Light The ultralight tank was highly regarded between the two world wars because it was easy to mass-produce, low cost, and could help the troops quickly increase their level of mechanization, and the British designed and built the Carden in the 20s of the last century. The Leuyd light tank is definitely the most influential light tank design, and many countries have borrowed it, including the Soviet T-27 light tank.
At the end of the 20s of the last century, the USSR studied the development of the future armor **, in which the development and manufacture of small reconnaissance tanks were proposed, and Soviet designers successively proposed a number of designs, but each of them had some flaws, so the idea of buying a carden. The idea of a Lloyd light tank production license, so in 1930 26 of these tanks were purchased for testing, the Soviet army named it 25-V, the Soviet designers thought that the 25-V was still not satisfactory, so they improved it, which was the T-27 that began to be mass-produced in 1931.
The T-27 is a "little guy", and the combat weight of the T-27A type is only about 27 tons, the length of the car 26 meters, width 183 meters, it has a fixed compartment with the driver on the left, the commander and machine gunner on the right, the whole vehicle is protected by riveted armor with a thickness of 6 10 mm. Because the tanks were so small, even with a crew of only 2 people was quite crowded, and the army had to select small armored men.
T-27 installation of a 40 horsepower GAZ-AA 4-cylinder gasoline engine, the walking part of the narrow track, the size of the front driving wheels is larger, each side of the installation of 3 pairs of small diameter load wheels, the vehicle unit power is higher, the maximum speed of 42 kilometers per hour, the maximum travel of about 120 kilometers. However, the small body and narrow tracks greatly limit the off-road performance, and it is difficult to cope with swamps and snow.
The ** of the T-27 light tank had only one DT 7The 62mm machine gun with 2,500 rounds of ammunition on board is enough for an armored vehicle of less than 3 tons, but it can only fire at a certain angle to the front of the hull, limiting its firepower.
The USSR mass-produced the T-27 in the early 30s with a total production of 2540 units, including some upgraded models, such as the Spitfire developed in 1932, which built 164 units;In 1933 there will be a 76The 2-mm gun mounted on the T-27 hull made a light self-propelled gun, only a few prototypes were built;Soviet designers also tried to combine 37-mm guns, 45-mm anti-tank guns, 76.The 2-mm recoilless gun was mounted on the T-27 and made into a tank destroyer or assault gun.
Since 1932, the T-27 has become one of the main armor of the Soviet army before World War II, they were deployed to Eastern Europe, the Far East, participated in military operations against Poland and Finland, the Soviet army still had about 1,100 T-27s in its hands at the beginning of 1941, they were all relegated to the second line, used for military training, supply transportation or towing small artillery, most of these tanks were destroyed in the war.