In 1941-1944, Leningrad was saved from complete destruction by German heavy artillery by hundreds of heavy and super-heavy Baltic guns. fleet - ships, forts of Kronstadt, railway artillery and cannons of the sea range. Land guns of great power were neither near Leningrad, nor under Sevastopol.
Together with the C-72 cannon, it entered the duplex of special power, developed by Vasily Grabin in 1946 – 1948. None of our artillery design bureau could create anything of the kind.
Triplex and duplex
Joseph Vissarionovich was able to learn from his mistakes. Immediately after the fall of Sevastopol, Stalin appointed the head of the Central Artillery Design Bureau (TsAKB) the most talented Soviet designer of artillery systems, Lieutenant General Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin, and entrusted him with the development of fundamentally new weapons systems for the ground forces, navy and aviation.
In particular, Grabin was ordered to create two unique systems of super-powerful guns - triplex and duplex. The triplex was to consist of a 180-mm long-range cannon, 210-mm howitzers and 280-mm mortars, which later received the C-23, C-33 and C-43 index (the letter "C" meant "Stalin"). Triplex complex was called because all three systems had to have different trunks, but the same gun carriages and additional equipment. A similar duplex system (210-mm C-72 cannon and 305-mm C-73 howitzer) should also have a single carriage.
The C-23 cannon system, along with the 180-mm gun, included the 210-mm howitzer C-23-I, 203-mm gun-howitzer C-23-IV and 280-mm mortar C-23-II.
Mobile Mastodons
For the first time, to install a special power system, it was not necessary to dig a large trench for a large metal base. All guns were transported on wheels with an unprecedented speed for that time - up to 35 km / h. The trip time from the combat to the traveling position at the triplex was 30 minutes, at the duplex - 2 hours (for similar foreign systems - from 6 to 24 hours). Shooting was done from the ground without complex engineering work.
Barrels of guns had high ballistics with a relatively low weight - this was achieved due to a special method of fastening internal pipes and casings. The most interesting recoil devices, consisting of hydraulic compressors, knurling and original construction openers. The best guns of this class in the world - German and Czech - had a very complex double recoil system. Grabin also managed to reproduce the usual pattern, like a field gun.
The weight of the triplex in combat and in the stowed position was 19 – 20 tons, and the more massive duplex implements in the stowed position were disassembled into three parts weighing 23 – 24 each.
Everything seemed to be going fine, and in the middle of the 1950s, the Soviet army was to receive the first series of triplex and duplex guns. But then the so-called human factor intervened. With his successes in the development of guns, Grabin had made irreconcilable enemies and competitors during the war.
Powerful enemies
These enemies were the designer artillerymen Ivanov and Petrov, and most importantly, the people's commissar of weapons Dmitry Ustinov. Finally, at the end of the 1940s, Beria himself turned out to be one of Grabin's ill-wishers, who believed that the artillery had already outlived its own. Here we are not talking about Beria, the security officer, but about Beria, the leader of the atomic project and the curator of the work on ballistic, anti-aircraft and cruise missiles.
Of course, neither Ustinov nor Beria could demand that Stalin close the TsNII-58 (renamed TSACB) or, moreover, arrest his leader. But they sabotaged the work on the triplex and duplex implements, they are great. For Grabin came the black stripe.
Kartuzy
In most countries of the world, for capturing high-power guns, a cap-loading was taken (the propellant charge was placed in a rag shell). Only the German designers from the beginning of the twentieth century went on a different path and used a separate cartridge case (the charge was placed in a metal sleeve).
The kartuznoe loading had many drawbacks: the complicated process of loading and storing ammunition, serious problems with the obturation of powder gases. During the battle of Jutland, British battlecruisers one after another flew into the air due to the ignition of rag caps, while on German ships that had received similar damage, the charges in the liners stubbornly did not want to ignite. In the Great Patriotic War, over 95% of domestic guns and 100% of Germanic (except for the captured ones) had cartridge loading.
The only advantage of the cap loader was a small gain in the cost of the shot. It was precisely this that Grabin’s enemies did not fail to take advantage of (of course, he created triplex and duplex systems with sleeve loading). They launched a campaign against the designer: they say, does not appreciate the people's money.
Earlier in such cases, the strong-willed Vasily Gavrilovich went personally to Stalin and argued that he was right. But then he conceded and agreed to remake his systems under the caps. In fact, this turned out to be three years of wasted time - it was necessary to make changes to the design of the barrels of the guns, make them anew and re-conduct factory, landfills, and then troop tests.
