Artillery. Large caliber. BR-17, gun 210-mm sample 1939 of the year
In our publications we wrote a lot about the artillery systems that covered themselves with glory on the fields of the Great Patriotic. Systems that some of our readers remember, see, or work with. But there are in our archives copies of such systems, about which few people have heard, and even less of those who saw them "alive."
Today our heroine is the X-NUMX-mm cannon of special power Br-210. The gun, which really did a lot in the defense of Leningrad. The gun, which helped our units break through the fortifications of the Germans in Königsberg.
Few people can boast of "close acquaintance" with this system. This is really a piece of equipment. In total, the Red Army had 9 such systems. Suffice it to say that in the special capacity artillery regiment there were only 2 such guns! Complemented their 6 pieces 152-mm guns Br-2. Total four special power regiment for the whole army!
Thus, the artillery system Br-17 is designed to fight the long-term field and fortifications of the enemy. The importance of developing such tools for the USSR can be expressed in two words - the Stalinist order!
This means that the gun was created in a complete carte blanche for designers and engineers. The general designer could invite any designer from other design bureaus, use the power of any plants, use landfills and test benches of any organizations. KB worked in two shifts. Almost non-stop.
But it meant both. Failure to comply with the Stalinist order meant acquaintance not only with the investigators of the NKVD, but also, quite possibly, with the executioners. This applied not only to the General Designer, but also to the entire team of design offices.
Let's start from afar. We have said more than once that in the middle of the 30s, the command of the Red Army concluded that the weapons that were in service were outdated. Required retooling on modern designs. During the discussion of the issue, it was decided to use foreign experience in designing such systems.
In the summer of 1937, a commission of representatives of the Red Army and military engineers was sent to the Skoda factory in Czechoslovakia to negotiate a new duplex, 210-mm cannon and 305-mm howitzer. The commission also included Professor Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, who led a whole group of designers of the plant No. XXUMX. It was this plant that was entrusted with organizing the production of duplexes in the Soviet Union.
Ilya Ivanov, Lieutenant-General of Engineering and Technical Services, an outstanding designer of artillery systems. One of the founders of the Soviet artillery large and special power.
Born in 1899 in Bryansk, in the family of a shoemaker. In 1918, he entered the Petrograd military-technical artillery school. During his studies, he went twice to the front. In 1922, he entered the St. Petersburg Artillery Academy. In 1928, a young military engineer was sent to plant number XXUMX. In 7-m is transferred to the plant "Bolshevik" (Obukhov plant).
Since 1932, the head of the department of design of artillery systems in the Artillery Academy named. Dzerzhinsky. At the same time, he heads the same department at the Leningrad Military Mechanical Institute.
In 1937, he was appointed General Designer of the Bolshevik plant. The next two years of life I.I. Ivanova marked the first Order of Lenin. For a significant contribution to the equipment of ground forces and naval forces with new types of weapons. Military engineer Ivanov was engaged in high power systems!
19 March 1939, military engineer of the 1 rank, Professor Ivanov, was appointed Chief Designer of the OKB-221 (special design bureau) of the Stalingrad Barricades factory (Plant No. XXUMX).
But back in our heroine.
The Soviet Commission did not agree with the proposed duplex options for Skoda. The company has refined the design to meet the requirements of the customer. Barrels of guns and howitzers got free liners. The wedge valves were changed to piston ones, the loading became cap type.
According to the X / NUMX D / 7782 contract of April 6 entered into by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade with Škoda, the latter undertook to produce for the USSR a 1938-mm cannon and an 210-mm howitzer with a set of ammunition and accessories for the USSR. The date of delivery of the test samples was set 305 December 1.
In addition to prototypes, sets of working drawings and other documentation for the manufacture of these artillery systems were to be transferred. The total cost of the order was 2 375 000 dollars (about 68 million crowns).
In addition, Škoda supplied (according to another contract with the industry) three sets of barrel and forgings for 305-mm howitzers in the first quarter of 1939 and six sets of barrels and forgings for 210-mm guns in the first half of 1939 (according to one set monthly), as well as ready-made tools a month after its introduction into production at the Skoda plant.
