I'll just put my spoon on about some details.
On seeing that first T-18 photo I immediately remembered the ubiquitous (can be found almost everywhere) french Renault FT-17 WWI tank.
The picture does not show the hull rears very clearly but there should be a structure looking like a sled welded on them hull rears (although I've seen pictures of FT-17s without the "sled").
As far as I think I know the "sled" served the purpose of lengthening the tank to enable it to ford wider trenches.
click picture to enlarge
Drawing from a Matchbox plastic kit box depicting the Char B1 bis and the Renault FT-17 showing the "sled" a bit more clearly.
As to the 3rd photo I thought those were not Joseph Stalins (JS) but rather Kliment Voroshilovs (KV), but after some digging up through wikipedia found out that although there is some resemblance between KV1s and JS1s those are clearly JS1s in the picture and my first impression was wrong.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iosef_Stalin_tanken.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kliment_Voroshilov_tankJust take a look also at that link named "A-40 flying tank at the bottom of any of those 2 pages.
It's delicious...
The first two armoured vehicles on the first museum photo are really german models.
The first one is a Sturmgeschütz assault gun (no revolving turret).
The second one is a Panzer IV tank.
They may have been either furnished by Germany (I have no actual knowledge of that, just supposing) while the two countries fought side by side or seized by Finland when in 1944 it changed sides (like other countries did although Finland never sought more than recovering what was lost at the Winter War unlike other countries that attacked the Soviet Union in 1941).
The next tanks are a bit lost to distance but do seem Soviet types.
In first plan from the armoured train it seems a german PAK 40 anti tank gun.
Yes, the swastika was used by Finland’s armed forces as has been used by many since thousands of years (not kidding I do mean thousands).
Incidentally there was a french WWI fighter squadron who painted swastikas to the side of their airplanes (as headgear decoration to their insignia depicting the head of an American Indian chief).
It was the Lafayette Squadron bearing number 124 that incorporated american volunteers prior to the USA's 1917 entry on the war.
Although Ricardus is probably more learned on Russian matters and would probably know better than me I would say that the major weaknesses of the soviet army at the beggining of the war had more to do with organization, training, strategies and tactics, leadership capability and political interference on military matters than with plain bad equipment.
Although it is true that huge quantities of soviet equipment were obsolescing (getting too old) by June 1941, it is also true that, particularly in what concerns tanks, early versions of the T-34 and the KV1 tanks were already in production and their first employment was deliberately delayed trying to ensure a capitalisation on the surprise effect an effective new weapon used in great numbers can cause on the enemy.
An example of good sense that was frequently not followed by german arms as shown by the battle testing of only 9 Tiger tanks at the end of 1942 near Leningrad or of about 200 (if I remember the number well) unreliable Panther tanks at kursk (with about half breaking down when taken from the railway lines to the front lines).
i love tanks and anything about tanks.
