This is a variation of another post I had made, The Vickers Mark E - An early Finnish light tank for BR1 , a modification of the vehicle in this post that shares a lot text, but is different.
The Vickers Mark E light tank was developed in 1928 in Britain designed to be used for them, it wasn’t really adopted besides as an artillery tractor. It did however, see massive exports to countries all over the world, and some of these countries include Russia (became the T26), Poland (became the 7TP), Bulgaria, the ROC, and the subject of this post, Finland.
The Finns at the start of the 1930s had only 35 tanks in total, with those being 34 aging Renault FTs and 1 Saint-Chamond M1921, which would be insufficient for any conflics in the future. As a result, Finland decided to outsource their tanks and turn to the UK, which after trials with 3 models of light tank, the Vickers Mark E was decided to be purchased. 32 were ordered in total, but interestingly, without any armament, optics, or radios. This was done to save money on the tanks, and more local equipment was used once the tanks arrived. The main gun was the 37mm Bofors Psv.K/36 cannon (see anti-tank shell stats in the spoiler below), an 8mm Ksp m/36 machine gun, which was a liscenced Swedish copy of the Vickers machine gun, an most interestingly, instead of a hull machine gun like other tanks, it was decided to use a modified Suomi KP/31 sub-machine gun as a mounted weapon in the hull, with the stock cut off and an optial sight used. The armor was similarly as thin as T26s at 17/10/17 and 10/13/10 millimeters thick armor on the turret and hull. These tanks would continue to see use up until the 1950s, and saw action in both the Winter and Continuation Wars, although different.
After the Winter War had ended, Finland ended up with a large number of captured T26s, but most weren’t in servicable conditions and were used for spare parts, but also used to retrofit the Mark E with a new armament. The original 37mm cannon was beggining to become less effective, and due to the availability of Russian weapons and ammunition, the mantlet of the T26, which has the 45mm 20-K cannon and 7.62mm DT machine gun, was removed from the original turrets and installed in the Vickers Mark E turrets. This modification, dubbed the T-26 “Englantilainen” (Translates to ‘English’) made the tank look very similar to the original T26, however there are a few visual differences. One of the largest is the sub-machine gun port on the left side of the hull where the T26 has a light in that area, and the turret on the Mark E is mounted more to the right, while the T26 is more to the left. The turret is also of a slightly different shape and general hull features, if you compare the two closely.
The Russian T26 versus the Finnish T26 Englantilainen as in War Thunder
- Yes
- No
- TT
- Event (with squad)
- Event (without squad)
- Premium