Centurion Mk. 3 Drawings, 1954


Perhaps one of the most successful post-war tanks, the Centurion served with a variety of countries, including the Netherlands.

Although initially expecting to use the American M47 tank, it was decided in 1952 to equip the Dutch Army with the Centurion instead, as the American tank was required by its home country due to the Korean War.

With an agreement reached by the end of 1952, the United States placed an order in the United Kingdom for 435 Centurion Mk. 3 tanks, to be delivered under the Mutual Defence Assistance Program. Ultimately, 592 tanks would arrive starting from January 12th 1953 to 1956, with one example lost to a fire in the summer of 1953.

Upon arrival, the Mk. 3 tanks were quickly modified to the Mk. 5 standard, which included replacing the BESA machine gun with an M191914A4 and replacing the British WS No. 19 radio with an American SRC 508 or 528, among other changes.

Somewhat curiously, the document posted below has some notes on anti-tank warfare, describing the use of Molotov cocktails and how to disable tracks.
Appropriate for the time, the notes also discuss the Soviet T34-85, T-54/55, T-44, PT-76, and IS-1/2/3 and T-10 tanks.

The drawings can be downloaded here.

The archive of manuals can be found here.



Footnotes