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Old 23-12-18, 00:21
Lance Wiebe Lance Wiebe is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Lincoln, NB
Posts: 10
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I may be able to add some information.
I was the Leopard Gunnery WO in Gagetown in the early 90's, and was part of the Leopard Thermal Upgrade Project, that resulted in the C2.

There were indeed a total of 5 driving cabs bought, as previously stated.

The IMR in K19 had 6 turret stands. 4 of the turrets came from the D&M tanks, while the remaining 2 were part of a buy of 4 turrets we bought over and above the 114 C1's. Two were used in Borden, and two in Gagetown.

Side story, one thing that always bothered me about the D&M tanks was that when they went to rebuild at 10,000 KM, I had to take one of my IMR turrets, that had never fired anything more than a laser, and send it to rebuild as well. Meanwhile, my gun tanks had fired 10's of thousands of main gun rounds, the turrets were totally worn out, but couldn't go to rebuild because the hulls only had 3 or 4 thousand KM on them.

There were two types of turret stands, one type used in the IMR, and the other type used by RCEME to plunk a turret when it was removed from a tank for whatever reason.

We bought 113 Leopard 1A5 turrets to convert our tanks to C2. We also bought 24 hulls to replace the hulls that were worn too thin and were starting to buckle.

Shortly after the project, the decision came that tanks were dead, and everyone started clammering for targets, for monuments, or whatever.

And shortly after that, came the new decision that tanks were not dead, and we needed them after all. Only 66 tanks were left......

There's still a bunch of C2's sitting in Gagetown, waiting for a new life, or the scrapyard.
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