A.B. SHIROKORAD

THE GENIUS OF SOVIET ARTILLERY

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF V. GRABIN

UDC 355/359 (092) BBK 63.3 (2) 6-8 Sh64 The series was founded in 1998

Serial design by A. Kudryavtsev

Signed for printing from finished transparencies on 23.04.03. Format 84X108 "/ 32. Typographic paper. High print with FPF. Print condition. Sheet 22.68. Circulation 5000 copies. Order 1261.

Shirokorad A.B. Ш64 The genius of Soviet artillery: Triumph and tragedy of V. Grabin /

A.B. Shirokorad. - M .: OOO "AST Publishing House", 2003. - 429, p .: ill., 24 p. silt - (Military History Library).

ISBN 5-17-019107-3.

Before you is a book dedicated to the life and work of the famous Soviet designer Colonel General of the Technical Troops Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin and the work of the Central Artillery Design Bureau, headed by him from 1943 to 1959.

Grabin created hundreds of unique weapons. The famous ZIS-Z cannon has become the same symbol of victory as the IL-2 attack aircraft and Katyusha. His post-war works are less known, although among them were the most modern models, for example, the 100-mm automatic aviation cannon, the mobile super-powerful S-72 and S-73 guns, the 420-mm recoilless atomic cannon, etc. Most of them, however, were not adopted for service, but their development made a great contribution to the development of domestic artillery.

The book is supplied with rich illustrative material - photographs and drawings - and is intended both for specialists and for a wide range of readers.

UDC 355/359 (092) BBK 63.3 (2) 6-8 Original Russian Text © A.B. Shirokorad, 2002. ISBN 5-17-019107-3 © ACT Publishing House, 2003

Foreword

During the Great Patriotic War, there were more guns designed by Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin on the fronts than guns of other types of Soviet and pre-revolutionary production. German and American designers and military historians unanimously recognize the ZIS-Z as the best divisional gun of the Second World War. By 1941, the 76-mm F-34 tank gun had become the world's strongest tank gun, and it was not without reason that the overwhelming majority of our medium tanks, armored trains and armored boats were armed with it. The 100-mm anti-tank gun BS-3 pierced through the armor of the vaunted German "Tigers" and "Panthers".

By the end of World War II, the forty-five-year-old Grabin became Colonel General, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Hero of Socialist Labor; he also led the most powerful design bureau in the field of artillery weapons.

Stalin addressed him directly, bypassing his assistants and ministers.

Our official historians were simply forced to write about all this, albeit with numerous omissions and errors. But after the victorious May 1945, the strictest taboo was imposed on information about Grabin's further work. What happened? Why, over the next fourteen years, only one S-60 antiaircraft gun from Grabin entered mass production?

In fact, Grabin created a whole arsenal of guns of caliber from 23 to 650 mm, among which were anti-tank, field, self-propelled, tank, naval and aviation systems. Among them, of particular interest is

there are still unmatched weapons of great and special power, some of them could fire nuclear ammunition.

But Grabin's successes, his closeness to Stalin and, to be honest, his quarrelsome and aggressive character created many enemies for him. Among them were practically all the chief designers of the artillery design bureaus, a number of heads of the Ministry of Defense and the Main Artillery Directorate. The main ill-wisher of Grabin was D.F. Ustinov.

In 1946-1953. the adoption of Grabin's guns was actually blocked, and after Stalin's death Ustinov made attempts almost every year to defeat Grabin's design bureau. It was possible to do this only in 1959. The Honored Designer was literally thrown into the street. His guns were melted down, and technical documentation was destroyed or scattered in secret archives.

For twenty years, the author of the book had to collect materials from Grabin's activities bit by bit in various central and departmental archives. The presented book is conceived as a popular essay about Grabin's guns, more precisely, about the masterpieces of his design thought. In addition, a story about an intelligent, restless and sometimes cruel person, about his successes and failures, brilliant foresight and delusions.

The book contains many references to various organizations. In order not to give their full names every time, abbreviations are used, a list of which is given at the end of the book.

In addition, those interested in factual material at the end of the book will find Appendices, which list the technical data of the tools developed by V.G. Grabin, their drawings and diagrams and a chronological list of his works compiled by him.

The youth of the designer

I apologize in advance to the reader that I am writing about the young years of the famous designer and will continue to write concisely: there is almost no documentary information, and the memories of relatives and friends 50 years later, to put it mildly, do not inspire confidence.

Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin was born in Yekaterinodar1 at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, this should be understood in the literal sense: according to the old Russian calendar, he was born on December 28, 1899, and according to the new one, already in the 20th century. - January 9, 1900

His father Gavrila Grabin served in the field artillery and rose to the rank of senior fireworks. He told his son a lot and vividly about the cannons of the 1877 model, and, possibly, already in childhood, Vasily showed an interest in artillery.

The Grabins' family was large by today's standards. At first, three sons were born in a row - Procopius, Dmitry and Vasily, and then four daughters - Varvara, Tatyana, Irina and Anastasia. The father of the family worked at the flour mill, the mother was engaged in the household. Vasily Gavrilovich said that he began his labor activity, grazing geese, and later began to help his father in work at the mill. In 1911 Vasily graduated from a rural primary school. At the age of 14, his father gave him a job in the boiler workshops of the entrepreneur Sushkin.

In 1915, Vasily Grabin entered the Yekaterinodar post office as a clerk. Work did not prevent Vasily from successfully studying in the evenings, and in 1916 he successfully passed the external exams for the four senior grades of the gymnasium and received a certificate of secondary education. After the February Revolution, Vasily successfully passed the exams for the post of a lower postal official.

