Centaur | Tank Chats #172 | The Tank Museum

this tank Jack's going to be about this vehicle the Centaur known also as the Marquee Cruiser tank or the a27l this video has been made possible by our supports on patreon our YouTube members and our super thanks donors please join them if you can't and support tank Museum and thanks for watching complex story behind it so bear with me we're going to have to start way back in the early 1920s when Britain put into service the Vickers medium tank 1923 and the Vickers medium is really the tank that Britain uses right the way up to the end of the 1930s they experiment replacing it there was going to be a vehicle called the 14 Tana bit too expensive they ended up trying some weird and wacky experiments independent for example with five turrets these other projects don't really lead anywhere and the only ones that do is at the early 1930s they start a program for light tanks with Vickers and a series of light tanks are built up leading to the mark 6B at the end of the 1930s 1935 with a realization War looks like it's coming um Britain decides it's going to actually have to formalize what type of Tanks its needs and how they're going to be used so we see in 35 the idea comes out that we're going to have that Cruiser tank will overtake or take the role of the medium tank that Vickers had built in 1923 and the idea of the cruiser tank you're going to have these three types the light tank scouting Etc Cruiser tanks are there for exploitation these advocates for the armored Force this is the type of tank they wanted this idea of fast exploitation and they're going to give Cruiser tanks an anti-tank gun because the belief then is that we will end up bumping into the enemy's anti-tank Force which is likely to be tanked so they've got to be able to knock them out so a two pounder Gun Will Go On the cruiser tank and that third category that's really in many ways goes back to the old school of thought qls as master of audience Ordnance in 1935 he's back in the first world war he was head of the tanks he's looking at the tank as a support for the Infantry on the attack so that third category infantry tanks they end up giving them machine guns and then anti-tang guns as well but thicker armor slow to attack prepared positions so 1936 one of the senior figures in the war office Martell heads out to Moscow with a a group of officers that see the Soviets experiments and their War Maneuvers and from that point having seen Christie suspension being used on their BT tanks and knowing that Britain is now going to be building a program of Cruiser tanks when he gets back to the UK he makes a really big suggestion to the war office look this is a way to go if you want a fast tank for exploitation let's import and they actually do import two hulls from water War to Christian America this slightly Maverick experimental person these two holes are brought across the Atlantic they're actually under the cover they're called tractors because officially at this time the US government would not allow raw material to be sold on that way otherwise and we look at those and the Christie suspension this idea of having a double skinned side to the vehicle in that double skin is a system which has got basically one long arm another arm that will support that long arm and it gives great play to the suspension arm and that means a vehicle can go faster over rough ground and the other thing that comes with that is the Christie vehicles are powered by the American Liberty engine that was developed in the first world war it has a lot more power in fact it's got about two and a half times the power to weight ratio of any British tank at the time which makes that vehicle very fast quickly the British decide we don't like that other Christy feature which is it can run on its Wheels if you take the tracks off that's abandoned but we start this program of Cruiser tanks and after the first couple we then start using Christie's suspension in that in this new type of model vehicle 1939 obviously there's a desire to increase production 1940 some of those Cruisers are out in France and they're lost and this is where we then get into this period where as I've said on a number of the other tank chats you've got to remember what that world situation is and certainly the situation for Britain in 1940 the emphasis goes straight towards the Air Force for defending the island and the Navy because we're a colonial power and we've got the channel we don't want the Germans to be able to cross the channel tanks drop into the secondary category of importance in fact this is basing on a policy for a Britain's Strategic Defense that dates way back to the earlier 1930s Chamberlain actually puts this in place and Churchill follows that and when you think about it it's a pretty sensible policy because it works for Britain in that way what it doesn't seem to work for is of course the tank Crews and tank design because then we start falling behind in our development process this now in that summer of 1940 an order is put into the war office say look we are going to want a heavier Cruiser tank um out in France we've already had the situation where we've seen that again the Panzer fours have got a short barrel of 7.5 centimeter gun there is a belief that bigger guns are coming so the idea the emphasis comes back two pounds is good at the moment best anti-tank gun in Europe but you're going to need a bigger one now Britain has always developed or has