Israeli Centurion Tank – In addition to its own designs, Iareal had upgraded the many tanks it had and even renamed them. Israel’s formerly British Centurions, bought in the late 1960s, were renamed “Sho’t” (“scourge” or “whip”) by the Israelis and heavily upgraded following their purchase.[59]
When the Six-day War broke out in 1967, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had 293 Centurion tanks that were ready for combat[60] out of a total of 385 tanks. During the war Israel captured 30 Centurion tanks from Jordan, when Jordan had only 44 Centurion tanks.[61]
Israeli Centurion Tank
Merkava (Chariot) – The Merkava (Hebrew: מרכבה (help info), “chariot”) is a main battle tank used by the Israel Defense Forces. The tank began development in 1973 and entered official service in 1979. Four main versions of the tank have been deployed.
The Four Eras We Cover
It was first used extensively in the 1982 Lebanon War. The name “Merkava” was derived from the IDF’s initial development program name. The engine has been changed to a more efficient diesel engine, fire control has been modernized, armor has been thickened, and an improved ammunition layout allows more rounds to be carried.
An improved fire extinguishing system, better electrical system and brakes, and an increased fuel capacity, complete the modifications. The Sh’ot can be distinguished from the Centurion by its raised rear deck, to accommodate the bigger engine.
They either have the original 7.62 mm caliber MG on the commander’s cupola or have it replaced by a 12.7 mm caliber HMG and American radios. With Rafah more or less cut off and Israeli forces controlling the northern and eastern roads leading into the city, Dayan ordered the AMX-13s of the 27th Armored Brigade to strike west and take al-Arish.[40]
By this point, Nasser had ordered his forces to fall back towards the Suez Canal, so at first the Bar-Lev and his men met little resistance as they advanced across the northern Sinai.[40] The Cold War: East vs West: Two opposed superpowers led to the splitting of the world into East and West.
Better
Prospects In Afghanistan
The USA and USSR, together with their own alliance, forged a new generation of armored vehicles learning from numerous proxy wars. The Israeli tank force included a small number of Sherman, Cromwell and Churchill tanks, as well as ten Hotchkiss H-39 light tanks.
Egypt used Shermans, Crusaders and Matildas, as well as Light Tank Mark VI and M22 Locust light tanks. They may have used some Valentines, as well. The Syrians and the Lebanese had old French tanks. The Syrians had Renault R35s and R39s (an improved R35).
The Lebanese used Renault FTs. Israel’s independence in 1948 saw the formation of the Israeli Defense Forces, and the IDF cobbled together a modest, ramshackle tank force to repel attacks from neighboring Arab countries. By the 1956 war the situation had improved considerably, and by 1967 Israel’s Armored Corps basically won the Six-Day War with a blitz across the Sinai Peninsula and into the Golan Heights.
The tanks, American M48 and British Centurion tanks, crushed the opposition and brought a quick end to the war. Sabra (tank) – The Sabra is an extensively upgraded M60 Patton tank developed by Israel Military Industries.
Dust-Offs
In The Desert The T- Vs The Centurion
MkII version of this upgrade package was used in one of Turkish Army’s modernization programs. The Sabra is known as the M60T in Turkish service.[69] WW1: Mud, Barbed Wire and Trenches The United Kingdom and France started development of tanks in order to break through enemy lines.
They were intended to breach no man’s land, but the tank quickly became a killing machine integrated in combined arms operations. During a secret operation in 1966, two British-made ‘Chieftain’ MBTs were brought to Israel for a 4-year-long evaluation for service with the IDF.
The plan was for the IDF not only to purchase the British MBTs, but for IMI (Israeli Military Industries) to buy production rights. As part of the deal during the early 1960s, Israel purchased second-hand ‘Centurion’ MBTs from the British, that used that money in the Chieftain development.
After the trials were done, Israeli improvements and ideas were implemented by the British manufacturer, but British politicians canceled the agreement with Israel and the program was shut down. The knowledge earned during the improvements on the ‘Chieftain’, together with earlier experiments in tank improvements, gave the last push for the development and production of the ‘Merkava’ tank.
The situation pushed the leaders of the neighboring Arab states to intervene, with the Arab Legion of Transjordan’s monarch, King Abdullah I moving tanks and amoured forces into the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine.
In the past forty years, just a handful of countries have proved themselves capable of building their own main battle tanks. One of these tank powers is actually one of the smallest countries in the world: Israel.
Israel’s main battle tank, the Merkava series, is one of the best-designed tanks ever produced. The Merkava is protected by the Trophy active-protection system, which uses a combination of turret-mounted sensors and explosively formed projectiles to shoot down enemy tank gun rounds, rockets and antitank guided missiles.
