The Centurion served in more wars than any other. Manufacture of the Centurion began in January 1945, and six prototypes arrived in Belgium soon after the war in Europe ended in May 1945. The chassis was also adapted for several other roles. After the test, it was found to have been pushed back about 5ft and its engine had stopped - but only because it had run out of fuel the tank was refuelled and driven away. The Centurion was the primary British main battle tank of the post World War II period, and was a successful tank design, with upgrades, for many decades. In a nuclear test in 1953, a Centurion built the year after The Engineer’s visit was placed 500 yards from the detonation point of a 9.1kt bomb, cleared of crew but fulled loaded with ammunition and with the engine running. These efforts paid off, as the Centurion was one tough machine - the only tank known to survive a nuclear explosion.

The report also describes how the tank turret was machined out of a single 8.25ton casting. The Engineer reported on the whole production process, including the ingenious welding jigs that rotated the steel-plate hull so that the joints were always presented so that the welders - all working by hand - could wield their welding electrodes downwards and vertically, which maximised the welding current that could be used and minimised the number of welding runs needed.

The heaviest armoured vehicle that had ever been produced in Britain, it weighed 50 tons, was built from 3.5in (88mm) thick steel armour-plate, carried a 3.7in (94mm) calibre gun firing a 20lb (9kg) shell and housed a modified Rolls-Royce Merlin engine - the same one that powered the Spitfire and Lancaster - which gave it a top speed of 25mph (speedy for a tank). The mighty Centurion, at the Royal Ordnance factory near Leeds The team get to grips with the restoration of a 50-tonne 1949 Centurion tank. Original Centurions had 20 pounder main guns, but these were quickly up-gunned to the British 105 mm L7. During the war, Israel captured 30 of Jordan's 44 Centurion tanks. In what was clearly a big deal for our predecessors, the press were invited, for the first time since the Second World War, to tour a Royal Ordnance Factory and see the assembly of what was to become an icon of the Cold War: the Centurion Tank, which saw service in the Korean War, the 1970s Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Vietnam War and even as late as the 1991 Gulf War. Centurion Tank: With Lee Hurst, Claire Barratt, Axel Cleghorn, Jerry Thurston. When the Six-day War broke out in 1967, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had 293 Centurion tanks that were ready for combat out of a total of 385 tanks.