already developed the six pounder about a 57 millimeter high velocity gun we haven't put it into production yet but an order goes out from the war office we are going to need a heavier Cruiser tank they call it Heavy Cruiser it's going to need a bigger turret ring to take a bigger gun 60-inch turret Rooney is what they asked for the expectations is going to be the six pound although it's not actually mentioned in the first requirement it's going to have to have at least 75 millimeters of frontal armor so that's much heavier than the cruiser tanks that had gone before and all round they want better reliability and mobility of that vehicle as a cruiser and the specification goes out that this vehicle it needs to be ready by the spring of 1942 so again a relatively short development time if you look at some of the previous development times we've had for armored vehicles like tanks now three companies are asked to put forward designs and even though I've not been able to pin this one down I do believe that probably what that original requirement was was for hulls only and the department of tank design are the ones that are coming up with the turrets because the turret is going to be the same on each of these three different offerings from the private companies that are approached now those companies voxel comes up with a potential solution to this requirement they are going to do a smaller version of their Churchill tank that they're in the process of developing smaller lighter version of that nuffield basically get there already what they're making as a cruiser their Crusader tankers it was being called they look at improving uh the hull of that vehicle strengthening the suspensions and using the Liberty engine again in the back that's their suggestion that's put forward and another company the Birmingham Railway carriage and wagon company they are asked again to come forward with a new design their design looks very similar to the nuffield slightly different suspension and track system so there's obviously collaboration with the Department of tank design because these three vehicles when you actually look at what's been presented are very very similar in shape deep in weight and they've all going to have this same rather boxy turret that I think is probably actually developed by the department of tank design a Weaponry by the way for tanks in Britain this was called free issue in other words the uh the guns were gifted by the war office to whatever company was making so there's only bits that the company on a vehicle have to actually look after and control January of 1941 the department of tank design they've been helping with nuffield they recommend the a24 is what is going to be the acceptable vehicle a24 is a one made by nuffields and it's got the Liberty engine in the back that's the one they decide they want to go for now with hindsight we might wonder why nuffields was given this because as a as a project because actually we know that the Crusader tank had a terrible reputation quite quickly for unreliability yet nuffields was the ones they went to now there is a bit of a reason if you actually look at the date that that contract was awarded actually at that moment in time British tanks were doing rather well in North Africa against the Italians and even though there had already been complaints about failures with enough oil Vehicles unreliabilities Etc um at least they were already building tanks and this is another other one of these background issues which is who can build tanks who can make them where is the capacity as the wars already begun so maybe it's a bit more understandable that already nuffield have been building Vehicles therefore will go back to them with an idea for this what becomes the a24 tank now what's that tank design like it's basted to a large part on existing nuffield parts and again sensible ideas let's go for things we know about already a manufacturing it ends up looking very boxy it's got a square turret it's got about six inches taller than the previous Crusader tank there and the turret the design of the turret is such that there's actually a two skin system inside the turret is welded a box of relatively thin metal work outside you've got about 76 millimeters of thick armor Square plate done I believe at the time just for sure air Simplicity because they also know other companies are going to probably have to be given work to get these tanks produced in enough number and you don't want to be going for too sophisticated a system just yet so that inner liner is welded the outer armor plate has about two inch bolts diameter bolts that are actually holding on the the plate to the inner part and those two inch bolts they've got huge great nuts on the end they're also tack welded in place so they don't fly off if the vehicle's hit and the inner because this is homogenous armor that inner box shape is actually there almost like a spool lining and because with homogenous armor they've already discovered in 1940 when it's hit by a higher velocity German gun there is a tendency of it not so much cracking but spalling and flaking happening on the inside and if you can capture that you're making the crew protect hidden safe that way um what else about the vehicle um they think they're going to equip it with the uh six pounder gun um it's going to have an internal gun mount lit and you can see that on the Centaur we've got here actually the mantle it's not on the outside it's on the inside