The first batch of drawings of barrels with closures and forgings was received from the company Skoda in August 1938.
In principle, the further actions of the USSR are clear. There is documentation, there are samples, there is a license. It remains to begin the release of guns. However, it was not so easy.
At that time, the USSR already had its own way, including in production. We went with this, our own way. The whole world, in a similar situation, changes the production process for a new product. We are changing the product under the existing production process.
The protocol of 15 September 1939, approved by the People's Commissar of Armaments and the head of the AU Red Army, it was decided to make some changes to the company's drawings, including simplifying parts, replace some forgings with casting, reduce bronze consumption, switch to OST and so on.
The main changes of the plant number XXUMX:
1.Starv Skoda consisted of a monoblock, coupling, support ring and liner. The barrel of the plant number 221 consisted of a monoblock barrel, a breech with a sleeve and a liner.
The Skoda liner is cylindrical, and Plant No. 221 is conical with protrusions at the government end. The diametral gap between the liner and the monoblock with the 0,1-0,2 mm is brought to the 0,25 mm (constant). Liner elastic limit increased to 80 kg / mm2.
2. The Škoda firm-trigger mechanism was replaced by the B-4 howitzer trigger mechanism. In addition, the frame was simplified shutter.
3. Made a number of changes in carts. The gun was put on domestic wheels.
By the decree of KO No. 142 dated June 1, 1939, plant No. 221 was supposed to hand over three 1-mm guns and three 1940-mm howitzers to 210 on April 305. Despite the seizure of Czechoslovakia by Germany, deliveries to the USSR continued, albeit with a slight delay on schedule.
Factory tests were conducted in Slovakia in the presence of a Soviet selection committee chaired by I. I. Ivanov. Factory tests of the 210-mm guns were completed on November 20 1939, and 305-mm howitzers - December 22 1939.
Factory test results for the 210-mm gun:
a) The gun is unstable when firing a full charge at elevation angles up to + 20 °.
b) Armament time - 1 hour 45 minutes, and disarmament - 1 hour 20 minutes.
c) The transition time from traveling to combat and back is about two hours.
Plant "Barricades" continued to upgrade the gun. Modernization was carried out even not at the request of manufacturers. Simply replacing one part led to problems with another. Thus, we can talk about a complete modernization of the system. The management of "Barricades" strongly risked independently changing the design of the system. But the winners are not judged. The Stalinist order was executed, it means they won.
The prototype 210 cannon of the Br-17 was presented to the ground testing in August 1940, that is, through the 2 (!) Year after receiving the Czech documentation. The gun had a barrel length 49,60 gauges, the length of the rifled part of the barrel was 37,29 gauges. In the barrel bore 64 were executed, cutting a constant slope. The shutter was a piston with a obturator.
The mass of the barrel with the bolt was 12 640 kg. The barrel is installed in the cradle of the ram type. When fired, he rolled away in the cradle along with the cylinders of the recoil devices - located reconciling the trunk of the hydropneumatic tensioner and mounted on the rollback hydraulic brake shaft.
Machine gun riveted, connected to the rotary part of the base by bolts. Pointing guns in a vertical plane was carried out manually using a lifting mechanism, equipped with two toothed sectors. The guidance was carried out in the range of angles from 0 ° to + 50 °. The system remained stable when firing with elevation angles above 20 °.
The rotary part of the base of the gun Br-17 to facilitate horizontal guidance rested on the balls. Under the action of a rotary mechanism mounted on a machine with a rotary part of the base, the latter rotated on a ball bearing due to the adhesion of the main gear wheel of the rotary mechanism with a gear ring mounted on a fixed part of the base.
A hand-operated rotary mechanism guided the implement in a horizontal plane in the ± 45 ° sector. When transferring the support feet and coulter supports, you can get a circular fire.
The role of the combat pin was performed by the lower support ring attached to the fixed part and covered around the circumference by a shoulder of the upper support ring riveted to the turning part of the base. The fixed part of the base is lowered in the fighting position into the pit in the ground, and the pit is pre-faced with special squares and bars. Both rotary and fixed parts of the base are riveted.
The fixed part of the base had divorcing support beds at all four corners. The ends of the ball screws with ball heels rested on the coulter supports, which are connected to the ground by the driving openers, and on the support heels.
