Teletanks were a series of experimental wireless remotely controlled unmanned

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; ...

s produced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and early 1940s so as to reduce combat risk to soldiers. A teletank is controlled by radio from a control tank at a distance of , the two constituting a ''telemechanical group''. While never in common use, the teletanks were used by the Soviet

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in the

Winter War The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peac ...

against Finland, with at least two teletank battalions at the beginning of the Eastern Front campaign in the Second World War.

Design

Teletanks were equipped with DT machine guns,

flamethrower A flamethrower is a ranged incendiary device designed to project a controllable jet of fire. First deployed by the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century AD, flamethrowers saw use in modern times during World War I, and more widely in World W ...

s, smoke canisters, and sometimes a special 200–700 kg time bomb in an armoured box, dropped by the tank near the enemy's fortifications and used to destroy bunkers up to four levels below ground. Teletanks were also designed to be capable of using

chemical weapon A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as ...

s, although they were not used in combat. Each teletank, depending on model, was able to recognize sixteen to twenty-four different commands sent via radio on two possible frequencies to avoid interference and jamming. Teletanks were built based on T-18,

T-26 The T-26 tank was a Soviet light tank used during many conflicts of the Interwar period and in World War II. It was a development of the British Vickers 6-Ton tank and was one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s until its light ...

, T-38, BT-5 and BT-7 light tanks. Standard tactics were for the TU control tank (with radio transmitter and operator) to stay back as far as practicable while the teletank (TT) approached the enemy. The control tank would provide fire support as well as protection for the radio control operator. If the enemy was successful at seizing the teletank, the control tank crew was instructed to destroy it with its main gun. When not in combat the teletank was driven manually. In addition to teletanks, there were also remotely controlled telecutters and teleplanes in the

.http://pvo.guns.ru/book/vniirt/index.htm#_Toc122708803 (Google cache

Short essays on history of VNIIRT: development of telemechanical cutters (Russian)

References

External links

What is teletank?

All about teletank

First Soviet tanks

70 years jubilee of Ulianovsk Higher Engineering School
{{Interwar tanks, style= wide Light tanks of the Soviet Union Interwar tanks of the Soviet Union World War II tanks of the Soviet Union Robots of the Soviet Union Russian inventions Soviet inventions Soviet chemical weapons program Chemical weapon delivery systems World War II light tanks Light tanks of the interwar period Unmanned ground combat vehicles 1930s robots Tracked robots Tracked military vehicles History of the tank Military vehicles introduced in the 1930s

Design

See also

References

External links