next to the six pounder would be the bees a machine gun 792 bees are and another bees will be put in the hull of the vehicle that's the ideas on the early days and rumor has it whether it's true or not some of the crews were not over keen on the way of that internal mantleer because they basically seem to think it gave a real aiming Point as a dark Square on the front of the turret sometime so there's pros and cons about doing in that particular way it's going to have the Liberty engine and nuffield have been working on the Liberty trying to upgrade the power at the end of that project they get about a 400 and just over 400 horsepower out of a liberty engine which is pretty good but it's still really when you're thinking about it it's based on the first one War engine that's really coming to the end of its development phases you know you can't get much more out of that Liberty and the engine is going to be one of the major issues about the centaurs it goes into production and the part of this bigger Cromwell picture you've got 14 inch manganese steel track about 124 links on each side there later they put a wider track on so it's a fairly simplistic looking vehicle but again I repeat you can understand to a degree why they want to get this into production relatively quickly they need that more Firepower the six pounder gun out and it's going to have that better frontal protection the problem with this program the a24 program that then becomes the a27 program will see is it takes too long so by the time it comes into fruition actually there's these tanks are now being outgunned by the enemy and they seem to be a couple of years out of date so another one of the points about this vehicle that will moves away from the vehicle and look at another subject but it's that issue of the engines now Rolls Royce are making the famous Merlin engine for Spitfires and hurricanes their developmental team headed by a champ called wa robot and he goes under the name rumpty robot and great name he has not got enough on his plate to do in terms of experimental work and he's already talked to some people in the department of tank design about their problem of finding enough power in an engine so that more armor protection can be put on British tanks uh faster speed and a more powerful gun because if you've got more horsepower you can do that but it's got to fit in a very confined space so robot and managed to get hold of some crashed Merlin engines they were basically engines recovered from crash planes in Britain and he starts working on converting the Merlin into a suitable engine for the tank and to do that he takes off the supercharger he does things like he changes the gear case he's got to find a way of putting a drive belt on so it can work cooling fans Etc for all of that he managed to get this done on these broken engines and so he offers back to the war office a new engine that they're going to call the meteor and that has now got over 600 horsepower and once the war office and the park Department of tank design see this engine they test it in a crusade a tank it has enormous potential and that then affects the a24 tank program because straight away they're all looking thinking hang on we can do something better now in terms of the engine power for this new tank we're developing the problem is when the department of tank design offer the Rolls-Royce engine up to Lord nowfield in the nuffield organization nuffield is adamant he wants to stick with the Liberty engine that he spent so much time in improving on and developing now David Fletcher makes the point very interestingly you know why didn't the department of tank design the war office why didn't they challenge nuffield to say look we want to go ahead with the Rolls-Royce we're in charge doesn't happen one of those classic moments where you can see British tank design development some of that overall arching how this is being run is not Britain's Finest moment at certain points in the war and nuffield goes ahead with his a24 project still using the Liberty engine Department of tank design though are very keen on this new Meteo engine from Rolls-Royce so they start another project and what we end up getting is basically in the end three three different strands that the time are called The Cromwell project but they're actually very different Vehicles now they're not given these new names straight away which makes this whole project even more annoying but we start knowing them the a24 led by nuffield still with that original Liberty engine that is going to have a Wilson episode click got gearbox in it that is going to ultimately be known as a vehicle called Cavalier now the war office wanting other options they push for another version of the vehicle which is going to be the a27 and because they haven't got the Rolls-Royce engines ready yet for the meteor they're going to call this an L model and the a27l will have a liberty engine in it but it is designed to be able to take the meteor later on when the meter engines become available in Productions uh loud because we can take the engine off the aircraft industry convert them or build them specifically now for tanks but that won't be for a while and of course the Tank's going to be needed sooner hence the a27l and that's what ends up being known as the Centaur and the third option which is the a27 brackets M meteor that's going to be the what ultimately becomes a Cromwell tank that we all know and love with a meteor engine in the