Screws (jacks) at the ends of the support beds of the Br-17 cannon were used to create additional pressure of the cannon on the support feet and the coulter supports with the aim of partially unloading the lower part of the base. Shooting from a cannon was carried out using a sight with an independent line of aiming.
When firing a full charge, the initial velocity of the F-643 projectile was 800 m / s. The firing range reached 30 360 m. 210-mm high-explosive projectile on sandy ground made a funnel 1,5 — 2 m deep and 5-5,5 m in diameter. 210-mm concrete-breaking projectile punched 555-meter, according to standards, with an initial speed of 2,5 m / s, using 358-meter, an meter-breaking concrete projectile, with an initial speed of 60 m / s, penetrated 2-meter, according to standards, with an initial speed of XNUMX m / s, penetrated XNUMX-meter, according to standards, with an initial speed of XNUMX m / s, the XNUMX-meter, 12 meters, was punched by an XHUMX meter with an initial speed of XNUMX m / s. and at the initial speed of XNUMX m / s at an angle XNUMX ° punched a concrete wall with a thickness of XNUMX m.
The loading of the instrument was performed using a special device consisting of the following devices:
a) an inclined rail track, fixed on the swiveling suit of the system;
b) the feed carriage moved along the track by means of a cable and a winch;
c) carts for shells.
The loading process itself was performed as follows. The shell manually dipped on a special shell cart. Then the cart rolls to the top of the track and the projectile is loaded onto the shell carriage. Pulling up the carriage with the projectile up to the breech of the gun is done using a hand winch mounted on a farm carriage.
After the swinging part was brought to the loading position (angle + 8 °) manually by force of 6 — 8 numbers, a projectile was sent using a punch. The charges were brought by hand and also sent by the punch.
The mass of the gun in the combat position was 44 000 kg. When translating the gun from the combat position to the traveling one, it was disassembled into three main parts:
1. The base together with the supporting coulters (wagon No. 1).
2. Machine with a cradle, yoke and wheel chocks (wagon No. XXUMX).
3. Barrel with bolt (wagon No. XXUMX).
For transportation on a hike, the standard volumetric parts of the system (except transported on 3-x vehicles), as well as spare parts, for each gun were attached one three-ton vehicle for transporting the lining of the pit and the demining tool, and four three-ton trailers for transporting the rest of the property. Carriages with parts of the guns and trailers were towed by the Voroshilovets and Komintern tracked tractors, the maximum speed of the carriage was 30 km / h.
It remains to combine the TTX systems in the table:
Caliber, mm - 210
Barrel length, gauges - 49.6
Maximum angle of elevation, degrees - 50
Declination angle, degrees - 0
Angle of horizontal fire, hail - 90
Weight in combat position, kg - 44 000
Mass of high-explosive projectile, kg - 135
Projectile initial velocity, m / s - 800
The longest firing range, m - 30 360
Rate of Fire - 1 shot in 2 minutes
Calculation persons - 20-26
According to the recollections of the soldiers who saw the combat work of these artillery systems, not a single weapon caused such admiration and respect. Power and beauty. There are memories that during the storming of Königsberg such a weapon was installed in 800 (!) Meters from the contact line!
However, in 1945 story This artillery system is not over. Suffice it to say that in 1952, all 210-mm guns of the Br-17 were overhauled at the Barricades factory. 9 guns that went through the war again rose in military service in the Soviet Army.
After the war, the Škoda company developed high-explosive shells of a new generation for guns. But the widespread emergence of rocket technology still sent a cannon to the deserved rest. And in the 60s, they were withdrawn from the military. Part sent to storage, part disposed.
To date, 3 guns, which are on display at museums, have remained in stock:
Br-17 No. 1 - Verkhnyaya Pyshma (UMMC Museum of Military Equipment. Up to 2012, it was located on the territory of the 39 arsenal of the Main Agrarian University in Perm.
Br-17 No. 4 - St. Petersburg (Museum of Artillery).
Br-17 No. 2 - Moscow (Central Museum of the Russian Army).
- Alexander Staver, Roman Skomorokhov
- Roman Skomorokhov
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