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This vehicle is not currently on display at the Museum
After a long development period the Chieftain tank began to replace the Centurion in the late 1960s. It was powered by a diesel engine designed to run on a variety of fuels and carried a 120 mm gun, as powerful as that of the Conqueror but in a tank weighing much the same as the smaller Centurion. A purpose designed ARV variant, it bore some similarity to the Conqueror ARV Mark 2, with a sloping glacis plate carried up to roof height. The novelty was a winch, designed to pull from the front of the tank so that the spade was mounted at the front and could double as a bulldozer blade. Another advantage was that the crew could, if necessary, control the winch from behind the vehicle's armour but with a full view of the casualty through the ARV's periscopes.
To speed up repairs it was usually necessary to remove a tank's engine completely. This involved first removing other components to gain access. A newer concept fitted engine and accessories together in a power pack, which could be lifted out more quickly in its entirety. The cranes on REME's forward repair vehicles were not robust enough for the heavy power packs, and it was decided to fit larger cranes on to the ARVs to give them the dual capacity to lift or recover equipment. The concept had been tried on foreign vehicles, and earlier ARVs had carried lifting booms but these had to be assembled before being used. Chieftain ARVs were reworked to carry hydraulic cranes and were redesignated Armoured Repair and Recovery Vehicles (ARRV). At one stage it was planned that the ARRV should carry a spare power pack on its rear deck but this made the vehicle conspicuous when it was in a forward area carrying out recovery work. Instead, special trailers were built to carry the power packs across rough ground.
The Chieftain is fitted with a dual capstan winch, in which the stresses are taken by a drum with only one winding of cable, to prevent it being crushed. A secondary drum stores the cable. A second low capacity winch is also fitted and can be used to haul out the main winch cable to speed up recovery work.
Chieftain ARRVs remained in use well into the 1990s.
Length |
8.57 m (28 ft 1 in) |
Width |
3.53 m (11 ft 7 in) |
Height |
3.43 m (11 ft 3 in) |
Weight |
54.7 tons |
Main winch |
30 tons capacity - direct pull |
Crane lift |
6.5 tons - max |
Engine |
Leyland L60 vertically opposed 6 cylinder diesel |
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Page produced by Peter Eldred - Last updated 24 July 2004