Rare Soviet SU-T-26 Improvised Self-Propelled Gun Defends Besieged Leningrad, 1941

June 22, 2025 - Reading time: 4 minutes

Military inspector V.O. Shpakovsky examines a rare 76mm SU-T-26 self-propelled gun during its final inspection at the Kirov Plant in besieged Leningrad.

Leningrad, Autumn 1941.
When the siege began, the factories of Leningrad didn’t just stop — they transformed.
One result of that transformation was this: the SU-T-26, a rare and improvised Soviet self-propelled gun, born from necessity and assembled with urgency.

What you're seeing is a T-26 light tank chassis stripped of its turret and re-armed with a 76mm regimental gun M1927 in a fixed, shielded mount. The design wasn’t sleek, and it wasn’t standardized — but it worked. It had firepower, mobility, and most importantly — it existed, when the front was screaming for anything that could shoot.

These improvised SPGs went by many names — SU-T-76, SU-26, T-26-SU — because even their designation wasn't quite settled. Official wartime reports suggest no more than 12 vehicles like this were built with 76mm guns at the Kirov Plant during the Siege of Leningrad. Others had smaller armament — 37mm cannons — but it’s the 76mm version that truly packed a punch for its size.

At the forefront of this photo stands military inspector V.O. Shpakovsky, inspecting one of the machines before it rolled out into battle. These guns saw action in the 124th and 220th Tank Brigades and, remarkably, were in operation up to 1944.

This is wartime improvisation at its finest — a rolling symbol of defiance built under fire, in a city fighting for its survival.

📷 Technical photo data:
📸 Photographer: Alexander Mikhailov
🌐 Source: Vostochnaya Sibirskaya Pravda, No. 259, November 1, 1941
📅 Date: 1941
📍 Location: Leningrad, USSR