That’s not what they were called, but I suspect we’re never going to get to the actual and correct designation, since I can’t find information online about them even with that … so with all the effort Lee put in, I suppose I’ll give this one to him
These are Leopard 1-V2 tanks. The plan was to upgrade all the 460-odd 1-V tanks — as Jon says, V for
Verbeterd, “Improved”, but crews instead expanded the abbreviation to
Verpest (“Ruined”) or
Verprutst (“Botched”) due to all kinds of small problems — to Leopard 1 A5 standard. The tanks in the photo have the A5 turret, with the big rangefinder housing on the front turret roof and no “ears” for the old stereoscopic one. However, they also have the hullside stowage boxes that mark them as Dutch tanks. Unfortunately the Dutch smoke grenade launchers aren’t on the turret, which would have made it more obvious.
Anyway, by the time two tanks had been upgraded, the Cold War had ended and the
CFE arms limitations agreement meant the Netherlands donated 170 tanks to Greece, to replace even more obsolescent ones. The Minister of Defense at the time then basically said, “Oh, and you can have those 1-V2 tanks as well, for free.”
As a result, photos of these tanks are pretty rare, and information very difficult to come by. I got the photo (and the above) from a very good book about the Leopard 1 in Dutch service published about ten years ago by the Netherlands Institute for Military History.