Trophy is combat proven, having saved several Merkava IV tanks (and their crews) from antitank weapons fielded by Hamas in 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Israeli tankers are also set this year to experiment with Iron Vision, an augmented reality system designed to allow crews to “see” outside of their tank with a combination of VR goggles and distributed aperture system.
Mobility was the lowest of the three priorities for the Israeli tank, and the tank used just a nine-hundred-horsepower diesel engine to power a sixty-three-ton hull, for a horsepower-to-weight ratio of 14.5 to one. As a result the Merkava had a relatively sluggish top speed of just twenty-eight miles an hour.
(This was in contrast to the American M1 Abrams, which had a set top speed of forty-five miles an hour and had a horsepower-to-weight ratio of twenty-five to one.) Given that Israel is just 263 miles across at its widest point, it’s hard to argue with making mobility the lowest priority.
Israel’s frequent wars have resulted in a consistent flow of combat experience, resulting in new and progressively improved Merkava tanks. The current tank, Merkava IV, retains the Merkava I’s design priorities and incorporates a new redesigned turret, explosive reactive armor and modular passive armor for quicker battle-damage repair.
It mounts a larger 120-millimeter main gun with fifty-eight rounds, including the LAHAT antitank guided missile, eighteen more rounds than the M1A2 Abrams with a similar gun. It has a larger 1,500-horsepower engine, bringing the horsepower-to-weight ratio up to 23.8 to one, and the tank is correspondingly faster.
The first armored tanks and vehicles in Israel were like many countries, imported or based on others designs but eventually evolved into their own tank designs. But in Israel the plans to import them began before the country even was formed and rudimentary built armored cars and trucks were prepared in secret.
The Palmach was an elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) and had been established on 15 May 1941 and organized so by the outbreak of the Israeli War for Independence in 1948 it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades.
the T-55’s first major clash with the Centurion came in June 1967 during the Six-Day War, which was won by Israel, with 20 Israeli tanks knocking out 32 Egyptian T-54 and T-55 tanks in the Bir Lahfan area.
However, conditions favored the Soviets tanks at El-Arish in 1973, when the Egyptians repulsed three attacks by Centurions of Israel’s 7th Brigade, destroying 17 enemy tanks. At the period right before the 1956 Suez war, the Israelis were also deeply troubled by Egypt’s procurement of large amounts of Soviet weaponry that included 530 armored vehicles, of which 230 were tanks and the influx of this advanced weaponry altered an already shaky balance of power .[35]
Additionally, Israel believed Egypt had formed a secret alliance with Jordan and Syria.[36] Protection also meant that tank crews could survive to fight again, allowing tankers to survive to continue to utilize their training and act on their experience.
The Israeli tank would next prioritize firepower because, survival aside, the only way to win a war was to destroy enemy tanks. Mobility was last—as a small country, Israel was not likely to fight long campaigns over great distances.
Following the United Nations General Assembly vote for the Partition Plan for Palestine on 29 November 1947, the Jewish forces plans went into action to build and procure mobile armored cars and supply trucks and to purchase and bring in tanks and a large number of half-tracks to prepare for the termination of the British Mandate]] and Israeli proclamation of statehood on 14 May 1948.[1]
During this period the Jewish and Arab communities of British Mandate clashed with only light arms, while the British organized their withdrawal and intervened only on an occasional basis.[[File:PikiWiki Israel 20804 The Palmach.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Palestinian irregulars near a burnt armored Haganah supply truck, the road to Jerusalem, 1948
![Development] Sho't Kal Dalet: Conquering The Desert - News - War Thunder](https://static.warthunder.com/upload/image/!%202018/11%20November/Shot%20Kal%20Dalet/shot_kal_08_1280h720_31f1f47a656229b8add12b0c38847b7c.jpg "Israeli Centurion Tank 4")
Original Centurions had 20 pounder main guns, but these were quickly up-gunned to the British 105 mm L7. The vehicles went through a number of both major and minor modifications culminating in the Sho’t with blazer package seen in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and retired with honor during the 1990s.
The biggest modifications were the upgrade of the engine, sights and blazer packages. While taking plenty of knocks – and knockouts – during its improvement, the T-55 proved itself as a cheap and mechanically simple and robust asset for armies around the globe, seeing service in around
70 countries. Simple to operate compared with Western tanks, it also offered excellent mobility due to a relatively low combat weight of 40 tons, wide tracks (giving lower ground pressure and thus good mobility on soft ground), a reliable good
cold-weather start-up system, and a snorkel for river crossings. After the British withdrew, they left behind equipment, including some such as the Bren Gun Carrier, a common name describing a family of light-armoured tracked vehicles built by Vickers-Armstrong which was utilized by the Israelis.
