Centurion Arrives in BC

[Aide Memoire]

Originally Posted by Ed Storey

This thread is about a Canadian Centurion which was shipped from Cornwallis NS to Aldergrove BC. The tank has been attributed to having seen service in Korea, a statement which has been challenged.

And quite rightly. While I love a good mystery, I prefer mine in paperback.

but you may be able to prove that some Canadian used Centurions had actually seen service in Korea prior to being shipped to Canada. So why not take another approach and first determine which British Regiments employed Centurions in Korea and work from there? You can then take this list of WD numbers and check with Bovington to see if any of the tanks made their way into Canadian stocks.

I've done a bit of that already, including finding for example that 1RTRs Centurions after Korea went to a couple of other deployments and wound up in...FARELF stocks in Hong Kong. That's already very interesting given those cards from Bovington showing three Centurion transfers to "Can Bde" apparently from those stocks, and not as loaners either because they were 'struck off census' meaning no further British Army record-keeping would be done.

Those are the only three transfers Bovington could find, but they also point (as mentioned in a previous post) that their records for the Centurion years in question are unfortunately quite spotty. In this case the transfers are just academic anyway, as the VRN range (and Bovington's own comments) make them older tanks 1948-1950...where the earliest hull stamp I can find on the Cornwallis tank is 1951, and the latest 1952.

If anything, Bovington's info coupled with their spotty records for tanks in the target year range (and I suppose Harold Skaarup's photos) invite more questions than they answer. Did transfers take place outside of the contracts for new ones and some of the specialty versions acquired later? Seems so. I think Bovington's cards meet the litmus-test for 'original sources' so the precedent's at least there. Were any of those transfers of tanks that actually served with the British in Korea? Harder question...but the paper trail is there at least as far as 1RTR is concerned for the chances to be better than even.

Some things you can do which may help you is catalogue what the casting number is on the turret and let us know which model of turret it is. You can also record the gun number and any other hull serial numbers as this information may help you later on.

Indeed. In the midst of all that now during our...4 hrs...of winter daylight. Cheers.