Description
The Centurion in Danish Service
Written by Kim Hartvig Sørensen
Foreword by Simon Dunstan.
The Centurion tank was the workhorse of the British Army’s tank squadrons for twenty years or more. The tank and its different specialised versions were used up to the end of the 20th Century, and into the 21st.
Very little been published about the daily use of the tank, particularly by the Danish Army. The aim of this work has not been to rewrite all the information about the standard vehicles but, based on contemporary primary sources of the time, describes the Danish part of the Centurion story from the early 1950.
Centurion was the Danish Army’s first modern main battle tank and became the backbone of Danish armoured formations during the Cold War up to 1976 when the Leopard 1 replaced Centurion in the armoured brigades of the Jutland Division. The Centurion kept soldiering on in the armoured brigades on Zealand up to the beginning of the 1990s.
Denmark used the Centurion Main Battle Tank, the Armoured Recovery Vehicle and the Armoured Vehicle Launched Bridge versions. The main battle tank was updated in relation to gunnery in the middle of the 1980s. Then, its ability to fight in the hours of darkness and with laser rangefinding, its gunnery was improved.
Subjects in The Centurion in Danish Service include:
• Arrival and Initial Use
• Cold War Wartime Tasks
• Training, Exercises and Maintenance
• Modifications and Upgrades
• ARV and AVLB
• Training Equipment
• Crew Dress
• Camouflage and Markings
• Transportation
• Walkaround
