part of the Red Army's armoured forces in autumn 1941 (many tanks arrived from inner military districts – Central Asia, Ural, Siberia, partially from the Far East). Tank units of the Western Front were equipped with 298 T-26 tanks on 1 October 1941, equivalent to 62% of total tank forces. However, many old T-26 tanks received by tank brigades from repair workshops were in poor technical condition and as the result there were only 50 T-26 tanks (14 of them under repair) available during the German advance in the Battle of Moscow. T-26 tanks participated in the Liberation of Rostov in December 1941 also. T-26 tanks participated in combat at the Leningrad Front in 1941. For example, the 86th Separate Tank Battalion, equipped with the T-26, supported attacks of Soviet infantry from Kolpino towards Krasny Bor and Tosno on 20–26 December 1941. One case of a T-26 in action there is well documented: during six days of continuous attacks and counterattacks, platoon commander Third Lieutenant M.I. Yakovlev's T-26 destroyed two pillboxes, three anti-tank guns, four machine-gun nests, three mortars and an ammunition depot in Krasny Bor, in addition to killing about 200 enemy soldiers. Yakovlev's T-26 was penetrated by nine shells, but was never taken out of action. 3rd Lt. Yakovlev received the Hero of the Soviet Union award. T-26 tanks continued to be used in combat throughout the Soviet-German front from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea (Battle of the Crimea) in 1942, but in steadily decreasing numbers as each T-26 tank that was destroyed or lost to technical problems was being replaced by a T-34. During the Second Battle of Kharkov, some tank units of the 22nd Tank Corps of the Southwestern Front were equipped with the T-26 (for example, the 13th Tank Brigade had six T-26 tanks on 9 May 1942). On 13 May 1942, German forces counterattacked the flank of the Soviet 38th Army, then on the offensive. Every available tank unit engaged the German battle group consisted from about 130 tanks of the 3rd and the 23rd Panzer Divisions. Three Soviet tank brigades lost all of their tanks, but inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. The last major operations of the German-Soviet War which involved substantial numbers of T-26 tanks were the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of the Caucasus in 1942. Though the T-26 saw no active action on the main Soviet-German