RESTORING THE BIGGEST GUN TANK IN THE WORLD ( FV4005 )

Restoring the FV4005 Centurion, the biggest gun tank in the world, with insights into its history, design, and restoration process.

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Key Takeaways

The FV4005 is a unique British tank designed to mount a massive 183 mm gun to counter heavy armor threats.
Restoration requires careful attention to original design details and overcoming significant mechanical challenges.
Collaboration with experts and access to original blueprints is essential for accurate restoration.
The tank's design includes innovative features to manage the recoil of its enormous gun.
The project highlights the blend of historical research, gaming culture, and hands-on engineering.

What the video covers

Introduction to the FV4005 Centurion Stage Two, the largest gun tank in the world, and its historical context.
Explanation of the tank's origin linked to the 1950s British Ministry of Supply's need for a powerful anti-armor weapon.
Details about the 183 mm gun designed to defeat heavy enemy armor at 2,000 yards using high explosive squash head rounds.
Discussion of the FV4005's development as a solution to delays in the FV 215 heavy tank project.
Description of gun trials including firing 150 rounds at a Conqueror tank with spaced armor.
Explanation of unique features such as the rear ground anchor to counter recoil and the gun crutch for support.
Restoration challenges including remanufacturing parts like the ground anchor, gun crutch, and rear mudguards.
Detailed process of disassembling the tank including removing the gun cradle, engine, and gearbox.
Issues faced with corroded internal components and difficult-to-remove bolts during restoration.
Collaboration with the Tank Museum and Wargaming to ensure historical accuracy and technical support.

Chapters

What is the FV4005 Centurion and why is it significant?

The FV4005 Centurion is a British tank fitted with a massive 183 mm gun designed in the 1950s to defeat heavy enemy armor at long range. It is significant as the biggest gun tank in the world and a unique solution to armored warfare challenges of its time.

What are some unique features of the FV4005 tank?

The FV4005 includes a large rear ground anchor to counteract recoil when firing its huge gun and a substantial gun crutch to support the weapon. These features were necessary due to the size and power of the 183 mm gun.

What challenges are involved in restoring the FV4005 tank?

Restoration challenges include dealing with corroded internal components, removing difficult bolts (some countersunk and rounded), remanufacturing parts like the ground anchor and gun crutch, and ensuring historical accuracy through collaboration with the Tank Museum and reference to original blueprints.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

[Music] The first time we ever have to look through a bush. Come on, I'll win that now. Come on. Ow. Tell you what, you're playing. Oh, come driving there. My mother would be proud of that. Jesus Christ, couldn't camel's ass for the ride's sake.

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I'm going to end up as gray as you here waiting for this. What? That was that your tee? Okay. So those that are new to the channel, we are actually in the process of taking on a restoration with our

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friends at the Tank Museum and with a little help from Wargaming as well. Well, to make one of the only—well, no, the only FV4005 Centurion Stage Two, which a lot of people won't have a clue what that was.

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And neither did I until last year when I was playing the game World of Tanks with a couple of my friends one evening, and obviously we kept getting absolutely obliterated by this giant vehicle. And Seb was a bit more switched on. World

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Tank has been playing it for many years, obviously told us what it was and explained all about it and why it's so good. In the 1950s, the Ministry of Supply ordered—they wanted a weapon that would be able to defeat enemy armor

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at 2,000 yards through at least 6 inches of armor. So all the heavy Russian stuff that was coming out at the time, they didn't have any gun that was capable of creating it. So in the end, they decided

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on a 180 mil gun firing high explosive squash head, and the initiative will be able to do it. This was then slated for the FV 215 project, which was a heavy tank to mount the 183 mil, but this was deemed through a lot of

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time that it would be ready in time. So they had the idea to come up with mounting this gun on a chassis that was available at the time, and at the common, the British tank at the time was the

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Centurion. So they decided then to come up with a way of mounting the 183 mil gun onto a Centurion chassis, and that's why the FV4005 exists today. And what did they try shooting against? Ah, yes.

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So as part of the gun trials, they fired 150 rounds out the L4 gun, and they used a Conqueror with spaced armor, which is in the game. We all know it as the Super Conqueror, and it didn't exist. And part of this is there's quite a lot of photographs of

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this weapon being tested against it to demonstrate how much damage the round impact to create a kill would be on a vehicle depending on where they actually aimed it. And we got a couple of photos that are, you know, widely sharing

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through the archives, and this is—this is them. This is that. [Music] We're filming again. It's not just quite as straightforward as just plonking the turret on the hole. There's a couple of things that are slightly different now.