Decoration parades
Only at the end of 1950, the first cannula, the 180-mm C-23 gun, passed factory tests at Rzhevka. In July, 1951 made 155 shots in Turkestan IN, and in January-February 1952-70 shots in the area of the Aga Zabaykalskaya railway station roads.
By this time, the Central Research Institute-58 completed technical projects of 210-mm howitzer C-33 and 280-mm mortars C-43 for capturing loader, and plant No.221 ("Barricades") ordered an experimental series of seven C-23 guns and 210 prototypes -mm howitzer C-33 and 280-mm mortars C-43.
By the end of 1955, the guns had arrived from Stalingrad to Moscow - just in time for the start of the famous Khrushchev persecution of artillery. It was decided that the C-33 howitzer and the C-43 mortar would not be adopted, and the X-NUMX-mm C-180 guns should be left in service, but not produced anymore. Several times the C-23 cannons went through parades on Red Square, arousing the admiration of Muscovites and the surprise of Western military attaches.
Bulba
Even more tragic was the fate of the duplex. From 26 in May 1956 of the year to 13 in May of 1957, the 305-mm C-73 howitzer with crank-loading was tested at the Rzhevka test site. Judging by the report, the howitzer fired perfectly, but the leadership of the landfill was extremely ill-disposed towards it. Not finding any shortcomings during the tests, the head of the range, Major-General Bulba, found fault with the low traffic ability of the AK-20 crane, without which the system cannot be re-equipped, and decided "to put the swinging part of the howitzer on the 271 object-type self-propeller."
A more illiterate decision is hard to come up with. After all, in the Finnish and Great Patriotic War, the USSR was left without a special power 305-mm howitzer because of the same mistake Tukhachevsky, who demanded to convert the collapsible towed duplex B-23 (305-mm howitzer and 203-mm gun) into SU-7 self-propelled units. The work went from 1931 to April 1938, after which it turned out that the 106-tonne SU-7 self-propelled do not hold bridges and the installation is not transported by rail.
As a result, the work had to stop. Only after the huge and unjustified losses in the Finnish war, we began to work on the towed collapsible 450-mm howitzer Br-23, but the war prevented them from completing.
The fate of the 271 object itself is similar. The gunsmith, created under the 406-mm cannon CM-54, was a monstrous monster who could not pass through ordinary bridges or under power lines, did not fit into the streets of cities, tunnels under the bridges, could not be transported on a railway platform. For these reasons, it was never adopted.
In the case of “failure of the AK-20 crane,” one, two, or even four spare cranes could be introduced into the S-73 battery. If the terrain of the crane is poor, then it can be elementary put on the chassis of the articulated tractor or tank. But if the artillery self-propelled engine fails, what to do with the monster?
How could the Major General of the technical service not understand that the C-73 is not a regimental or divisional gun, which is obliged to accompany the advancing infantry, but a piece weapon! Fifty 305-mm howitzers could in a couple of weeks turn into ruins all the pillboxes of the Mannerheim line. The Red Army needed at least 100 for such weapons.
Nevertheless, Grabin had to again give in to the generals from the GAU and take up giant self-propelled artillery installations. On the basis of C-72, C-73 and C-90 in 1954 – 1955, a large triplex was developed at the CNI-58 - 210-mm C-110 gun; 280-mm C-111A gun-howitzer and 305-mm howitzer on a single self-propelled gun carriage. The technical project was sent to the Ministry of Defense Industry 31 December 1955 of the year. Here came the decision of Khrushchev to stop work on heavy artillery.
Local Wars Superpower
Formally, Khrushchev was right - to the most powerful weapons of Grabin against the 50 megaton hydrogen bomb and the intercontinental rocket P-7! But it was the enormous destructive effect of the hydrogen bomb that excluded the possibility of its use.
But in the local wars of the second half of the twentieth century, the role of heavy artillery greatly increased compared with the wars of the 1930-ies and the Second World War. In conflicts such as, for example, in the Sinai Peninsula, in Lebanon, during artillery duels between North and South Vietnam; during the “first socialist war” between the PRC and the DRV, heavy artillery was the only type used weapons.
In the course of local conflicts, Soviet-made guns came under fire from American guns that were beyond the reach of their fire. At the direction of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the factory "Barricades" urgently began to restore the production of C-23. It was very difficult to do this, since much of the documentation and technical equipment was lost. Nevertheless, the plant team successfully coped with the task, and by the year 1971 twelve 180-mm C-23 guns had been manufactured. They were designed and launched in a series of active-rocket projectile OFNUMX with a range of 23 km.
These were the last guns of the great artillery designer Vasily Grabin.