The Bren Gun Carrier were usually used for transporting personnel and equipment, mostly support weapons, or as machine gun platforms and is the most-produced armored fighting vehicle in history. the Soviet challenge did not go unanswered.
The appearance of the U.S. M48 Patton III and the British Centurion battle tank was followed in 1959 by the debut of the U.S. M60 main battle tank. The Mk.10 modification of the Centurion also had Soviet
tank builders working overtime to match its improved specifications. On the morning of 1 November, Israeli and French aircraft launched attacks on the Egyptian troops at Umm Qataf and the 37th Armored Brigade came in and joined the 10th Brigade to assault Umm Qataf, and the Egyptian commander ordered a general retreat from the “Hedgehog” on the evening of 1 November.
Syrian forces suffered heavy losses as Israeli tanks and infantry fought desperately to buy time for reserve forces to reach the front lines, and conducted stopgap blocking actions whenever the Syrians were on the verge of breaking through.
However, the Syrians pressed the attack in spite of their losses, and the vastly outnumbered defenders lost a number of tanks.[50] Whenever Syrian tanks penetrated the Israeli lines, Israeli gunners would immediately rotate their turrets and destroy them before turning their attention back to the oncoming forces.
Israel Tal, who was serving as a brigade commander after the Suez Crisis, restarted plans to produce an Israeli-made tank, drawing on lessons from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israeli forces were outnumbered by those of the Middle East’s Arab nations. [58]
This article deals with the history and development of tanks of the Israeli Army, from their first use after World War II in the establishment of the State of Israel after the end of the British Mandate, and into the Cold War and modern era.
Though the Sho’t tank was not commonly perceived as a principal battle tank during the Six Day War (1967), nor the Yom Kippur war (1973); it was in fact considered the Israeli Army’s most effective tank.
This Israeli version of the Centurion earned its legendary status during the Battle of “The Valley of Tears” on the Golan Heights in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Less than 100 Centurion tanks of the 7th Armored Brigade defeated the advance of some 500 Syrian T-55s and T-62s.
Fighting the Syrian army on the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War, two damaged Centurion/Sho’t tanks engaged approximately 150 Syrian T-55/T-62 tanks. In the course of the following 30-hour tank battle, the two tanks knocked out over 60 tanks.[62]
The destruction of this entire armored division forced the Syrian army to halt their advance. In 1965, Israel’s military establishment began research and development on a domestically produced tank, the “Sabra” [56] (not to be confused with the later model of the same name which is now in service, see: Sabra tank).
Initially, Britain and Israel collaborated to adapt the United Kingdom’s Chieftain tank that had entered British Army service in 1966.[57] However, in 1969, Britain decided not to sell the tank to Israel for political reasons.[58] Overall,
Israel lost 122 tanks of all types on the Egyptian front, while Egypt lost more than 820 of its 935 tanks and self-propelled guns, destroyed and captured, including 82 T-55s. On the Golan Heights, Syria lost 1,116 tanks, including 627
T-54s and T-55s, while Israel lost 250 Centurions and U.S.-built Shermans. The Soviets also extensively used the T-55 in the 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan, since the most modern tanks available went to the Western Group of Forces, based in Europe.
Meanwhile, army formations on the southern border of the USSR were equipped with already obsolete T-55 and T-62 models. In Afghanistan, these were used in small units to beef up motorized infantry and airborne assault battalions, as well as to secure lines
of communication in key areas, functioning as long-range, maneuverable firepower. As well as in the Middle East, the battlefield stalwart saw action in such far-flung theaters as Angola, Vietnam, the Indo-Pakistan wars, the Balkans, and more
recently in Libya. And it’s still fighting. In July, 2014, a T-54 from a museum in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk was reportedly commissioned into the rebel forces. Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast.
In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami. Anticipating a swift Israeli armored counterattack by three armored divisions,[44] the Egyptians had armed their assault force with large numbers of man-portable anti-tank weapons—rocket-propelled grenades and the less numerous but more advanced Sagger guided missiles, which proved devastating to the first Israeli armored counterattacks.
Each of the five infantry divisions that was to cross the canal had been equipped with RPG-7 rockets and RPG-43 grenades, and reinforced with an anti-tank guided missile battalion.
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Emma Nehls is a military writer and historian with a passion for exploring the intricacies of warfare and the human experience within the military. With extensive knowledge and a deep understanding of military strategy, tactics, and historical contexts, Nehls brings a unique perspective to his writings.