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If we roll the footage of the World of Tanks footage that they've kindly given us, you can see on the back of the vehicle there's this great big rear ground anchor, and the reason for this is the gun was so big when the gun fired it

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actually recoiled the vehicle back so much that it actually needed this ground anchor to stop it from moving the vehicle back too much. So we're going to have to get that all remanufactured. I think the Tank Museum are finding the

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blueprints for the original specifications for that, so we're going to have that re-engineered. We're not going to do that ourselves. The Tank Museum are trying to sort that for us, which would be brilliant. And also, so if you come

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around to the front of, you've got the—what do you call it? The brace, the A-bar GCR in it. The gun crutch is a better word. Yeah. So you've got the gun crutch, which is obviously quite a

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substantial thing because the gun is absolutely massive. So the gun crutch is also going to have to be remanufactured because we want to get it to be as accurate as we possibly can to the original that we have the photos of

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here. A couple of other things that are different are the rear mudguards are slightly longer, and we've seen this before on the lightweight Centurion, I believe. I don't know why it was used on the FV4005, but it was, so I quite like the

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look of them, so we're going to get some of them made up as well so it looks right. So basically, we're going to try and make it look identical

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to the real thing when they built it.

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First job before we do anything with this is to stay. Stay, you are too high up to jump off. Sit down. Sit. Sit. Sit. Very well behaved. It is. He's very well trained. Sit there. There we go. Look

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at that. Now stay there. Right. So the first thing we're going to do is take this gun cradle, this mantlet thing or whatever hell you want to call it, the spinny spinny. It must be four or five tons

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worth. Don't know, something like that. Yeah, roughly. So we're going to get the impact gun and the spanner, whip all the bolts out, now lift it off, put it on that other Mark 3 hole because we've got Mark 3 holes

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coming out of it. Dump it over there, and then that will give us plenty of room to get inside to get all the other bits off. But I think we'll dump that over there, and then we'll weld this in the

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workshop and start taking a bit. Sounds like a plan. Let's get on with it. Start. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, got it. I've got it. Will that pull out? P? It will. It pull out with your finger?

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That's the first one out. Now I got 9 million more to go. Only a couple. Yeah, go on gently. Not a lot of weight on those back wheels if you look carefully. Quite a bit of weight on the

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front wheels. That wasn't your main trailer that I just hit, was it, mate? That was factory fresh. Sorry about that. Like a glove. [Music] Back more. You. You. Yeah. Sit back. Sit back. Oh, there you. Yep. Right. So now we're

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in the workshop. We're going to start taking everything we can off, and you can see if you have a little look around, it's not in awful condition, but it's also not in the best of condition. Obviously, anything that's been set outside tank-wise always

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fills up with a lot of water in the lower hull, and a common thing with Centurions, which this will have failed with all the same as the others, is the rods down there that operate the gears, the clutch, and the steering will all be

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corroded and won't be safe to use. So they're going to all have to be taken out, replaced, which means all the floor plates will all have to be taken out. A good strip down. But before we're going to start—well, before we start doing

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anything on that side really, we're going to take the engine and the gearbox out, and obviously that is under these louvers that I'm stood on here. They're incredibly heavy, and I mean, you can take the engine and gearbox out and

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leave them on, but it's a lot of lifting, and if they fall down and hit you, it's going to hurt. So I think for safety, and we can do a lot better job or really to do a proper

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restoration, we want to take off—they've got to come off to do a proper restoration. But the only trouble we're taking these off is these bolts, some of them, not all of them, but some of them are countersunk for

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God knows why they did that. So as you can see here, some of them stick out nice and proud. That'll come out no problem, but then these countersunk ones that only have like a couple of mil all

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they want to do, it looks like someone's already had a go at this, rounding them off. So they're going to take a lot of doing. We may have to cut them off and then retap it. I'm hoping we

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don't because they are a real pain in the bum. But we're going to take that off, take all the louvers off, and then we'll probably start by taking the gearbox out, I think. Yeah, I think gearbox out first will be the easiest, and then work

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way to the fuel tanks and engine. So, yeah, time to fire up the flame and I'll heat all these bolts up before we even try and turn them. So I'll get the gas set up now. Cool. So that's it for

Topics:FV4005Centurion tanktank restorationBritish tanks183 mm gunTank MuseumWorld of Tanksmilitary historyheavy tanktank engineering

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