"Captured T-26 Tanks" Topic

"Year 1930 Soviet Union bought 15 Vickers Type E Alt A (aka Vickers 6 ton tank Alt A) tanks from British company Vickers Armstrong Ltd. These Vickers tanks proved successful in tests, so the Soviets acquired a manufacturing license for them. The Soviet license manufactured version was named as T-26 and its first version (model 1931) was designed by design teams lead by G. Barykov and S. Ginzberg. While T-26 model 1931 was very similar to Vickers Type E Alt A, the two tanks had also notable differences. While the British tank for obvious reason had been build in inch-pattern, the Soviet version for equally obvious reason was metric-pattern. Hence the spare parts or even bolts used in the two tank designs were not usually interchangeable. However likely the largest visible differences between the two are in turret designs and armament. T-26 model 1931 started with two small machinegun turrets as the Vickers design, to which it was based, but starting from T-26 model 1933 these were replaced with one larger turret that contained 45-mm tank gun and 1 – 3 7.62-mm DT machineguns. Other notable practical mechanical differences can be found in engines, since while their GAZ T-26 engine was a near copy of Armstrong-Siddeley Puma, it wasn't an exact copy. The differences showed for example with lubrication of valves, for which Puma engine had a pressure-lubrication, but GAZ T-26 required them be manually lubricated every now and then. T-26 was adopted among weaponry of Soviet Red Army in February of 1931, before the mass-production had even started. Red Army designated T-26 tanks as infantry support tanks. They were manufactured in several factories, first of which was Bolshevik in Leningrad, which started its manufacturing in autumn of 1931. Later the part the of this factory manufacturing T-26 tanks was separated as a factory on its own and named as Factory of K.E. Voroshilov number 174. This factory was the manufacturer of T-26 and manufactured over 10,000 of these tanks in 1931 – 1941. The other factory that manufactured T-26 tank was STZ (Stalingrad Tractor Factory), which manufactured them 1933 – 1940. Soviet T-26 tanks are usually divided into three main variants:…"
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Also….

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Amicalement
Armand

And from the Light Tanks category of this most excellent Finnish Tank Site you can get a metric s**tload of T-26 pics in Finnish service.

andreaslarka.net

Thanks!

Amicalement
Armand