Tanques Chieftain - Gran Bretaña: libros - historia, modelos y técnica

The FV4201 Chieftain was the main battle tank of the United Kingdom during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It is still in service in the Middle East today. A development of the Centurion, the Chieftain introduced the supine (reclining) driver position to British design enabling a heavily sloped hull with reduced height.

This book provides the reader with the full and unvarnished story of the origins, development, decades of service and combat history of the Chieftain Main Battle Tank.
The text is interspersed with numerous photographs, many published for the first time, alongside colour profiles and scale plans, including those of rare and unusual variants. It also relates the experiences of the crews who lived and worked on the Chieftain, often in the irreverent style typical of Army humour.

The British Chieftain - designed in the late 1950s as the replacement for the Centurion - was perhaps the best main battle tank in service with Nato during the 1960s and 1970s.
Its 120mm rifled main gun and advanced armour made it one of the most formidable tanks of its time, and Robert Jackson's book is an authoritative introduction to it.

Although it was intended to fight Soviet armour on the plains of northern Germany, it was in the heat and sand of the Middle East that the Chieftain fought its major battles during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and it proved to be very effective during the Gulf War of 1991.
Variants of the Chieftain were exported to Iran, Oman, India, Kenya and Nigeria, and its chassis was adapted to fulfil a variety of tasks, including armoured recovery and bridge-laying.

As well as tracing the history of the Chieftain, Robert Jackson's work provides an excellent source of reference for the modeller, providing details of available kits and photographs of award-winning models, together with artworks showing the colour schemes applied to these tanks. Each section of the book is supported by a wealth of archive photographs.

The Chieftain was a radical evolutionary development of the successful Centurion line of tanks that had emerged at the end of the Second World War. The British had learned during the war that their tanks often lacked sufficient protection and firepower compared to those fielded by the enemy, and that this had led to high casualty levels when faced with the superior German tanks in World War II.

Chieftain was designed to be as well protected as possible and to be equipped with a powerful 120 mm rifled gun. The heavy armor came at the price of reduced mobility, chiefly due to engine power limitations, which was perhaps the Chieftain's main drawback.

The concept of the Main Battle Tank emerged from the Centurion Universal tank that was developed at the end of World War II. Development of its successor began as early as 1951. The Chieftain incorporated significant innovations including a reclining driver position and two-piece ammunition for greater survivability. The tank entered service in 1967 and was the heaviest armed and armoured MBT within the NATO alliance. The Chieftain saw combat during the Iran-Iraq War, with the Kuwaitis during the 1990 Iraqi invasion and with the British Army during the Gulf War of 1990-91 as special-purpose variants.

This book explores the design, development and operation of one of the most influential vehicles used in modern warfare.Contents: Introduction - Design and Development - Operational History - Colour Plate Commentary - Bibliography - Index.