back so it's a complex story of those three vehicles and even worse is actually Leyland who are put in charge of trying to get the meteor into what becomes a Cromwell tank they back out quite quickly because they can see they've already had the war offices particularly Keen that that engine is kept cool they've already had problems out in the desert with the cruiser tanks Crusader Etc um Leyland is worried about this and they hand the project over to to English electric and it actually takes nine months to get the meter engines cooling system worked out effectively and yet again this is impacting on these three different vehicle programs because what they end up doing is trying to work out if this vehicle is going to be converted later on into a meteor engine it's got to have the air intakes in the same place so it's very confusing when you look at these three models that are similar in the first place trying to work out which ones which and of course some of them start life as an a27 L for the Liberty engine but later in life are converted over to the meteor engine so they become a Cromwell a27m complex story so first of March 1942 the actually even though it goes against the the plans of things uh the a27m is actually the first vehicle that's actually tested uh centor comes along with a liberty engine afterwards um January 1943 production of the a27 M starts and that becomes the as we all know now the Cromwell tank now to add to the confusion of this story there's also in parallel with this backing of a new engine there's also questions then over Firepower because as the project runs on initially the idea of the six pounder fantastic anti-tank gun will go through about 56 millimeters of armor plate at about 2 000 yards away so that was a really effective gun but the trouble was the cruiser tanks in the western desert that are already out there they start realizing that actually their Theory of being the Breakthrough tank they might meet other tanks the hence the anti-tang gun but they were also Rommel is using tactics such as luring the British Cruiser tanks to attack but then on to an anti-tank gun line and for firing at anti-tank guns you really want high explosive because again that has blast effect rather than finding this one solid shot hopefully hitting the uh the gun screen Etc so there's a realization that a dual purpose gun may be more useful for a certain percentage of the tanks they decide they're going to get a Vickers to build a new gun that takes too long it won't quite fit in the same turret size so one of the issues that comes up is a new gun that's based on the six pounder but it's actually bored out from 57 millimeters to 75 millimeters and so it can use the same ammunition that's being supplied for the Sherman tanks and that means it's armor piercing ability goes down it'll still go through about 50 millimeters of armor at two thousand yards but it's now got this high explosive capacity that the British military think is going to be needed especially when we go back into Europe after D-Day so there's a decision made that of British tanks 10 of them are going to carry a new gun a Howitzer and that's going to be 95 millimeter Howitzer Britain comes up with this you get the 25 pounder breach you add that to the 3.7 anti-aircraft Gun Barrel liner sounds weird cut it down that becomes a 95 millimeter Howitzer it can fire a good high explosive shell but it can also fire quite an effective heat high explosive anti-tank in other words a Monroe effect Hollow charge round that will go through over 10 centimeters of armor so they decide yep howitz is going to be useful about 10 of the vehicles they then say as well 30 of them are going going to need a high velocity anti-tank gun so the six pounder or hopefully as it's coming along now the 17 pounder as well but that's a smaller percentage and originally all these Cromwell tanks were going to originally have that just the six pounder on but 60 of the vehicles going to be built in the future with the aim was we won 60 percent of them to carry that Dual Purpose uh what becomes known as the quick firing 75 millimeter gun that bored out six pounder and so these change obviously the production targets the way that these vehicles are going to be built and that also has a knock-on effect of things such as stowage inside the Gunnery training Etc so a number of issues as you can see are coming along and affecting this project and one of the biggest ones is because they are now going out to new manufacturers and finding new suppliers because this is a serious vehicle that we're going to be building in they were hoping in the thousands they are going to need new suppliers to help do that and another thing comes into play now which again is a burden for the Cromwell program which is the failure of a number of components from new suppliers and new manufacturers trying to put these vehicles together and that in itself um you know there's an example of a hundred sets of armor for ascentors are actually made none of them meet specifications so those hundred Vehicles had a red triangle put on the side and they could only be used for training because the metal work wasn't good enough and these are things that have a knock-on effect to the Troops now I was rummaging around in the archive and I found there some really interesting reports they took some Centaur tanks down to the ranges and they've actually got on that report 33 problems they were finding with the Centaur tanks