I suppose someone knows what's going on
now we're going to look at the t26 now the t26 is a Russian tank this one
actually came to us from Finland and I'll tell you about that a bit later but
to begin with the t26 and all of its sort of family if you like emanate from
the British six Tonner the vickers-armstrong Mark E and originally
the Soviets in about 1930 tried to build their own version of this and failed and
their authorities told them to that they get in the British tank and pay
royalties on it and build on that and they built actually some 5000 of these
which is quite remarkable they built more all together if you count
all the other turrets but of the one we're looking at the 1933 model they
built about 5000 of them which is typical of the Russians to build them in
huge numbers but that's how this tank looks on the outside from the turret
downwards at least from there downwards it looks like a six Tonner it's got the
same sort of four-cylinder air-cooled engine driving into a five-speed
transmission the front front drive sprockets and a typical
vickers-armstrongs suspension but the real secret of the t26 is what goes on
above that level they put in a new turret and they added a 45 millimeter
gun which gave it a much more powerful anti-tank potential than anything that
Vickers had produced and it was actually quite a good tank in its day with plenty
of them all too far as firings concerned the only problem they had and they
didn't really find this out until the fighting in Manchuria was that the armor
was a bit thin it was the same with their high speed their BT tanks the
armor was a bit thin by sort of other standards and they were tanks from being
penetrated so what we're looking at now is a tank that actually fought in the
Russo Finnish war of 1940 and it was captured by the Finns it is
said now I mean the number of excuses have been offered about the the freezing
weather and the fact that it ruined a lot of the fuel the Russians used but
the main problem seems to have been the lack of leadership from their officers
they'd lost so many in Stalin's purges that the men who took over weren't so
efficient and the whole lot there was no reason otherwise for the Finns to wipe
them out but a large number of these were taken into finished service
afterwards after being captured and after a while they they got a bit long
in the tooth and they stripped them of their internal fittings their engines
transmissions and that sort of thing and dug them in on their defensive positions
and would just the turret showing and in that condition they lasted for years
well of course they do at least last in that state and it meant that when they
dug them up the Finns have quite a number of t26 tanks as there and for a
pre-war Russian tank that's quite remarkable and that's how we got it when
it arrived here it was in a terrible state the armor was all broken and
collapsing but it's been restored quite well externally and it really looks the
part now but this particular tank was used in a movie in Finland during the
the the filming they had to do a bit where they set it on fire
so they set it to light and everyone stood back and looked around and they
really looked good but it meant that by the time we got the tank not only was a
lot of the armor plate damaged there were signs of scorching and this sort of
thing all over it and we had to do quite a lot of work to get it back into a
reasonable condition but at least we've now got a t26
and this is the model 1933 which we can show people it really is an effective
little tank in its days much better than the tank from which it was developed
which is quite remarkable very efficient little tank
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