Centurion vs T-55: Yom Kippur War 1973: No. 21 (Duel)

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At the onset of the battle, the Israeli brigades of some 3,000 troops, 180 tanks and 60 artillery pieces faced off against three infantry divisions with large armour components comprising 28,000 Syrian troops, 800 tanks and 600 artillery pieces. In addition, the Syrians deployed two armoured divisions from the second day onwards. [55] [56] [57] [58] Israeli tanks crossing the Suez Canal LIGHTNING STRIKES At that moment, Major Shmuel Askarov, the deputy commander of the 53rd Tank Battalion, was in his office at the Hushniya base of the 188th Barak Brigade. His Shot Cal was parked outside his door with the crew within hailing distance. As he had indicated to General Moshe Dayan ten days earlier, he was certain that war was imminent. Throughout the night, the command elements of the brigade had been in conference revising plans and preparations. The commander of the 188th Barak Brigade was the Turkish-born Colonel Yitzhak Ben-Shoham. The brigade was composed of just two battalions with the 74th Tank Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Yair Nafshi deployed in the north from the slopes of Mount Hermon to near Mutzva 109 to the south of Kuneitra and the 53rd Tank Battalion At the same time, the large-scale operation of the Arab Liberation Army was defeated at Mishmar HaEmek. [14] Their Druze allies left them through defection. [15]

quotas until the German invasion was fully contained. Accordingly, the T-34 did not see any radical improvements until after 1943 when the battle of Kursk revealed the urgent need for a more heavily armed version of the tank to counter the much feared Tiger and Panther tanks. An improved model of the T-34 armed with a 85mm D-5 gun was accepted for production on 15 December 1943 and the first T-34/85 entered service with the Red Army in March 1944. Production of the T-34/85 was soon running at 1,200 per month at a time when there were only 304 Panthers on the whole Eastern Front. The T-34/85 was at the forefront of the climactic battles of Operation Bagration in the military imports of tank equipment or tanks Toggle Foreign military imports of tank equipment or tanks subsection M1919A4 Browning. With this modification, the tank became the Centurion Mk 5. A Mk 4 had been planned, mounting a 95mm close-support howitzer, but it was never produced. Meanwhile, a new turret was under development with a revised mantlet featuring resiliently mounted gun trunnions, improved gun control equipment as well as a new commander’s contra-rotating cupola that allowed faster target acquisition and incorporated a double leaf hatch to give overhead ‘umbrella’ protection to the commander while allowing him direct vision of the battlefield: a device subsequently adopted by the Israelis as the ‘Tal cupola’. When this new turret was eventually mounted on the revised hull with its extended range, the model became the Centurion Mk 8 in 1956. From 1959 onwards, the Centurion underwent an up-armouring and up-gunning programme whereby an extra 2 inches of armour were added to the glacis plate to give greater immunity against the 100mm main armament of the T-55. This involved the substitution of the 83.4mm 20-pounder with the L7 105mm gun that, because of its outstanding performance, became de facto the standard main armament within NATO. When both these modifications were applied retrospectively to previously built models, the Centurion Mk 5 became the Mk 6 while the Mk 7 and the Mk 8 became the Mk 9 and Mk 10 respectively. New-build vehicles had these features incorporated during production. The final two modification programmes for the Centurion in the British Army were the fitting of IR night-fighting equipment and a coaxial-mounted .50-calibre ranging gun together with a thermal sleeve for the 105mm barrel. The Centurion hull also became the basis for a series of special purpose variants to undertake a variety of roles on the battlefield including an armoured recovery vehicle, various bridge layers, an assault vehicle for combat engineers mounting a 165mm demolition gun and a version for use on amphibious beach landings. Together they showed the great versatility of the basic Centurion design but, interestingly, the Israeli Armored Corps did not procure such variants in any quantity as gun tanks were deemed to be paramount and the defence budget did not extend to such luxuries on the battlefield.

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Israel Tal, who was serving as a brigade commander after the Suez Crisis, restarted plans to produce an Israeli-made tank, drawing on lessons from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israeli forces were outnumbered by those of the Middle East's Arab nations. [64] At the period right before the 1956 Suez war, the Israelis were also deeply troubled by Egypt’s procurement of large amounts of Soviet weaponry that included 530 armored vehicles, of which 230 were tanks and the influx of this advanced weaponry altered an already shaky balance of power. [36] Additionally, Israel believed Egypt had formed a secret alliance with Jordan and Syria. [37] Damaged Israeli Sherman tank and vehicles, Sinai War, 1956 Sho't – The Sho't (meaning "Whip" in Hebrew) is the Israeli designation of the 105 mm L7 armed Centurion tank, which entered Israeli service in 1970. [75] The tank was the dominant weapon in land warfare during World War II, supported by a myriad of other Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFV) adapted to meet the demands of total war. Together with the essential infantryman, the tank was the basic component of every offensive from the deserts of North Africa and olive groves of Italy to the hedgerows of Normandy and jungles of the Far East. It was however on the Eastern Front that armoured battles occurred on an unprecedented scale between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It was a clash of titans as thousands of tanks and AFVs fought from the gates of Moscow to the heart of Berlin. As the war progressed, the Germans produced a series of outstanding tank designs such as the Tiger and the Panther but they were overly engineered and therefore expensive to produce. As such, they were manufactured in relatively small numbers. The Soviet Union on the other hand produced a series of simple but effective designs that could be produced in vast numbers. Although its tanks destroyed a disproportionate number of Allied AFVs, Nazi Germany was defeated by the mass of war matériel arraigned against it, with the ubiquitous T-34 at the spearhead of every offensive from the East and the American M-4 Sherman from the West. It was a lesson that became ever more significant as the post-war world devolved into mutual mistrust between the antagonistic camps of the Western Powers and the Soviet Union as codified by the North Atlantic Treaty

