We all know what a classic tank looks like: a tracked armored hull, a rotating turret mounted on it, armed with either a cannon or a howitzer and one or more machine guns. But there were other, not similar and not falling under this definition, tanks invented by both foreign and ours, Russian engineers and designers. When looking at such a tank, it is not immediately clear for what purposes and for what combat missions such a machine was created.
In the 30s of the twentieth century in the USSR, in addition to work on the development, creation of new types of machines, research was also carried out in the field of installation on existing serial samples of a wide variety of weapons, from flamethrowers and mortars to heavy 122-mm mortars. The idea of equipping tanks not only with cannon or machine-gun armament, but also with various other types of weapons, interested designers from the very beginning of the appearance of tanks as combat vehicles. Experiments on installing mortars on a tank were carried out during the First World War in all developed countries. One of the first examples of this type of vehicles can be considered an experienced British heavy tank Mk IV "Tadpole", on which, on a specially created site in the rear of the hull, in 1917
was installed 87, 2-mm Stokes mortar. As you know, almost half of the casualties in manpower during the war were losses from mortar fire. This was taken into account by all military engineers and designers who created and improved this type of weapon. In this article, we will consider one of such projects, namely the MXT-1 tank - a chemical mortar tank, or a self-propelled mortar. The only prototype of this tank was built on the basis of the T-26 light two-turret tank of the 1931 model already mastered and mass-produced by the Soviet industry. Which, in turn, was created on the basis of the purchased British tank "Vickers" six-ton. For its time, it was a good machine with acceptable combat and running characteristics, but did not have cannon armament. However, with the high rates of development of anti-tank artillery by the end of the 30s, the T-26 tank was hopelessly outdated, the troops understood this, and military engineers often made attempts to find this tank more
rational use.
The mortar chemical tank was designed and created by the engineer of the 6th mechanized brigade Ptitsyn (unfortunately, his name was not preserved in the archives) with the support of the brigade commander Gennady Ivanovich Brynkov, the chief of the chemical troops of the Trans-Baikal Military District. The serial T-26 tank in the repair shops of the brigade underwent re-equipment and was re-equipped, the left machine-gun turret was removed from it, the turret platform was changed and modified so that a mortar could be installed inside the hull, the chassis of the tank and the right turret were left unchanged. The armament of the tank was a XM-107 mortar of the 1931 model (an upgraded MC-107 mortar or a Stokes mortar), some sources mention a 107-mm XM-4 mortar, also a 1931 model (XM-chemical mortar), designed according to the scheme of an imaginary triangle (two links, three hinges), firing eight-point mines weighing from 6.5 kg to 7.2 kg at a distance of more than 2000 meters, filled with chemical warfare agents, smoke or conventional high-explosive. In the stowed position, the mortar compartment of the car was covered with shields made of multilayer aviation plywood. The armament of the right turret remained the same, the "native" 7, 62-mm DT-29 tank machine gun in a ball bearing, which made it possible to reliably protect the tank in the event of an attack by enemy infantry. The crew consisted of three people, a commander (aka a tower gunner), a driver and a mortarman. In fact, it was a self-propelled mortar, mobile and well protected. In July 1935, a prototype was tested, the shooting was carried out both on the move and at stops, the car showed good results and was the best suited to the conduct of hostilities in the mountains and in wooded areas. However, the proposal to accept the vehicle into service and launch it into serial production was not considered, the tank remained in the history of tank building only as a prototype. Information about the further fate of this unusual project has not survived, just as the prototype of this tank itself has not survived.
