The 41 Centurion was a British high-speed tank, sometimes classified as a primary, from the Second World War and the Cold War. The first prototypes of the vehicle were built in 1944, and serial production continued in the years 1945-1962, ending with the production of 4,423 copies. The centurion was powered by an engine Rolls-Royce Meteor V12 with 600 hp . The basic armament of the vehicle is a single 77mm HV cannon, 1 20mm Polsten cannon and 1 7.92mm Besa machine gun.
The Centurion was created as a result of the experience of armored clashes in North Africa in 1942-1943. In 1944, the first mock-ups of the car and its prototypes were ready, and in 1945 several examples were delivered to British troops fighting in Germany, but they did not manage to take part in the fighting. When designing the Centurion, the emphasis was on high mobility, the best possible armor and the use of a cannon that could fight even the heaviest German and later Soviet vehicles. In the course of operation, it also turned out that the Centurion was characterized by low failure rate and high susceptibility to modernization. All this made it one of the best tanks of the Cold War period by many analysts. Many modernizations of this successful car were made in the course of series production. One of them was the Centurion Mk. 3, which received a 20-pounder (86 mm caliber) gun, or one of the most successful versions - the Centurion Mk. 5 armed with a 105mm gun. The Centurion tank also took part - with success - in many armed conflicts, including: the Korean War (1950-1953), where it surpassed the American and Soviet designs, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Six-Day War (1967), the Yom-Kippur War (1973) or the Lebanon War of 1982. It was also widely exported to, among others, Austria, Australia, India, Israel, Kuwait, South Africa and Sweden.