As V.G. Grabin, for the first time he saw artillery action in March 1920 in Yekaterinodar: “... I, still very young, returning from work, saw a crowd of onlookers on Cathedral Square, and at the walls of the cathedral there were four small cannons that fired at the retreating across the Kuban River to the White Guards. These were three-inch guns - 76-millimeter cannons of the 1902 model ... With great interest I watched the work of the gun crew, which was sending shells somewhere across the city. My father said that the bombardier-gunner fires only at the target that he sees, and if he does not see, then he does not shoot. And these did not see anything, but shot! After each command on

the driver turned the flywheels, sometimes threw his hand back and busily waved it in one direction or the other. The Red Army soldier, standing at the lever, behind the cannon, took hold of it and turned the cannon to where the gunner was pointing. Another Red Army soldier brought shells, on command, quickly threw them into the back of the barrel, and the third, sitting on the right side, closed the lock. The gunner raised his hand and shouted: "The first is ready!" Immediately they heard: “The second is ready”, “The third is ready”, “The fourth is ready”. Only after that did the commander give the command: "Fire ... First!" The gunner pulled the cord - a shot rattled. Behind him - the second, third, fourth ... Watching all this, I was very interested in where the gunner was looking and what he saw.

Tell me, please, - seizing the moment, I turned to one of the military, - how can a bombardier-gunner ...

He corrected me:

Gunner ...

Okay, gunner. How can he shoot if in front of him the houses, which close everything, prevent him from seeing the target?

He does not see the goal. He doesn't need to see her now.

How, then, does he aim the weapon?

Very simple. On the bell tower is the battery commander who sees the target. The bell tower is connected to the battery by a telephone, next to the battery commander is a telephone operator. The commander, who is near the cannons, - the soldier indicated with his hand, - also has a telephone. All commands of the battery commander are transmitted here. The gun servant carries them out. The gunner uses a panorama, sight and guidance mechanisms to direct the gun along the pipe, - the military man pointed to the pipe. “Only then will the cannon send the projectile wherever the battery commander directs it.

Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin with the collar tabs of the Major General of the Technical Troops

Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin was born on December 29, 1899 (January 9, 1900 in a new style) in the village of Staronizhesteblievskaya, Kuban region, now the Krasnoarmeisky district of the Krasnodar Territory. In 1913, after graduating from only three classes of school, Grabin got a job as a sorting operator at the Yekaterinodar post office, and later served as a postman.

In July 1920 Grabin entered the artillery department of the Krasnodar command courses Red Army. During his studies as part of the combined battalion of cadets, he took part in battles against Wrangel.

After completing courses Grabin was sent to continue his education at the Military School of Heavy and Coastal Artillery in Petrograd, which he graduated in 1923. In 1923-1924 he served in the combat units of the Red Army as the commander of the artillery platoon and the chief of communications of the artillery battalion. Since 1924, the commander of the course of the Second Leningrad Artillery School. In 1925 he entered the Dzerzhinsky Military Technical Academy of the Red Army in Petrograd. At this time, such prominent artillery scientists as Gelvikh, Durlyakhov and Rdultovsky taught there.
In 1930 Grabin Graduated with honors from the Academy and was sent as a design engineer to the design bureau of the Krasny Putilovets plant in Leningrad. Since 1931 - a designer at design bureau No. 2 of the All-Union Arsenal-Arsenal Association (VOAO) of the USSR People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry (Moscow). In the same year, KB-2 was merged with KB No. 1 and transformed into KB VOAO. In 1932 V.G. Grabin appointed first deputy chief of GKB-38 (created on the basis of the VOAO design bureau). It was the only design bureau in the USSR that was engaged in the development and refinement of various types of barreled artillery systems. However, it did not last long and at the end of 1933 it was liquidated on the initiative of the chief of the Armament of the Red Army, Tukhachevsky, who preferred the dynamo-reactive artillery systems of the Kurchevsky design.

Late 1933 Grabin was sent to the new artillery plant number 92 ("New Sormovo") in the city of Gorky, where he achieved the creation of a design bureau dealing with cannon artillery. Grabin was appointed its leader. Under the direction of Grabina The design bureau has created dozens of different systems of artillery weapons that are not inferior or superior to foreign models. According to many domestic and foreign historians, the only area of ​​weapons in which the USSR was qualitatively superior to Germany throughout the war was artillery. Along with purely design work, Grabin developed and applied for the first time in the world methods of high-speed integrated design of artillery systems with simultaneous design of the technological process, which made it possible to organize in a short time the mass production of new models of guns for the Red Army. A distinctive feature of the design school Grabina the principles of unification and reduction of the number of parts and assemblies of tools, the use of the principle of equal strength became. The use of these methods made it possible to reduce the design time of guns from 30 to 3 months, significantly reduce the cost of guns, organize mass production at new factories in the shortest possible time (which played an invaluable role in the first period of the Great Patriotic War).

Z and outstanding achievements in the field of creating new types of weapons that increase the defensive power of the Soviet Union, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 28, 1940, Major General of the Technical Troops (military rank awarded on 08/01/1940) Grabin Vasily Gavrilovich awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal (No. 6). The awards were presented on November 12, 1940.

