The Tank Museum information board reads as follows:
Often known as the Jagd (or hunting) Chieftain this strange design was the
British element in an Anglo-German
project to produce a new Main Battle Tank in 1972. The Jagd prefix was applied
to some German self-propelled
guns during the Second World War and you can see examples of the JagdPanther
and JagdTiger on display inside
the Museum. One of the problems that faced NATO tank designers during the Cold
War was that of driving
backwards, which is never an easy thing for a tank to do. The theory was that,
as the Soviet invaders advanced,
since they were obviously regarded as the aggressors, the Allies would fall
back while inflicting as many casualties
as possible so the idea behind the JagdChieftain was to create a machine with
a low profile that could travel just
as easily in both directions.
Underneath the superstructure is a conventional Chieftain chassis although,
in order to conform with British and
German requirements it could be fitted with the British Leyland L60 engine
or the ten cylinder MTU multi-fuel
power pack preferred by the Federal German Army of that time. The superstructure,
which housed a crew of three,
was fabricated from aluminium although had the tank entered production it seems
probable that the new
Chobham armour would also have been applied. The main armament was intended
to be the British 120mm L11
rifled gun although for trial purposes only a dummy tube was installed. The
gun would have been capable of
elevation and depression in the normal way but in order to traverse the gun
left or right the tank itself had to
swing on its tracks. The crew of three comprised a commander, driver and loader,
all of whom had their own
steering controls. Either the commander or driver could fire the gun while
the loader, who sat facing backwards,
could drive the vehicle in reverse.
The Concept Test Rig was assembled by the Fighting Vehicle Research & Development
Establishment at Chertsey
but trials at Woolwich revealed that accurate gun laying, even using the sophisticated
hydraulic system installed
for the purpose, was not possible so the project was dropped and the vehicle
came here in 1990.