that went down there for example this is just one of the 33 number 20 ammunition containers for the six Pounders the rounds either do not fully go into the Container or jam and are almost impossible to remove in many cases the responsibility for inspecting this point does not seem to be uncovered um the form may be due to either incorrect metal support for the containers or in the container itself this point is important and it's one of the things that comes out there's not enough inspectors in the factories checking things are being built to the right standard and when you've got a new company that's perhaps sometimes doing this for the first time you can understand there's going to be faults and there's a really interesting line after you read all these pages and all these faults that comes out which is basically saying we know from experience that there is nothing more calculated to make a unit lose confidence in its equipment than the issue of vehicles in the state of the Centaur tanks which we have received so you've got things there going on which again affects not only these centaurs have got to be built to a good enough standards many of those earlier ones weren't and had to go back to the factories for adjustments and newer bits of Kit whilst in the meantime changes in the gun specified changes in the engine specified are we going to have to refit these with the new Rolls-Royce engine that's another one of the problems coming along there as an example of how poor some of these tanks were of 129 issued in April of 1943 95 had major defects on them and 23 Vehicles out of that 129 ended up having major clutch failures um so the military decide that we are going to call the Centaur as a stop Gap is the actual phrase used a stop Gap tank we are hoping that with the new Cromwell where some of these problems ironed out with that new meter engine that is what they are banking on and the Centaur ends up becoming really a training vehicle and then gets moved on to other areas to the point even America knows about these problems British Britain's having with this overall Cromwell program and they offer more tanks Britain there is discussions in the war office should we stop making these vehicles and go over and using our production facilities is to making other things some of these factories has made Railway engines Americans suggest that might be more useful in the end the war office does cut production centaurs is one of the tanks that they decide to cut down there were going to be about 2 700 and they immediately cut that order to 2000 not that many are actually built in the end but they do decide to carry on making tanks they think it's too fundamental an issue for the British military if we were to stop making tanks in Britain at that time despite the offer of the Sherman and the despite the fact that the Sherman from 43 and 44 is really the main tank Britain is using because the Americans can supply so many of them now of these centaurs they start using them not just for training but they start thinking well hang on we can do some other things with them so this idea that when I was saying 10 of centaurs or 10 of the British tank force to have a 95 millimeter Howitzer that for many people is one of the vehicles that you may be more familiar with seeing an image of a centaur tank with that 95 millimeter Howitzer because they were used for the D-Day Landings Montgomery has already seen the fact he's very well aware of our tank production issues he's seen the fact that we're building tanks that aren't going to be necessarily good enough to fight in the front line but he thinks it would be a waste to not use that Firepower on D-Day so initially the idea was the center tanks with 95 millimeter guns are going to be about 80 of them are going to be put on landing craft engines taken out they're going to need a lot of Firepower so why not take the engines out fill that space full of extra ammunition taken on landing craft near the Normandy beaches and fire going ashore so it's fire support they're just basically using them as almost like mobile Gunnery now Montgomery once he looks at that plan he says well hang on a second you might as well at least land them so there's a bit more fire support that can lead the troops in land so the Royal Marines they have to put the engines back in these vehicles and drivers have got from other Royal armored call units and they go ashore on D-Day in two different regiments as part of the Royal Marines armored support unit and they are those very distinctive looking Vehicles where they've got white painted lines around the outside of the turrets that's so that again Gunnery officers other troops from outside the vehicle could radio in five degrees left four degrees rise Etc so they could pick out targets for this fire support make sure everyone's amazement these tanks actually keep going because there's not much support for them but they're still or they are fighting in Normandy at least a couple of weeks later 10 miles Inland and there's some classic images Vehicles like Hunter that appear so the Centaur does have a role on the battlefield but not as a gun tank some of the vehicles as well they're converted into they use them as they take basically the turret with 20 millimeter post and cannons on those are actually put on top of Centaur hulls and later in the program as well they end up getting a number of the original centaurs removing the turrets and putting dozer blades on the front