In November 1942, the Central Artillery Design Bureau (TsAKB) was created in Kaliningrad near Moscow (since 1996 - the city of Korolev), better known then by the name of its station on the Northern Railway as Podlipki. Lieutenant-General of Technical Troops was appointed Chief and Chief Designer of TsAKB (rank awarded on February 20, 1942) Grabin... TsAKB was entrusted with the functions of the leading design organization in the artillery industry. Of the 140 thousand field guns that our soldiers fought during the Great Patriotic War, more than 90 thousand were made at the plant, which he led as the chief designer Grabin, and another 30 thousand were made according to projects Grabina at other factories in the country. March 30, 1945 Grabin awarded the military rank of Colonel-General of Technical Troops. "
In 1946, TsAKB was renamed the Central Research Institute of Artillery Weapons (TsNIIAV). V. G. Grabin appointed by its chief and chief designer. In 1955, a fundamentally new main task was set before the institute - the creation of nuclear reactors. V. G. Grabin transferred with demotion to the position of head of department of TsNIIAV. However, he is making tremendous efforts to defend the role and tasks of the institute of artillery weapons, and in March 1956 seeks to recreate it under the name TsNII-58 in the USSR Ministry of Defense Industry. Since 1956 V.G. Grabin- Director and Chief Designer of TsNII-58. During these years, TsNII-58 took part in the development of tactical complexes of the "ground-to-ground" and "ground-to-air" class.
In July 1959, TsNII-58, together with an experimental plant, which employed about five thousand people, including almost one and a half thousand engineers and designers, attached S.P. Korolev to the nearby OKB-1. At the same time, the unique archives of technical documentation and the museum of samples of Soviet and foreign artillery equipment, many of which existed in a single copy, were destroyed. This decision was a direct consequence of NS Khrushchev's line of "missileization" of weapons and caused enormous damage to domestic artillery.
Since 1960 Grabin retired, but not retired - he was appointed head of the department at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, where he taught a course on artillery weapons. There he also created a unique youth design bureau from among the students of the Moscow Higher Technical School and was its chief designer.
Vasily Gavrilovich died on April 18, 1980. Buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

ZIS-3

the best weapon of the second world

During the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army still had such obsolete field guns as arr. 1900/02, 1902/26 and 1902/30. But there were also more modern guns: 76.2-mm divisional gun mod. 1936 (F-22) and 76.2 mm divisional gun mod. 1939 (USV).
The design of a new cannon was started Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin at the end of 1940, after successfully testing a 57-mm anti-tank gun ZIS-2 ... Like most anti-tank guns, it was compact, had a lightweight and durable carriage, which could well be used to create a divisional gun.
At the same time, a technologically advanced barrel with good ballistic characteristics was developed for the 76.2-mm F-22USV divisional guns. So, in principle, the designers only had to put the barrel of the 76.2-mm F-22USV divisional cannon on the carriage of the ZIS-2 gun, providing it with a muzzle brake to reduce the load on the carriage. In parallel with the design of the gun, issues of the technology of its production were resolved, and the manufacturing of many parts by casting, stamping and welding was being worked out. Compared to the USV, labor costs for the manufacture of one such weapon have decreased three times, and the cost of the gun has decreased by more than a third.

The ZIS-3 was a cannon of a modern design for that time. The barrel of the gun is a monoblock, with a breech and a muzzle brake (absorbing about 30% of the recoil energy). The shutter is vertical wedge, semi-automatic. Semi-automatic shutter of mechanical (copy) type. The descent is push-button or lever (on implements of various production series). The barrel resource for the guns of the first series is 5,000 rounds, for most of the guns - 2,000 rounds. When fired, the recoil devices roll back with the barrel; they consist of a hydraulic recoil brake and a hydropneumatic knurler. The rollback is permanent. The lifting mechanism has two sectors. Rotary screw type. The handles of the lifting and turning mechanisms are located to the left of the barrel, which greatly facilitated the gunner's work when firing at moving targets. The balancing mechanism is spring, pulling type, consists of two columns. The combat axis is straight. The gun had suspension, spring springs in the column. Metal wheels, with rubber tires, close to those from the car GAZ-AA(differed in a different shape of the hub). To protect the crew, the gun had a 5 mm thick shield. The gun was equipped with a panoramic sight (guns aimed at anti-tank artillery - PP1-2 or OP2-1 direct fire sights). To move with horse-drawn traction, the ZIS-3 was equipped with a unified front end, model 1942 for regimental and divisional guns.
The prototype ZIS-3 was completed in June, and in July 1941 it passed field tests.

Initially, the prototype of the ZIS-3 carriage had a variable recoil length mechanism. But the tests revealed the poor performance of the recoil devices, and it was decided to make the rollback permanent. But then it turned out that when shooting at an angle of 45, it was necessary to make a ditch between the beds. To solve this problem, the elevation angle was reduced from +45 to +37, and the height of the line of fire was increased by 50 mm.

The work was organized in such a way that the ZIS-3 parts were manufactured in parallel with the USV parts. At the same time, no one, except for a narrow circle of initiates, knew that a new gun had gone into production. The only detail that could arouse suspicion - the muzzle brake - was manufactured in an experimental workshop.

In the battles of 1941, the ZiS-3 showed its advantage over the heavy and inconvenient for the gunner F-22USV. As a result, this allowed V.G. Grabin to present the ZiS-3 to Stalin personally and obtain official permission to manufacture the gun, which by that time was already being produced by the plant and was actively used in the army. At the beginning of February 1942, official tests were carried out, which were rather a formality and lasted only five days. According to their results, the ZiS-3 was put into service on February 12, 1942 with the official name “76-mm divisional gun mod. 1942 g. "
The launch of the ZIS-3 into production made it possible to organize the production of guns by the flow method (for the first time in the world) with a sharp increase in productivity. The Volga Plant on May 9, 1945 reported to the party and the government about the release of the 100,000th ZIS-3 cannon, increasing its production capacity during the war years by almost 20 times.

