A Chieftain throwing up dust and smoke as it crosses the arena at Tankfest, Bovington, with camouflage netting wrapped on its 120mm gun. It is one of four Cold War vehicles I photographed that day.
The Chieftain entered British Army service in 1966 and was the main British battle tank through much of the Cold War. It carried a 120mm gun with heavy armour and a low profile. Challenger 1 replaced it in 1983, with a 120mm rifled gun and Chobham composite armour, and went on to see combat in the 1991 Gulf War before Challenger 2 took over.
The Alvis Stalwart was a six-wheel-drive amphibious load carrier built for the British Army from the 1960s, moving supplies across rough ground and through water. The Leopard C1 is the Canadian Army designation for the West German Leopard 1, of which Canada bought 114 in the late 1970s, built around speed and mobility with a 105mm rifled gun.
The MoD equipment register, the Merlin Archive, lists these three as a Chieftain Mk 10 (03 EB 83, in service October 1968), a Challenger Mk 1 (34 KA 11, in service August 1983) and an Alvis Stalwart Mk 2 (18 ET 23, in service January 1969 and cast in September 1993). The individual histories of the vehicles, and of the Leopard, could not be confirmed. I photographed all four at Tankfest at Bovington.
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