We only modified 113 C1's to C2 because LETE had borrowed a tank from Germany. This tank was a Leo1A4 that had been highly modified, it had the EMES 18 fire control system, turret electric drive that replaced the hydraulic system in our tanks, and had, at one point, been modified to have an independent commander sight. This sight had been removed, and a plate welded in the turret top to cover the hole.
To compensate for this tank, we left one tank in Germany. So, we did have 114 tanks, but only 113 were C2's. I have no idea what happened to the LETE tank after it left Gagetown.
I had borrowed the LETE tank after the project started to develop the new gunnery tables and to trial some tactics that would be required once we had a tank with true night fighting capabilities. I put quite a few KM's and fired quite a few rounds out of it in Gagetown.
The C Squadron tanks in Gagetown were used hard, combined with the rocky terrain and use, the hulls were worn and developed metal fatigue, causing the hulls to bend so bad the power packs could not be removed. Several fixes were proposed, the easiest and cheapest solution was to buy more hulls from Germany.
I might add, we had two choices in the Leopard Thermal Upgrade Project. The first choice was to modify our existing turrets with the EMES 18, as the Danes did with their tanks. However, no company in Canada had the requisite skill and equipment to do this, which meant all of our turrets would have to be sent to Germany. This was to expensive, as our project had a cap of 130 million dollars. The second choice was to buy surplus German Leo 1A5 tanks and use their turrets. This is obviously what we went with.
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