Due to its high manufacturability, the ZIS-3 became the first artillery gun in the world to be put into line production and assembly line assembly. The main shells for firing a cannon are a long-range high-explosive grenade and an armor-piercing shell. In accordance with the assigned tasks, shrapnel, sub-caliber, cumulative (armor-piercing), incendiary, smoke and other projectiles can be used. The maximum firing range of the OF-350 long-range high-explosive fragmentation grenade is 13290 m. The direct firing range when firing a long-range high-explosive fragmentation grenade and an armor-piercing projectile is 820 m (with a target height of 2 m). When a high-explosive fragmentation grenade burst, 870 lethal fragments with a radius of continuous destruction of 15 m were formed (a German 75-mm high-explosive fragmentation projectile gave 765 fragments with a radius of continuous destruction of 11.5 m). At a distance of 500 m at a meeting angle of 90 °, an armor-piercing projectile of the cannon penetrated armor with a thickness of 70 mm. The maneuverability of fire is provided by a gun carriage with sliding beds, allowing the greatest elevation angle of 37 °, declination angle of 5 °, and horizontal firing angle of 54 °. The rate of fire of the gun, thanks to the semi-automatic, reaches 25 rounds per minute. The weight of the gun in the firing position is 1150 kg. By a trained calculation, the transfer of the gun from the traveling position to the combat position and back is carried out in 30-40 seconds. The cannon can be transported by mechanical and horse (six horses) traction. Trucks were used to transport the gun. GAZ-AA, GAZ-AAA, ZIS-5 other. It was allowed to transport the gun with mechanical traction at a speed: on the highway up to 50 km / h, on country roads up to 30 km / h, off-road up to 10 km / h. The horse-drawn cannon was transported at a speed of 8-10 km / h. 76.2 mm divisional gun mod. 1942 (ZIS-3) was successfully used by the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. This gun was rightfully evaluated by experts, including German ones, as one of the most ingenious designs in the history of cannon artillery. In the post-war period, it was in service with the Soviet Army and the armies of many other countries of the world.

57-mm anti-tank gun, 1941

During the Great Patriotic War, at the request of the head of the British military mission in the USSR, the Soviet government handed over several ZIS-2 guns to the British army for inspection. The Allies' interest in this weapon was not accidental, because combat experience showed: Soviet designers managed to create a 57-mm anti-tank gun, which was 1.6 times more powerful than the English 57-mm gun.

The history of the creation of this weapon dates back to 1940, when the design team headed by the Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of State Prizes, Doctor of Technical Sciences Vasily Grabin began to design a new anti-tank gun that would meet the tactical and technical requirements of GAU.
When designing the classic anti-tank gun, Grabin faced the problem of choosing the caliber of the gun. Calculations showed the futility of the 45 mm caliber in terms of a sharp increase in armor penetration. Various research organizations considered calibers 55 and 60 mm, but in the end it was decided to stop at the caliber 57 mm. Guns of this caliber were used in the tsarist army and navy (Nordenfeld and Hotchkiss cannons), in addition, captured British Mark V tanks, which were in service with the Red Army, were armed with 57-mm Hotchkiss guns. However, by the beginning of the 1930s, all these guns had already been removed from service.
The main feature of the new gun was the use of a 73 caliber long barrel. At the same time, the issue with the shot was resolved - a standard sleeve from a 76-mm divisional gun with a re-compression of the muzzle of the sleeve to a caliber of 57 mm was adopted as its sleeve.
Designed to destroy enemy tanks and armored vehicles, to suppress and destroy infantry fire weapons, to destroy enemy manpower located openly, this gun at a distance of 1000 m pierced armor-piercing projectile 90 mm thick, and with a sub-caliber projectile - 105 mm. At a distance of 500 m, these figures are 100 and 145 mm, respectively.
The prototype of the gun was manufactured in October 1940 and passed factory tests. And in March 1941, the gun was put into service under the official name "57-mm anti-tank gun mod. 1941 g. " However, due to the plant's unpreparedness for the production of a new complex weapon, the shipment of guns to the troops began only in the summer of 1941.
In November 1941, it was decided to suspend the serial production of the ZIS. In total, 371 guns were manufactured from June 1 to early December 1941.
However, 57-mm cannons from experimental batches took part in the hostilities. When the tank armadas of the Nazis were rushing to Moscow, the anti-tank self-propelled guns 57-mm guns, mounted on the light tracked tractor "Komsomolets" (about them -), said their weighty word. It turned out that the armor of German tanks was not capable of withstanding the ZIS-2 projectile. There was even a proposal to shorten the barrel by 1.5 m to make the gun more convenient for camouflage by reducing the power. In the end, it was decided not to put the gun on gross production in 1941.
“... Collect, preserve and remove all unfinished trunks in production. All technological equipment and technical documentation should be preserved, removed to the appropriate place in order to immediately launch production of the 57-mm ZIS-2 cannon if the need arises ... ”- read the order for the plant. And when in 1943 the Nazis threw heavy tanks into battle, it took the plant only three weeks to resume production of the weapon - the 57-mm anti-tank gun of the 1943 model ZIS-2.
True, this gun did not become an exact copy of the 1941 gun, although the ballistics and firing tables were exactly the same for them. In 1941, by imposing a new barrel on the 57-mm gun carriage, the famous 76-mm ZIS-3 divisional gun was obtained. Having adopted the second path, the design bureau carried out a constructive and technological modernization of the guns.
Here are just a few numbers: the number of bolt parts has been reduced from 103 to 51, the lower machine - from 349 to 157. For the entire gun, the number of parts has decreased from 2080 to 1306, and the power consumption for its manufacture has decreased by 86%. As a result of modernization, the manufacturability of the structure has increased, the quality has improved. The most striking difference of the modernized carriage is the tubular frames instead of the box ones. The ZIS-3 has been produced in large quantities since 1942 and has been well mastered in production. When the production of 57-mm anti-tank guns was resumed in 1943, it was considered expedient to carry out production on a single gun carriage. In order to switch from the ZIS-3 to the production of the ZIS-2, it was only required to establish the production of monoblocks of the barrel. And this is the key to the record speed with which the release of the ZIS-2 was resumed.
During the Second World War, not a single army in the world had an anti-tank gun, the combat characteristics of which would exceed those of the ZIS-2.
.

1870: "The guns of our most powerful battleship are rendered useless by their own shells."

By the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Russian field artillery had only two types of guns - 4-pounder and 9-pounder arr. 1867. We did not have field mounted guns, that is, howitzers and mortars. However, a similar situation was typical for all armies in Europe, with the exception of the Austrian one. Russian field artillery, in modern terms, was divisional. In peacetime, the artillery brigade was completely independent, that is, it was subordinate only to the command of the military district and its artillery command. In wartime, artillery brigades were attached to infantry and cavalry divisions and were operatively subordinate to their commanders. The regimental artillery was abolished by Paul I. By the way, such an organization of Russian artillery existed until 1914. Heavy guns were in service with fortresses and siege artillery. Siege artillery in Russia was intended exclusively for action against fortresses, until 1877 its participation in a field war was not even considered.

