Arab nations surrounding it had many tanks. The Arabs and the Israelis had to find their weapons through arms dealers or from any country that would supply them.In October 1955, a comprehensive improvement programme for the T-54 was initiated under the designation Obiekt 155. The principal innovation was the introduction of protection against Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) contamination on the nuclear battlefield that was now deemed to be inevitable by Soviet planners in any future conflict. The new design was accepted for service in May 1958 and production ran from June 1958 to July 1962 in the Soviet Union and subsequently in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The T-55 was of conventional layout with a four-man crew. Like the Centurion, the wartime practice of a five-man crew with a hull machine gunner, such as the T-34 or Cromwell tanks, was dispensed with in the interests of extra ammunition stowage, given the increased size of the main armament ammunition. However, the crew positions were reversed to those in the Centurion and, indeed, most Western tanks. The driver was situated in the left-hand side of the hull front while the commander and gunner were positioned to the left of the D-10T gun and the loader to its right. The most striking aspect of the T-55 was its compact dimensions with a height to the turret top of just 2.39m although the loader’s roof-mounted heavy machine gun did somewhat compromise the low profile: in comparison, the M-48 stood 3.13m tall and the Centurion 2.94m. However, the superb shaped turret did markedly reduce the internal volume of the tank and make it extremely cramped for the crew. This inevitably affected their performance when fighting closed down over extended periods of time. It also significantly reduced overall ammunition stowage with just 43 rounds as against 65 for the Centurion. Nevertheless, such a compact tank was difficult to hit and the armour configuration made it more likely for shells to ricochet off the turret or glacis plate without penetrating, while the limited amount of ammunition carried was compensated for by the sheer numbers of Soviet tanks committed to any offensive. For these reasons, Soviet tank crews were chosen on Zvi ‘Zvika’ Greengold receives the Medal Of Valor on 8 May 1975 from the President of Israel, Efraim Katzir, with Defense Minister Shimon Peres to the President’s right and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to his left. Lieutenant Greengold was just 21 when he fought his heroic action on the Tapline Road against the Syrian 51st Armoured Brigade as part of Force Zvika. He later rose to the rank of major in the reserves and became the director general of Israel Oil Refineries. He is currently the mayor of Ofakim in the Negev Desert. (IGPO) M1919A4 Browning. With this modification, the tank became the Centurion Mk 5. A Mk 4 had been planned, mounting a 95mm close-support howitzer, but it was never produced. Meanwhile, a new turret was under development with a revised mantlet featuring resiliently mounted gun trunnions, improved gun control equipment as well as a new commander’s contra-rotating cupola that allowed faster target acquisition and incorporated a double leaf hatch to give overhead ‘umbrella’ protection to the commander while allowing him direct vision of the battlefield: a device subsequently adopted by the Israelis as the ‘Tal cupola’. When this new turret was eventually mounted on the revised hull with its extended range, the model became the Centurion Mk 8 in 1956. From 1959 onwards, the Centurion underwent an up-armouring and up-gunning programme whereby an extra 2 inches of armour were added to the glacis plate to give greater immunity against the 100mm main armament of the T-55. This involved the substitution of the 83.4mm 20-pounder with the L7 105mm gun that, because of its outstanding performance, became de facto the standard main armament within NATO. When both these modifications were applied retrospectively to previously built models, the Centurion Mk 5 became the Mk 6 while the Mk 7 and the Mk 8 became the Mk 9 and Mk 10 respectively. New-build vehicles had these features incorporated during production. The final two modification programmes for the Centurion in the British Army were the fitting of IR night-fighting equipment and a coaxial-mounted .50-calibre ranging gun together with a thermal sleeve for the 105mm barrel. The Centurion hull also became the basis for a series of special purpose variants to undertake a variety of roles on the battlefield including an armoured recovery vehicle, various bridge layers, an assault vehicle for combat engineers mounting a 165mm demolition gun and a version for use on amphibious beach landings. Together they showed the great versatility of the basic Centurion design but, interestingly, the Israeli Armored Corps did not procure such variants in any quantity as gun tanks were deemed to be paramount and the defence budget did not extend to such luxuries on the battlefield. RIGHT In the standard post-war colour of British Bronze Green, these Centurions show the classic configuration of the Mk 5 model with the Type A 20-pounder barrel during manoeuvres in France.