Chinese Eye Chieftain

[Adrian Harris]

[Kevin Hunter]

Oh dear, that’s disappointing - based on the clues, there was a CoH Clive Seager in RHG (The Blues) and subsequently Blues and Royals.
Any caption to the picture?

[Chris Hall]

It's OK, chaps - it's not a Chieftain at all. With those eyes it's obviously a Pink Panther (probably Ausf. A) ......

[Stephen White]

OK, I'll play. I see your photo Adrian and raise you this one:

Copyright Richard Kent. Now Adrian you're going to have to use this scheme......

Meanwhile, back to hard core Chieftain?

[John Clarke]

It's got to be Mr Blobby tank or Barbie's present to Ken.

[Mark Heaps]

There must be a very interesting story behind that paint-scheme.
From the front I immediately thought Mr Blobby but the side view disagrees and suggests kindergarten.

To me it looks like too much effort has been taken for it to be a piss-take or wind-up.

I suspect it was done to honour the "recipient" when he was leaving the regiment after 22 years service and acknowledges his and his wifes service to child welfare whilst he was with them.

[Stephen White]

Talk about reliving your past. I've just found this video on YouTube:



Taken by a German civilian in the area of Gronau in Nord Rhein-Westphalia in 1987,"Manöver an der Leine Teil 2.flv" shows D Squadron, 4th Royal Tank Regiment on Exercise Keystone, the same exercise during which I took the photos in a previous post.

- At 3.52, you see D Squadron assembling non-tactically after we'd attacked into and demolished a Bundeswehr Territorial Brigade armed with M-48s. One tank is seen travelling cross country with gun rear, which was a sign that it had been "knocked out", while the rest of my Squadron lines up on a country road. My tank is probably the one with the small pennant on the antenna.

- At 7.02 you see the two opposing sides disengaging by driving through the town of Gronau. The M-48s are directed one way and we go another, so that the battle can recommence. The most surprising thing to me, seeing the whole squadron go through, is the mix of marks of Chieftain. There are Mk 6,7 or 8s, (although I suspect they are all Mk 9s ie upgraded for fin ammunition), Mk 10s with Stillbrew and one or two Mk 11s with TOGs. Shows how complicated the fleet management was for Chieftain.

- At 9.21 onwards you see the armoured engineers who were attached to my squadron for this phase of the exercise, including the Chieftain AVLB and an AVRE.

I'll now be looking for Part 1.

[Stephen White]

With Centurion under my belt and Chieftain imminent, I thought I'd do some research into the transition between the MBTs in the British Army. I've been digging in the National Archives to find out what the Army Board was thinking at the time it was considering how and when to replace Centurion, which had proved to be such a success. Given the lead times for new tanks, it's not surprising that the most interesting papers date from the late 1950s, when Centurion was at the peak of its career.

First off is a paper from the 1958 deliberations of the ABC (America, Britain, Canada) Tank Philosophy Meeting, which sets out the highest level cardinal points specification for what was to become Chieftain but was then referred to as F.V. 4201. Notable are the highest priority given to effective firepower, the pre-occupation with the nuclear threat and, in a swipe at the WW2 panzers, a particular emphasis on strategic mobility.

Next is a fascinating summary of the advantages of "Medium Gun Tank No 2" as the initial Chieftain project was known, compared with Centurion. It was used to justify upgrading Centurion and proceeding with Chieftain in parallel, when the Treasury was trying to force a choice. The tone of the papers reflects the urgency given to delivering improved armour capability in the face of a rapidly increasing Soviet threat. Two years previously, the Hungarian Revolution had exposed the true capabilty of T-54, which was surprisingly found to overmatch Centurion (before it was given the extra 47mm glacis and 105mm gun). JS-3 was about to be replaced with T-10 and no doubt the advent of T-62 was anticipated.

In 1958, Chieftain was scheduled to come into service in 1963. A succession of Army Board papers considered the feasibility of accelerating the programme.

In the event, the programme was not accelerated as the prototypes revealed some shortcomings. Nevertheless, the first issues of Chieftain were to occur in 1966, which is not bad considering the huge increase in capability Chieftain offered, with its innovative and pioneering design.

You wouldn't turn to UK Ministry of Defence high level policy papers for a thumping good holiday read. I should know having been at the sharp end (of the pencil that is). There's something about old secrets which is fascinating and these papers do add a lot to our knowledge of Chieftain (if you like that sort of thing).

[Stephen White]

Making a start with the tracks, as ever. Fingers a bit sore.

[Phil Woollard]

Nice, tell me Stephen are you going to run with cross country tracks with no rubber or road work rubber blocks? How do they feel in steel?

[John Clarke]

Stephen

There something not quite "White" with that track picture.

The pliers don't seem to be in scale or correct aspect, is it the right tool to use anyway?

The holes don't pass all the way though. Not quite up to Armourtek standards.

I think it's another Stephen White made up picture with 1/35 scale parts.

[Stephen White]

Rumbled. Well spotted John. It was a slow afternoon. Phil, sorry to disappoint. I haven't really decided yet whether to put the track pads on. If I do, they'll need a lot of "distressing". They took a bashing and had to be replaced regularly. We'd have taken them off at the first stage of warning, depending on how the crisis would have unfolded. If it was the short warning scenario, we'd have "crashed out" into our real deployment areas near the garrisons and there tried to get the pads off. Without power tools it would have been a pain at a time when we'd have been more concerned with bombing up and last minute repairs. Still, without them, the German roads would have suffered.

Just looking at this photo again, from our trip to BATUS in 1975, it looks as though my tank hasn't got track pads. My troop sergeant's tank behind certainly has got pads on. I'm a bit mystified by that because track pads were in place for later Med Man exercises. I'm now left wondering if we were doing some sort of trial. I know 4RTR were the first Battle Group to deploy to Canada when BATUS opened in 1971 and they certainly had track pads on, although the BATUS camouflage hadn't been invented then.

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Suffice to say that tracks without pads on a model would really represent a "what if" Chieftain.

[Phil Woollard]

You bugger! The pads are missing in that last photo. I have to agree without them it would be "a what if" . Food for thought. I'm going to let you guys get way ahead with your builds

[John Clarke]

For a few seconds you had me going with the picture Stephen.........Now if you'd have fitted the pads to the tracks.......

I thought Armortek had got you on minimum wage piece work. on your slow afternoons.

I'll be definitely fitting my set. Hopefully getting plenty of grip when loading and unloading.

All those extra hours to look forward to too, etch priming and painting all the pad steel backing mounts.

As always, great pictures Stephen

[Stephen White]

Today is ground zero, courtesy of OPS (owner's parcel service). Good to meet Kevin Wheatcroft at the factory collecting his Mk IV. Thanks Kian, it's been just about a year since Chieftain first surfaced and it's a real winner. Here's to all the new builds just starting.