In July 1877, Russian troops met stubborn resistance from the 30,000th Turkish corps near Plevna. The Turks had 70 field guns, and they built earthworks in a few days. Two assaults of Plevna were repulsed by the Turks with heavy losses among the attackers. By July 19, 1877, Alexander II concentrated 110 thousand people at Plevna with 440 guns, of which only 20 were siege guns. Nevertheless, the third assault was repulsed. Only on November 28 did the Turks surrender, exhausted by hunger. The Russians lost 22.5 thousand soldiers at Plevna. The army stood at Plevna for five months. Only the inaction of the rest of the Turkish troops saved her from complete defeat. The main reason for the disaster at Plevna was the inability of the Russian field artillery to destroy the simplest Turkish earthworks, in other words, due to the lack of a sufficient number of howitzers and mortars.

It would seem that the Russian generals should have taken into account the lessons of Plevna and began to create heavy field artillery, where howitzers and mortars would play the main role. Moreover, since the mid-80s. XIX century. In Russia and abroad, shells filled with pyroxylin have become widespread. And at the very beginning of the XX century. there were also more powerful explosives - shimosa, liddite, melinite, TNT, etc. Due to the replacement of black powder with new explosives, the high-explosive effect of shells increased tenfold. Now guns with a caliber from 122 to 152 mm could effectively destroy any earthworks with hinged fire.

Alas, in Russia, with the beginning of the reign of Nicholas II, the development of artillery goes in a completely different direction. In 1891, Alexander III entered into a military alliance with France against Germany. Germany, on the other hand, tried with all its might to tear Russia away from France and establish good-neighborly relations with her. In particular, Krupp, Erhardt and other German industrialists offered their latest tools to Russia almost every year. It got to the point that German firms at their own expense sent their guns for testing at the Main Artillery Range on Rzhevka near St. Petersburg. But under pressure from above, GAU began to curtail contacts with Krupp and give preference to the French firms of Schneider and Kane (later Kane's firm became part of Schneider's firm). It turned out to be an anecdotal situation: Krupp's cannons won the war with France in 1870, and Russia decided to abandon them in favor of the losing side.

During the reign of Nicholas II, the Russian artillery was led by the General Feldzheikhmeister Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich and his son, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich. Both visited France annually, and Mikhail, in general, from 1903 to 1909, left the Cote d'Azur only for trips to Paris. Thus, the leadership of our artillery was conducted from the Cote d'Azur.

Sergei Mikhailovich entered into a relationship with the former mistress of Nicholas II, the ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya. For several years, the impoverished ballerina has become one of the richest women in Russia. Already in 1895, Kshesinskaya bought a two-storey country palace in Strelna. The ballerina overhauled the palace and even built her own power plant. “Many were jealous of me, because even in the imperial palace there was no electricity,” she proudly noted. In the spring of 1906, Kshesinskaya buys a plot of land at the corner of Kronverksky Prospekt and Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya Street and orders the project of the palace to the architect Alexander von Gauguin. By the beginning of 1907, the two-storey palace, measuring 50 by 33 meters, was completed. They wrote about the palace that everything was built and furnished according to the wishes and taste of Kshesinskaya: the hall - in the Russian Empire style, the salon - in the Louis XVI style, the bedroom and dressing room - in the English style, etc. The furniture was supplied by the famous French manufacturer Melzer. Chandeliers, sconces, candelabra and everything else, right down to the bolts, were ordered from Paris. The house with the adjoining garden is a small masterpiece of Matilda Kshesinskaya's fantasy: well-trained maids, a French chef, a senior janitor - St. George's Knight, a wine cellar, horse carriages, two cars and even a cowshed. There was, of course, a large winter garden. In 1912, Kshesinskaya for 180 thousand francs buys a villa "Yalam" on the Cote d'Azur in the south of France.

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich and Kshesinskaya, together with the leadership of Schneider's firm and the board of the Putilov factory, organized a criminal syndicate. Note that the Putilov factory, where French capital predominated, was the only private artillery factory in Russia. Formally, competitive tests of prototypes of artillery systems continued in Russia, to which the firms of Krupp, Erhardt, Vickers, Skoda, as well as the Russian state-owned Obukhov and St. Petersburg gun factories, were still invited. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, Schneider was the winner of the competition. The author personally studied reports on competitive testing of guns in the archives of the Military Historical Museum. To please the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, the commission often went for forgery. For example, the weight of Schneider's guns was calculated without shoe belts and a number of other necessary elements, and Krupp's guns were calculated in full. The report stated that Schneider's gun was lighter and had to be put into service, but in fact, in the combat and traveling position, it was heavier than the Krupp counterpart.

But this is not so bad. Krupp, as we already know, very quickly fulfilled all Russian orders and was actively establishing production at Russian state-owned factories. Schneider's firm delayed the execution of orders for years and actually interfered in the internal affairs of Russia, stipulating in contracts that the production of guns was allowed only at the Putilov plant. And the Grand Duke calmly podkazyvayut all the demands of the French. As for the all-Russian autocrat, busy with uniforms, buttons, badges and ribbons, he did not show much interest in howitzers.

As a result, from 1905 to 1914, the Putilovsky plant received a huge number of orders and successfully filled them, having received huge sums of money. With the outbreak of the First World War, the state had to take over the management of the plant, willy-nilly. But the huge Perm gun factory from 1905 to 1913 was not ordered a single gun.

The plant occasionally produced a batch of shells, then a hundred blanks for artillery barrels for other plants, etc. The workers of the Perm plant were saved from starvation by their farmsteads, since almost all the workers lived in the surrounding villages.