with a little winch Arrangement about 250 of those are converted by MG cars of Abingdon they unfortunately there's delays in their production they only get to Europe from about April 1945 but they do see some service with the 79th Armored Division towards the end of the war so these original centaurs seem to be used in a number of different ways other than what they were originally intended for as a gun tank that was going to be that Heavy Cruiser so after all that let's talk about this particular tank this tank behind me actually started Life as a centaur gun tank it was converted into a dozer tank and it was then subsequently bought um some years ago restored as a gun tank and that turret when we have a closer look at it you'll see there's battle damage on it or range damage where it's been fired at where it sat on a firing range and by these conversions a lot of work has been done on this vehicle already things such as originally the hatches for the driver and the co-driver on centaurs opened upwards this was thought to be too risky because if the gun was over the top they couldn't open that way there is a way you can crawl from one side through into the other side to escape that way but again if the vehicle's on fire you don't want to delay at all so they actually have on the second type of holes they end up doing a side hatch that spins open to the side and allowing the crewmen to escape from from that side of it the vehicle again as you look at it this particular restoration job as well it appeared in bander brothers and recently it's gone through really a a mechanical rebuild um so the engine it is that Liberty engine in the back um the track's been sorted it's slack track as it was called so metal track no top rollers on a centaur the spacing of the wheels those six wheels either side with their Christie suspension they're not actually even all the way down um a good day with a liberty engine running well you could probably get about 24 miles an hour out of this vehicle all in weight bombed up about 28 tons the standard British crew in there five crew members would be in the vehicle that changed obviously for some of the other variants that were put into production the turret as I mentioned earlier it's not actually Square it's hexagonal because there's angles on the rear of that turret but the key bit on that from about 75 millimeters of armor plate there now of all of those Vehicles when they were built they tend to call them Centaur one two and three I won't confuse us again with all these different names but once they decided that this model was going to be Centaur they'll Center one tended to have just the six pounder gun on um if they re-engineered them um so Centaur 3 becomes the go the 75 millimeter quick firing gun um some of those originally were fitted in the first place with six pounder they were later converted and if you have your meteor you become one of the Cromwell three or ten series if it was originally a centaur I hope you're following all this you can see how confusing it gets a centaur 4 has the 95 millimeter Howitzer fitted for it um and again we've seen how they were used by the Royal Marines so the Centaur op is an observation tank and they are taken to Europe for the D-Day Landings quite a number of converted and what they do is they basically put a dummy gun in the front so inside the turret there's room for two separate radios and map cases and they're being used by the Royal artillery keeping up with the main tanks it's the idea of a sheep in wolves closing it can't fire can't do anything but looks just as effective as a normal Tang would be and they do see service across Europe as do some of these that were converted into arvs or armored recovery Vehicles there's a lifespan the Centaur doesn't see much more service but some about 52 are actually gifted to the Greek army just after in 1946 as a civil war going on in Greece unfortunately the Greek army don't have enough trained drivers and crew members so they're not actually used till a bit later but some versions of this stayed on in the British army some of the armored recovery variants for example some went to Korea and stayed on a little bit longer into the 1950s but we're very pleased now to have this as an example here at the tank Museum mechanically it's been running now it's part of the bill banister collection that's stabled here um it'll be going away at some point um where then the rest of the vehicle will be brought up to the standard of the engine Etc that's there at the moment the interior is still pretty bare and basic but we hope to see that back again and we were very fortunate to be able to see this running just recently on the Saturday at our town Fest event so another key piece however complex a key piece of that British armored Cruiser story from the Second World War

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 404,441

Keywords: Bovington, Dorset, Tanks, Tankfest, tanks, tiger, chieftain, tank museum, second world war, world war two, top five tanks, tank chats, david fletcher, british army, tiger 131, royal armoured corps, tank regiment, RAC, tank museum bovington, tanklife, bovingtontank museum, military history, ww2, ww1, armoured car, tankchats, army, veteran, wwii history, world war 1, world war ii, war history, royal navy, ww2 history, royal air force, wwii museum, wwi, ww2 tanks, ww2 weapons

Id: iRuGPSD4bUA

Length: 35min 36sec (2136 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023