According to historical researches,[3] this feature may have been required by Stalin for planned European warfare within a strategy similar to blitzkrieg.

However, Soviet tank forces soon found the convertible option of little practical use; in a country with few paved roads, it consumed space and added needless complexity and weight.

At least two of Christie's M1931 tanks (without turrets) were later purchased in the United States and sent to the Soviet Union under false documentation, in which they were described as "agricultural tractors".

Based both on them and on other plans obtained earlier, three unarmed BT-2 prototypes were completed in October 1931 and mass production began in 1932.

[citation needed] During the Battles of Khalkhin Gol (also known as the Nomonhan Incident), which lasted from May to September in 1939, BT tanks were easily attacked by Japanese "close quarter" teams[16] (tank killer squads)[17] which were – in lieu of anti-tank weapons – armed with petrol (gasoline) bottles[18] (later called "Molotov cocktails").

The BT-5s and BT-7s, operating in temperatures greater than 100 °F (38 °C) on the Mongolian plains, easily caught fire when a Molotov cocktail ignited their gasoline engines.

[24] The other side consisted of the Khalkhin Gol veterans led by Generals Zhukov and Grigory Kravchenko of the Soviet Air Force.

[25] The lessons of Russia's "first real war on a massive scale using tanks, artillery, and airplanes" at Khalkhin Gol went unheeded.

[26][27] During the Winter War against Finland in 1939–1940, BT-2, BT-5 and BT-7 tanks had less success against Finnish Army forces than they had against the Japanese at Khalkin Gol.

The Red Army planned to replace the BT tank series with the T-34 and had just begun doing so when Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began on 22 June 1941.

[citation needed] During the final weeks of World War II, a significant number of BT-7 tanks took part in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, seeing combat against Japanese occupation forces in Northeast China.

In the Kiev manoeuvres of 1936, foreign military observers were shown hundreds of BT tanks roll by a reviewing stand.