Although there was no picture of the Chieftain in the book, it does show a highly detailed T94 used for radar recognition. This was the clue! So after an email or two from the author the enigma was solved. The tank has now fully Benerdini'd and R/C'd.
Dear John,
The model was indeed built for radar related purposes and almost certainly at Chertsey. It was built before I joined Chertsey so I do not know the full details. I am not an expert on the exact details of all the different Marks of Chieftain but this looks like an early Mark 3 as it has the old No1 NBC pack on the rear of the turret – the bee hive as we called it.
I believe it was built for developing radar systems. There is a one to one relationship between the model size and the radar frequency and so you could test a 1/5 scale model with a radar 5x the frequency and get equivalent results. There used to be an in-door radar range at a place called Hutton Moor near to Bristol where testing was done and being in doors with a scale model it was easier to control what was going on. This model is unusual because as far as I know it was the only model of its type that was motorised in order to look at the Doppler radar signature of a moving vehicle.
A speed camera test bed for tanks.
Now there's great tank Armortek could build next, though I'd have a hard time resisting this if they ever built it!