But the disasters of the Russian artillery did not end there either. The French government through the firm of Schneider, Sergei Mikhailovich, Matilda and a number of other agents of influence in St. Petersburg imposed their doctrine on the Russian artillery. According to French doctrine, future hostilities should be agile and fleeting. To win such a war, it is enough to have one caliber, one type of cannon and one type of projectile in the artillery. This meant that the army had to have 76-mm divisional guns that could only fire one shell - shrapnel. Indeed, by the end of the XIX century. in France and other countries, effective examples of shrapnel have been created.

A.B. SHIROKORAD

THE GENIUS OF SOVIET ARTILLERY

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF V. GRABIN

The series was founded in 1998

Serial design by A. Kudryavtsev

Signed for printing from finished transparencies on 23.04.03. Format 84X108 "/ 32. Typographic paper. High print with FPF. Print condition. Sheet 22.68. Circulation 5000 copies. Order 1261.

Shirokorad A.B. Ш64 The genius of Soviet artillery: Triumph and tragedy of V. Grabin /

A.B. Shirokorad. - M .: OOO "AST Publishing House", 2003. - 429, p .: ill., 24 p. silt - (Military History Library).

ISBN 5-17-019107-3.

Before you is a book dedicated to the life and work of the famous Soviet designer Colonel General of the Technical Troops Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin and the work of the Central Artillery Design Bureau, headed by him from 1943 to 1959.

Grabin created hundreds of unique weapons. The famous ZIS-Z cannon has become the same symbol of victory as the IL-2 attack aircraft and Katyusha. His post-war works are less known, although among them were the most modern models, for example, the 100-mm automatic aviation cannon, the mobile super-powerful S-72 and S-73 guns, the 420-mm recoilless atomic cannon, etc. Most of them, however, were not adopted for service, but their development made a great contribution to the development of domestic artillery.

The book is supplied with rich illustrative material - photographs and drawings - and is intended both for specialists and for a wide range of readers.

UDC 355/359 (092) BBK 63.3 (2) 6-8

During the Great Patriotic War, there were more guns designed by Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin on the fronts than guns of other types of Soviet and pre-revolutionary production. German and American designers and military historians unanimously recognize the ZIS-Z as the best divisional gun of the Second World War. By 1941, the 76-mm F-34 tank gun had become the world's strongest tank gun, and it was not without reason that the overwhelming majority of our medium tanks, armored trains and armored boats were armed with it. The 100-mm anti-tank gun BS-3 pierced through the armor of the vaunted German "Tigers" and "Panthers".

By the end of World War II, the forty-five-year-old Grabin became Colonel General, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Hero of Socialist Labor; he also led the most powerful design bureau in the field of artillery weapons.

Stalin addressed him directly, bypassing his assistants and ministers.

Our official historians were simply forced to write about all this, albeit with numerous omissions and errors. But after the victorious May 1945, the strictest taboo was imposed on information about Grabin's further work. What happened? Why, over the next fourteen years, only one S-60 antiaircraft gun from Grabin entered mass production?

In fact, Grabin created a whole arsenal of guns of caliber from 23 to 650 mm, among which were anti-tank, field, self-propelled, tank, naval and aviation systems. Among them, of particular interest is

there are still unmatched weapons of great and special power, some of them could fire nuclear ammunition.

But Grabin's successes, his closeness to Stalin and, to be honest, his quarrelsome and aggressive character created many enemies for him. Among them were practically all the chief designers of the artillery design bureaus, a number of heads of the Ministry of Defense and the Main Artillery Directorate. The main ill-wisher of Grabin was D.F. Ustinov.

In 1946-1953. the adoption of Grabin's guns was actually blocked, and after Stalin's death Ustinov made attempts almost every year to defeat Grabin's design bureau. It was possible to do this only in 1959. The Honored Designer was literally thrown into the street. His guns were melted down, and technical documentation was destroyed or scattered in secret archives.

For twenty years, the author of the book had to collect materials from Grabin's activities bit by bit in various central and departmental archives. The presented book is conceived as a popular essay about Grabin's guns, more precisely, about the masterpieces of his design thought. In addition, a story about an intelligent, restless and sometimes cruel person, about his successes and failures, brilliant foresight and delusions.

The book contains many references to various organizations. In order not to give their full names every time, abbreviations are used, a list of which is given at the end of the book.

In addition, those interested in factual material at the end of the book will find Appendices, which list the technical data of the tools developed by V.G. Grabin, their drawings and diagrams and a chronological list of his works compiled by him.

The youth of the designer

I apologize in advance to the reader that I am writing about the young years of the famous designer and will continue to write concisely: there is almost no documentary information, and the memories of relatives and friends 50 years later, to put it mildly, do not inspire confidence.

Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin was born in Yekaterinodar at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, this should be understood in the literal sense: according to the old Russian calendar, he was born on December 28, 1899, and according to the new one, already in the 20th century. - January 9, 1900

His father Gavrila Grabin served in the field artillery and rose to the rank of senior fireworks. He told his son a lot and vividly about the cannons of the 1877 model, and, possibly, already in childhood, Vasily showed an interest in artillery.

The Grabins' family was large by today's standards. At first, three sons were born in a row - Procopius, Dmitry and Vasily, and then four daughters - Varvara, Tatyana, Irina and Anastasia. The father of the family worked at the flour mill, the mother was engaged in the household. Vasily Gavrilovich said that he began his labor activity, grazing geese, and later began to help his father in work at the mill. In 1911 Vasily graduated from a rural primary school. At the age of 14, his father gave him a job in the boiler workshops of the entrepreneur Sushkin.

The day when the director of Politizdat N. Tropkin informed Colonel-General Vasily Grabin that his book "The Weapon of Victory" would not be published was, according to the eminent artillery designer's own recollections, the darkest day of his life.

