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Tanks

Northern Fronts contains a wide variety of accurate WW2 tank designs. These are often full families of one tank design.

Vickers 6-ton / T-26

Vickers 6-ton

The British Vickers 6-ton design was videly exported tank design, which saw service in many countries, including Poland, China, Bulgaria and Finland. For the Finnish Army these tanks were exported without weapons in 1936. Equipping of these vehicles was still underway when the Winter War broke out, and only one tank company could be equipped with haste and saw combat in the disastrous battle at Honkaniemi, resulting in destruction of 6 Finnish tanks.

The weaponry of the tank was quite crude. Main gun attached was the Swedish made 37mm Bofors (Finnish designation 37 Psv.K/36) along with a coax Maxim M/09/31 maxinehun. The sights were simplistic crosshair, which caused issues accuracy on longer ranges. The coax-machinegun was also cramped and could not be reloaded quickly, since it required deattaching and turning the machinegun. The hull also had a tank version of the renowned Suomi KP31 as secondary automatic weapon.

T-26E

The Soviet military had also licensed the Vickers 6-ton design, which resulted in improved tank known as the T-26. Later model 1933 had superior firepower to the Finnish desings with its 45mm main gun and coaxical DT-machinegun. The remaining Finnish Vickers tanks were upgraded to “T-26E”-status with fitted soviet 45mm guns and DT mounts.

T-26 Obr. 1931 (Finnish designation T-26A)

The earliest license build Soviet T-26 tank was fitted only with two separate DT equipped MG-turrets and acted as a “tankette”-design for infantry support. As such these tanks fell to disuse later down the war due the limited capability against enemy armor. This T-26 along with the other vehicles of the type were nicknamed “Vickers” or “Viku” by Finnish tankers.