Merkava (Chariot) – The Merkava ( Hebrew: מרכבה ⓘ, "chariot") is a main battle tank used by the Israel Defense Forces. The tank began development in 1973 and entered official service in 1979. Four main versions of the tank have been deployed. It was first used extensively in the 1982 Lebanon War. The name " Merkava" was derived from the IDF's initial development program name. The surprise of the Yom Kippur War, and its aftermath completely changed the IDF's procedures and approach to warfare. Organizational changes were made [ by whom?] and more time was dedicated to training for conventional warfare. The armoured forces also were involved in the Lebanese Civil War, Operation Litani and later the 1982 Lebanon War, where the IDF ousted Palestinian guerilla organizations from Lebanon. Service history [ edit ] Centurions of the 8th Hussars disabled during the retreat of 29th Brigade on 25 April 1951 in the Battle of the Imjin River in Korea Korean War [ edit ] The TSh 2-22 gunner’s sight has a magnification of X3.5 or X7 but in the final battles of the Syrian offensive the tanks were so close that range assessment was unnecessary and opposing AFVs often filled the gunner’s field of view, but only if they left the safety of the firing ramps. In October 1955, a comprehensive improvement programme for the T-54 was initiated under the designation Obiekt 155. The principal innovation was the introduction of protection against Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) contamination on the nuclear battlefield that was now deemed to be inevitable by Soviet planners in any future conflict. The new design was accepted for service in May 1958 and production ran from June 1958 to July 1962 in the Soviet Union and subsequently in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The T-55 was of conventional layout with a four-man crew. Like the Centurion, the wartime practice of a five-man crew with a hull machine gunner, such as the T-34 or Cromwell tanks, was dispensed with in the interests of extra ammunition stowage, given the increased size of the main armament ammunition. However, the crew positions were reversed to those in the Centurion and, indeed, most Western tanks. The driver was situated in the left-hand side of the hull front while the commander and gunner were positioned to the left of the D-10T gun and the loader to its right. The most striking aspect of the T-55 was its compact dimensions with a height to the turret top of just 2.39m although the loader’s roof-mounted heavy machine gun did somewhat compromise the low profile: in comparison, the M-48 stood 3.13m tall and the Centurion 2.94m. However, the superb shaped turret did markedly reduce the internal volume of the tank and make it extremely cramped for the crew. This inevitably affected their performance when fighting closed down over extended periods of time. It also significantly reduced overall ammunition stowage with just 43 rounds as against 65 for the Centurion. Nevertheless, such a compact tank was difficult to hit and the armour configuration made it more likely for shells to ricochet off the turret or glacis plate without penetrating, while the limited amount of ammunition carried was compensated for by the sheer numbers of Soviet tanks committed to any offensive. For these reasons, Soviet tank crews were chosen onBut even before the Outline Specification of the A41 was released in October 1943, these limits were removed, and the weight was increased from 40 tons to 45 long tons (50 short tons; 46t), because of the need for heavier armour and a wider turret (too wide for the tank to be transported by rail) with a more powerful gun. [19] The new version carried armour equal to the heaviest infantry tanks, while improved suspension and engines provided cross-country performance superior to even the early cruiser tanks. The War Office decided it would be wiser to build new trailers, rather than hamper what appeared to be a superb design. Historian David Fletcher states, "But was Centurion, after all, a Universal Tank? The answer has to be a qualified negative." [20] The first Centurion prototype is completed and six prototypes are despatched to Germany in the following month for combat trials, but the war ends before their arrival. The Centurion first saw combat during the Korean War of 1950–1953 in a completely different theatre of operations for which it was designed. It proved highly effective despite the appalling cold weather and the mountainous terrain. A Centurion Mk 3 of A Squadron, the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, transports Australian infantry across the Imjin River in April 1951, when the Centurions of the 8th Hussars won lasting fame in the decisive battle that thwarted the Chinese Spring Offensive. In 1943, the Directorate of Tank Design, under Sir Claude Gibb, was asked to produce a new design for a heavy cruiser tank under the General Staff designation A41. After a series of fairly mediocre designs in the A series in the past, and bearing in mind the threat posed by the German 88 mm gun, the War Office demanded a major revision of the design requirements, specifically: increased durability and reliability, the ability to withstand a direct hit from the German 88mm gun and providing greater protection against mines. Initially in September 1943 the A41 tank was to weigh no more than 40 long tons (45 short tons; 41t), the limit for existing Mark I and Mark II transport trailers and for a Bailey bridge of 80ft (24m) span. The British railway loading gauge required that the width should not exceed 10ft 8in (3.25m) and the optimum width was 10ft 3in (3.12m), [15] but, critically, for the new tank this restriction had been lifted by the War Office under pressure from the Department of Tank Design. A high top speed was not important, while agility was to be equal to that of the Comet. A high reverse speed was specified, as during the fighting in southern Italy, Allied tanks were trapped in narrow sunken roads by the German Army. The modified production gearbox had a two-speed reverse, with the higher reverse speed similar to second gear. [16] [17]