It was roughly hexagonal with a gun mantlet on the leading edge. The turret of the Mk.1 Centurion was built to mount the famous 17-Pounder gun. In those 10 years of service, it had already been in use with two types of turrets. Photo: The Tank Museum.īy the late 1950s, early 1960s, the FV4007 Centurion had been in service for over 10 years and had already proved to be a reliable vehicle, highly adaptable, and well-liked by its crews. The ‘Centurion Mantletless Turret’ mounted on a Centurion chassis during trials. What he fails to mention is that this was written in the 1980s, and does not appear in any official material. The name ‘Action X’ appeared in a book published in the early 2000s after the author cited seeing the name written on the back of a photo of the turret. The first falsehood to tackle is the name ‘Action X’. Thankfully, due to the efforts of amateur historians and Tank Encyclopedia members Ed Francis and Adam Pawley, some fragments of its story have been recovered.
There is also a false belief that the turret is associated with the FV4202 project, however as we will see, this is not the case.īut what is the truth behind the awkwardly titled ‘Centurion Mantletless Turret’? (for ease this will be shortened to ‘CMT’ throughout the article) Unfortunately, that is currently a hard question to answer, as much information surrounding the turret and its development has been lost to history. In turn, vehicles fitted with the turret, such as the intended Centurion, then have a false suffix attached to them, ‘Centurion AX’ being an example.
It is also known as the ‘Action Ten’ or simply as ‘AX’.
This redesigned turret – intended for installation on the Centurion – is often incorrectly identified as the ‘Action X’ turret, with the X being the Roman numeral for 10. In recent years, thanks largely to erroneous publications and popular video games such as ‘ World of Tanks’ and ‘ War Thunder’, a comedy of errors has surrounded the history of the officially named ‘Centurion Mantletless Turret’.
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