Product Details
The T-26 tank was a Soviet light infantry tank used during many conflicts of the 1930s as well as during World War II. It was a development of the British Vickers 6-Ton tank and is widely considered one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s until its light armor became vulnerable to newer anti-tank guns.
It was produced in greater numbers than any other tank of the period, with more than 11,000 manufactured.
The T-26 together with the BT was the main tank of the Red Army's armored forces during the interwar period. Though nearly obsolete by the beginning of World War II, the T-26 was the most important tank of the Spanish Civil War and played a significant role during the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 as well as in the Winter War in 1939–40. The T-26 was the most numerous tank in the Red Army's armored force during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The T-26 participated in combats with the Germans and their allies during the Battle of Moscow in winter 1941/1942, the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of the Caucasus in 1942–1943; some tank units of the Leningrad Front used their T-26s until 1944. The Soviet T-26 light tanks last saw use in August 1945, during the defeat of the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
The T-26 was exported and used extensively in the armies of Spain, China and Turkey. In addition, captured T-26 light tanks were used by the Finnish, German, Romanian and Hungarian armies.
The T-26 was reliable and simple to maintain, and its design was continually modernised between 1931 and 1941. However, no new models of the T-26 were developed after 1940.
T-26 model 1938: new conical turret, small changes in hull parts, increased volume of fuel tanks. Tank gun mod. 1937 and mod. 1938 were equipped with an electric breechblock and a vertically stabilized TOP-1 telescopic sight (or a TOS telescopic sight on the 1938 model).