The T-27 was a

tankette A tankette is a tracked armoured fighting vehicle that resembles a small tank, roughly the size of a car. It is mainly intended for light infantry support and scouting.

produced in the 1930s by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. It was based on the design of the Carden Loyd tankette, bought under license from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

in 1930.

Design

The Soviets were not fully satisfied with the Carden Loyd design and made a number of changes before putting it into mass production under the designation of T-27. Compared with the British original, the hull was larger, the running gear was improved and the weapon mount was modified to take a Soviet 7.62 mm DT machine gun. A number of other changes were made by Chief Engineer N. Kozyrev and Lead Engineer K. Sirken to improve the tankette's ability to cope with the Russian climate and terrain. It lacked any communication devices, as communication between vehicles was intended to be carried out using signal flags.

Service

The tankette was accepted into service on February 13, 1931. It was manufactured in two factories simultaneously, the Bolshevik factory in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

and what would later become the

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factory in Nizhni Novgorod. The principal use of the T-27 during its service life was as a reconnaissance vehicle. Initially, 65 tankette battalions were formed by the

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 ...

, with each having about 50 tankettes. This figure was later reduced to 23 per battalion. The tankette was also intended to be air-mobile. In 1935, the Soviets experimented with transporting T-27s by air, by suspending them under the fuselages of

Tupolev TB-3 The Tupolev TB-3, OKB designation ANT-6, was a monoplane heavy bomber deployed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1930s and used during the early years of World War II. It was one of the world's first cantilever wing four-engine heavy bombers. Des ...

bombers. The T-27 saw active service in the Soviet republics of

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

during the 1930s, where the tankettes were used in campaigns against basmachis. However, they fairly quickly became obsolete due to the introduction of more advanced tanks. The Red Army found them reliable and simple to operate, but the T-27 coped poorly with swampy and snowy terrain due to the narrowness of its tracks. It was also difficult to find crews, as the tankettes were so small that it was difficult to find crews of sufficiently diminutive stature. By the end of the 1930s the T-27 was relegated primarily to training use, with some being used as tractors to tow field guns. Ten T-27s were captured by Hungarian forces during the fighting on the Eastern Front. Five T-27s were ordered by

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

in 1935, alongside 60 T-26s. Two T-27 tankettes were captured by Romanian forces as of 1 November 1942.Mark Axworthy, Cornel I. Scafeș, Cristian Crăciunoiu, ''Third Axis, Fourth Ally: Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1941-1945'', p. 220

Variants

Some experiments were also made to equip T-27s with more advanced weapons, such as

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 and recoilless guns, but these did not prove successful. A few T-27s were pressurized and provided with special equipment to enable them to cross rivers underwater. It was also the first Soviet tracked vehicle transported by plane (a single tankette could be mounted below the fuselage of the TB-3 bomber).

References

Sources

External links

{{WWIISovietAFVs Reconnaissance vehicles Tankettes of the interwar period World War II armoured fighting vehicles of the Soviet Union Interwar tanks of the Soviet Union Military vehicles introduced in the 1930s