Centurion

The Centurion tank is an British Main Battle Tank, which in a number of 216 units went into service in the Danish Army in 1953. The Centurion was the first modern tank of the Danish Army, as the Sherman M4A3 was already obsolete when it entered service the year before.

The Centurion tank served both on Zealand and in Jutland at the Guard Hussars Regiment in Næstved and the Jutland Dragoon Regiment in Holstebro respectively. The Centurion was also widely used among other NATO partners, and in the rest of the world from Sweden in the north to South Africa in the south.

Originally, the Centurion was equipped with an 84 mm gun, which was a good gun when it went into service in the mid-fifties. In the mid-sixties, about 100 of the Army’s Centurions were upgraded with the British 105 mm L7A1 rifled gun, which later became NATO’s standard tank gun and was used on the Leopard 1, among others.

With the 105 mm gun in the majority of all tanks, NATO partners were well equipped to counter the threat from the East. It was thus only in the early 1980s that NATO began to use tanks with 120 mm guns, as on the German Leopard 2 or the British Chieftain.

The Centurion tanks received several mid life updates while in service. In the mid-1980s, the most extensive upgrade of these tanks took place. Most of the tanks that had previously been equipped with 105 mm guns were fitted with a new fire control system, which included laser rangefinder, thermal sight for the gunner and image intensifying equipment for the driver and commander. This equipment gave the vehicles the ability to fight effectively at night, and was at the time more advanced than the fire control system fitted to the Leopard 1, at least until the Leopard 1 was upgraded with the same type of equipment in the early 1990s.

The Centurions with the 84 mm gun were transferred to local defence units as ‘tank destroyers’, to complement the M10 Achilles.

The Centurion was withdrawn from service in the mid-1990s.

The vehicle on display is fully roadworthy.

12...5►