Vasily Gavrilovich gave this book to the publishing house in 1974, when for many years he was removed from the work of his whole life - the design and production of guns. In 1960, the country no longer needed the skills and talent of the great artilleryman - among the 1,200,000 soldiers who fell under the reduction, he was dismissed from the army. It turned out that not only the defense industry did not need his knowledge and experience - doctors of technical sciences, professors were not hired in any "respectable" department, even in the State Planning Committee (where he was often invited for consultations in the old days) politely refused.

And only the vice-rector of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University M. Anuchin suggested that the professor transfer his enormous experience and knowledge to the students. And he gave lectures on artillery weapons, and having mastered the work of a teacher thoroughly, he created a youth design bureau at a technical school and became its chief designer. I went to the institute by train and public transport. Students doted in him, and he saw in them not just future specialists, in everyone - a person with his unique destiny. It was then that Vasily Gavrilovich began to write his memoirs, without offense and without embellishment, as it really was. The memoirs cover the period from 1934 to 1941. I liked the book, it was signed for printing, and even a date was set when it was supposed to go into production. Suddenly, the publishing house began to call and insistently offer to agree with their demands to finalize the manuscript, to add, rewrite individual episodes, etc. Grabin answered categorically: “I wrote my memoirs not for money and fame. I wrote to preserve our common experience for the future. My work is done, it will be kept in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense and will wait in the wings. "

And only many years later, already in the years of perestroika, the aura of mystery was removed from this story. It turned out that when the workers of the Central Committee reported to D. Ustinov about the content of Grabin's memoirs, he snapped: "The book will never be published." So all the editors' demands for rework were just a dishonorable game. But this indecent story with the book had a backstory filled with almost Shakespearean passions. At the behest of His Majesty, on the first day of the war, Vasily Gavrilovich became an unwitting witness to the deep confusion of the 32-year-old People's Commissar for Armaments Ustinov. He was sitting at the table, surrounded by his deputies, covering his face with his hands, and bewilderedly repeated: "What to do?" Grabin approached him, touched him on the shoulder: "Dmitry Fedorovich, open the safe, there are mobilization plans:". And although he helped the People's Commissar to get out of his torpor, he could not forgive him for this, it would seem, natural and necessary advice in such a situation. Moreover, Ustinov was annoyed that Stalin allowed the chief designer to contact him directly, bypassing the armament commissariat, he perceived this as humiliation and once threatened that he would grind the designer to powder. It turned out that these are not empty words: he would have taken revenge on the eminent subordinate who did not delve into the affairs of the courtiers before, but the Supreme Commander himself provided protection to Grabin, who was not afraid to defend his point of view when it came to the security of the country until his death.

The story with the book is an excellent addition to the portrait of the chief designer, a principled, honest man who served not people, but the work entrusted to him.

The whole life of a "genius of artillery" is resistance to circumstances, the shortsightedness of his superiors, constant and conscious risk. This man had amazing strength of spirit and conviction in the correctness of his thoroughly calculated impulses.

Grabin, who did so much for the development of the defense industry, already in the early 30s, unlike many leaders of the country, understood that traditional guns were too old for a future war. He knew that Germany was starting to expand the production of new tanks. A tank without a gun is just a wagon, the Germans will equip them with new rapid-fire cannons.

In January 1934 he arrived in Gorky with a group of designers. The construction of "New Sormovo" has just finished.

We came from Moscow to design cannons .. - justified his task in the party committee. - Any weapon, including artillery, must be improved ... You know what is happening in Germany. We must hurry with the guns ...

And already on March 1, the director of the plant reported that the designers had redesigned the units and parts of the divisional semi-universal gun, it began to weigh two hundred kilograms less, which is very important in the field. The fulfillment of the terms of the order was under the control of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense Tukhachevsky.

From the first days of his work at the plant, the designer did not set himself the task of simply increasing the number of guns - this was the easiest way. He went to the same result in a more complicated way, but reliable and promising. First of all, I began to fight against the "racial" disorganization and laxity, looseness. And he organized the training of personnel. Hence the result. Divisional production was set up, and Vasily Gavrilovich was already working on special-purpose guns. Unfortunately, many in the Red Army did not even want to hear about them. Suddenly (as often happened in the life of the chief designer!) He was forbidden to engage in new developments - they decided to leave several designers at the plant to help the shops to fulfill current orders, and send the rest to Moscow. The director of the plant, Radkevich, did not dispute the order, and Grabin went to the Main Military Mobilization Directorate. For the truth. And he did not go empty-handed. As he told the head of the department, I. Pavlunovsky, "as an initiative, we have prepared a project for a new divisional special-purpose gun."

A week after the Moscow voyage, there was an emergency meeting of the party committee at the plant. The director of the plant excitedly said that he had called S. Ordzhonikidze and ordered to create conditions for the normal work of the chief designer, who had been instructed by the People's Commissariat to create new weapons. And he appointed a deadline - eight months, but already at the end of the first decade of May, again ahead of schedule, the 76-mm divisional gun F-22 announced its birth: Stalin, who personally inspected the gun, liked that it was made entirely on domestic equipment and from domestic materials ... And also because "it is powerful and lightweight."

She had to prove her superiority on trials. For more than a month Grabin lived without a break at the military training ground. “On what roads and ravines, copses with stumps and potholes, the six selected horses did not roll her! But the most difficult test of strength she withstood on a concrete platform, surrounded by stacks of boxes with reinforced cartridges,” - recall the veterans.

The F-22 became the basic ancestor of the Soviet divisional guns of the 1936 model. And the designer's thought was already far from the F-22. He developed a weapon for the T-34 tank under construction. The T-34 manufacturers were delighted with the Grabin cannons. And the chief designer A. Morozov, thanks to their creator, admitted: "We only dreamed of such a gun."

