Weekdays of a deputy tech: KrAZ trucks that are frozen
KrAZ-255B
“Water is dripping from under the KrAZ trucks!”
Before starting this note, I want to thank those readers of the Military Review who congratulated me on my anniversary. Sincerely glad!
So, “winter” came on the Crimean peninsula, which was accompanied by frequent storms, such as I did not observe in the Baltic in terms of power and entertainment (perhaps because I lived not on the coast, but three kilometers from it).
Sometimes it seemed that huge waves were about to overwhelm our homes and equipment. I, a native of Siberia, took my breath away from such a revelry of the elements!
It happened that it snowed, which, however, quickly melted.
Once even the temperature dropped 4-5 degrees below zero. Not for long, however, but it was precisely at that moment that a nuisance happened that disrupted my serene stay in Cossack Bay.
The same previously mentioned a spoon of tar.
The next morning, after a night frost, a soldier ran up to me and said excitedly:
“Comrade lieutenant, water is dripping from under the KrAZ trucks!”
I soon convinced myself that the soldier did not invent anything - water really dripped from under the engines of the cars.
All doubts disappeared - the water in the cooling systems froze, and the walls of the engine blocks cracked. As it thawed, the water began to drip, seeping through the cracks onto the ground.
Emergency!
At this point in the note, an important, although far from lyrical, digression must be made.
The fact is that these tractors (I didn’t remember if there were 6 or 8 of them?) were standing on the shore, and no one paid much attention to them. The factory workers did not need them in their activities, since they had a caterpillar tractor on the shore to pull the boats ashore if necessary.
But no one handed them over to me for protection and observation: neither in writing nor orally.
So they would have stood at some distance until they were loaded onto the railway transport, if my soldier had not accidentally passed by and noticed the trouble.
What to do?
I immediately turned to the factory workers.
And here it is worth noting that neither the civilians nor I - no one began to shift the blame on each other. The cars turned out to be like no one's, in a "legal vacuum", so to speak.
Everyone understood that if there had been an official trial, all the sisters would have received earrings.
The paradox of the situation was that I would have suffered materially less than the factory workers, since more than three official salaries could not be calculated from me according to the law, and the rest could well fall on their shoulders. I don’t know how much the YaMZ-238 engine cost, but probably more than my salary. And there were as many as 6 pieces (or 8)!
Home - in Kloogu
They began to decide how to get out of the situation.
When the wings were removed from the front wheels of the KrAZ trucks, they found cracks from 4 to 6 cm long in the lower part of the blocks. It was impossible to see them while these same wings were in place.
And the factory workers tell me:
"Don't worry, lieutenant! We'll fix everything!"
And the guys got to work.
First, the ends of the cracks were drilled with a 2 mm drill so that they did not increase in length.
The walls of the cooling jacket of the block are made very close, the gap between them is very small, and any careless movement would lead to through drilling of the block. Then nothing could be fixed.
But the Volzhans did not let us down.
Moreover, several threaded holes were made on both sides of the cracks with the same drill and then with a tap. Then, very carefully, the cracks were lightly cut and filled with epoxy glue. Then thin metal plates were screwed with screws under a screwdriver over the cracks. Yes, on all machines. Filled with water and checked the quality of the repair by heating and a little running.
Everything worked out, the repair turned out to be necessary!
And after the “break-in”, they sanded the protruding edges of the patch plates so that they began to look like small bulges, and finally painted over the repair sites with silver paint, almost the same color as the gray (almost white) cast iron of the cylinder block.
I looked at all this from the "height" of my short technical experience and admired.
As time went. February has come. There were no more frosts. Then March came, and there was no clarity with the dispatch of the echelon with equipment.
I gradually became this story bother. At home, in Kloog, a young wife with a little daughter, and here ...
It must be remembered that in those years it was impossible to call so easily. Already one night unloaded, returning from combat duty in the Mediterranean Sea, a regiment of marines, without letting us fall asleep until the morning, spring was already in full swing in the Crimea. And I decided this year to write a report for admission to the academy.
Once, from the post office of the military camp, I managed to send a telegram to the unit with a request to replace me, but I never received an answer.
And, tired of the uncertainty and of the Cossack Bay, I made a risky decision: to leave for Klooga on my own, under the pretext of having to pay party dues (in case of non-payment of party dues for three months in a row, a party member could be expelled from its ranks - on this I decided to play ).
Upon my arrival at the unit, they shouted at me a little, but they did not punish me, and the company commander was delighted.
But instead of me, the platoon commander from our company, Lieutenant Chivilev, left for Sevastopol, who stayed there until midsummer. And only in the summer the train with equipment finally arrived in Klooga.
I wrote a report for admission to the academy the following year, 1972, the battalion commander Major Romanenko signed it, and I began to prepare for admission.
All summer high officials traveled to our battalion, starting with the command of the Baltic District and ending with the command of the Ground Forces. And everyone wanted to see this outlandish technique in action.
At first, it was run by factory workers, but very soon a unit of boatmen appeared on the staff of the battalion, and the specialists of the manufacturer, having trained the sailors, departed home, to Navashino.
"Viru Valge"
The KrAZ trucks did not let us down, they worked flawlessly, and it never occurred to anyone to remove the wheel wings and check the integrity of the blocks.
I was silent.
The soldier who discovered the malfunctions safely retired to the reserve.
At that time, the junior lieutenant, a "two-year-old", an Estonian by the name of Rosmaa (or, possibly, Roosma), was the deputy commander of the company of floating assets (RPS), which included autotractors. He completed his service in September and retired.
And a year earlier, we agreed with him that he would sell me a cape upon his dismissal. I left mine on the train when I was on my way to my duty station in Kloogu.
He was a good guy, reliable, as, indeed, all Estonians, and there were several of them in the military camp in officer ranks. The commander of the same RPS was a captain, an Estonian named Vyahk.
Rosmaa said that a bottle of good vodka would be enough for me for a cape (after all, two years of service among Russian officers were not in vain!), And he offered me to drink it with him.
I bought a bottle of Estonian vodka "Viru Valge", deciding to please the national feelings of a drinking buddy. We had a good time, we talked sincerely. In the process of drinking under the influence of alcohol, my sense of caution was slightly dulled, and I, relying on the camaraderie of Rosmaa, decided to reveal the secret of the KrAZ trucks.
Of course, he was very surprised, but said that he didn’t care anymore, that he had already quit and was not going to return to the unit, and even more so, he was not going to hand me over.
On that we hugged and parted.
Many years have passed since then, but I still have not decided what the degree of my guilt is in the incident that happened in the Cossack Bay back in January 1971.
Sometimes I feel like it's not my fault at all, and sometimes...
To be continued ...
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