A few months before the start of the war, the chief designer proposed to equip the new heavy tank being prepared for production with the appropriate new generation cannon (Grabin had to defend his view of artillery again, now in front of the tankers), he assured the government that the 107-mm tank gun would be ready in 45 days ! The term, in the opinion of artillery specialists, is not realistic, but not for Grabin and his associates. All the know-how introduced by the chief designer along the entire technological chain affected. That's what he said: "The designer is the father, the technologist is the mother." And most importantly, his faith, his enthusiasm infected the entire work collective. The cannon was created in 38 days! The first experimental guns turned out to be reliable, easy to manufacture and cheap.

But the heavy tank was not ready by the appointed date, and the plant stopped the production of guns.

The same happened with the F-22 USV cannon. At the end of the 40th, the military refused to extend the order to the plant, believing that the Red Army was already sufficiently saturated with them. But from the first days of the war telegrams were sent to the plant: "Let's get guns, and the more the better!" The designers and technologists of the Grabin bureau worked around the clock. They re-calculated the technical capabilities of all mechanical equipment in order to have a clear idea of ​​the capabilities of each machine. In order to fulfill the orders of the front on time, the bureau created a cannon, which had no equal in terms of tactical, technical and economic characteristics, and the design allowed the plant to quickly readjust production and significantly increase the production of guns for the front, tk. in terms of labor intensity, it is 2.5 times less than that of SPM, and it cost the country three times cheaper. Grabin took his illegitimate brainchild to the bride in Moscow. The cannon brilliantly proved itself in business, killing tanks on command from the right, and from the back, and from the left, and in front - the barrel twisted in vertical and horizontal directions. The generals who attended the bride were pleased. Contrary to all expectations, Marshal Kulik sharply threw at the meeting: "Your guns are not needed. You want the plant to have an easy life when blood is shed at the front: Go to the plant and make more of those guns that are in production:"

The plant managers were faced with a choice: to obey Kulik and disrupt the order of the front, or to fulfill the promise - to increase the production of guns, under the only condition - the development of the ZIS-3, because it requires less labor. We decided to do it our own way, and Grabin personally took responsibility for everything that happened. He managed to convince a representative of the military acceptance of his innocence: in such a situation, it is criminal to wait for the formal recognition of a new gun. And the ZIS-3 echelon after echelon went to the troops. She became the most massive weapon of war, showing itself perfectly in battles. She was called a masterpiece of design thought. "The ZIS-3 cannon is the most ingenious design in the history of cannon artillery," said Hitler's artillery consultant.

Later, Grabin wrote in his book: “Soon we began to receive very good reviews from the army about the ZIS-3. It was nice, but formally the gun was considered rejected. And only on January 5, 1942, during a telephone conversation with Comrade Stalin, I reported to him in detail about the ZIS-3 and asked to see it. True, the Supreme Commander did not immediately agree, but then asked to immediately deliver the gun to the Kremlin. The ZIS-3 and F-22 USV (for comparison) were delivered: After the approval of the gun and subsequent tests adopted: ".

Grabin was ahead of his time both in designing guns and in preparing them for mass production. He was the first in the world to organize an in-line production of guns! In his design bureau, it took a few months to create a gun from a drawing to the start of mass production, while saving metal and labor costs. Just one fact. During the war, 18 times more cannons were produced on the premises of the Novoye Sormovo plant in Gorky than in the pre-war period! By the end of the war, 100 thousand guns were produced here - an absolute record. Germany, together with the occupied countries, produced 102 thousand guns of various calibers during the entire war.

Grabin's 76mm cannons helped defeat the Germans. The anti-tank artillery was armed with its 57-mm and 100-mm cannons, the last one was nicknamed "St. John's wort" for its ability to penetrate the armor of fascist "tigers" and "panthers": Think about these data: more than 70% of all artillery that smashed the enemy was Grabin development ! During the war years, in addition to creating powerful field, tank and anti-aircraft guns, Grabin had to create the Central Artillery Design Bureau in Kaliningrad near Moscow.

It was not easy for the chief designer after the war. Vasily Gavrilovich considered the institute, then it was called TsNII-58, as a continuously developing organism, capable not only of keeping pace with the world mechanical engineering, but also surpassing it. Full of strength and energy, he made far-reaching plans that were not destined to come true. In 1959 the institute was included in the OKB-1 S.P. Queen, who was tasked with working on long-range ballistic missiles. Grabin was removed from business - for intractability, independence of thought and technical risk. As the chairman of the State Committee for Defense Technology K. Rudnev admitted, "I have been doing a lot of things recently to expel Grabin from the Ministry of Defense Industry."

A talented designer, an excellent technologist, an imperious, strong-willed leader who knew the production perfectly, Grabin, referring to the management and leading specialists of the institute, said that the decision had been made right: reunification with a neighbor is the best of all possible options. "You and I have traveled a glorious path, and our conscience is clear before the Motherland. I advise you to work in such a way that never, under any circumstances, drop our traditions."

The merger of OKB-1 and Grabinsky TsNII-58 made it possible to expand the overall scope of work on space issues. The programs for the creation of a reconnaissance satellite and the first manned space flights were accelerated, projects that had previously seemed almost unrealistic were implemented. Through joint efforts, the RT intercontinental solid-propellant rocket was created. But personally, the chief designer Grabin, against his own will, did not take part in this anymore. And the loser, of course, was not he, but the state, which had lost the designer, whose thought was ahead of its time.

And yet the general was destined to win one more victory - 9 years after his death, the book "The Weapon of Victory" was published - without cuts and softening the wording.

All these are just touches to the portrait of the great artilleryman. In the presented book "The Genius of Artillery" of the Khudyakovs father and son, Grabin is shown both as a statesman, and as a caring father (he had four sons), and as a person who surrendered to passion - from the beginning of his career to the last day of his life. His second wife selflessly loved him, literally dissolving in him, his fate, subordinating her whole life to his interests, him and his children. Probably, he was a happy person: he fulfilled his duty to the Motherland, which he understood in selfless service to her, realized his talent, reaching unprecedented heights in design thought. And the love and disfavor of those in power? Grabin found the right approach to this too, preserving his dignity and not tarnishing his name in any way.