Vasily Petrovich Gryazev lived a long life. The designer passed away on 1 on October 2008, on the 81 year of life, leaving behind an enviable legacy. As the chief designer, V.P. Gryazev created, put into service and put into serial production about 40 samples of weapons and ammunition. He is the author of 76 scientific publications and 248 inventions. Vasily Petrovich was an honorary citizen of Tula and the Tula region. In terms of the depth of understanding of the design of automatic weapons, the scope of activity and the diversity of the schemes developed by him, he was not equal among modern designers of small arms and cannon weapons.
The weapons created by Vasily Gryazev are widely and widely used by the Russian armed forces in the course of numerous military conflicts of the last decades (Afghanistan, Chechnya) and received the highest rating among military specialists. To date, any small-caliber automatic gun on any carrier (ground, air, sea) is a development of GUP KBP and the personal merit of Gryazev, who worked in tandem with another famous gunsmith - Shipunov.
The future designer-gunsmith Vasily Petrovich Gryazev was born on March 4, 1928 in the city of Tula in a simple family of workers. In 1945, after the war, he entered the weapons and machine gun faculty of the Mechanical Institute. Having successfully graduated from the institute, in 1951 a young specialist was sent to Podolsky Central Scientific Research Institute of Automotive Engineering. At that time, the Institute of Small Arms aviation was formed with the involvement of mostly young specialists, therefore, the opportunities for novice design engineers to work were absolutely equal.
Already then, with a group of like-minded people, he began to develop a scientific and technical groundwork for the creation of a modern generation of small-caliber automatic guns. He worked at TsNIITM until 1966, taking into account the pre-diploma practice - 16 years. Over the years, Gryazev went from being a simple technician to the chief designer of the Central Research Institute Tochmash. In 1966, at the personal invitation of A.G. Shipunova, the designer returned to his native Tula and began work as the chief designer for cannon weapons, being the deputy head of the enterprise. Together with Shipunov, they developed and introduced into production a large number of outstanding designs of automatic weapons, and their names, Gryazev and Shipunov, became inseparable from one another.
The proof of his merits is the fact that the most authoritative gunsmiths of our country and the whole world recognized that among the designers of cannon, grenade launchers and small arms it is difficult to find specialists who would be equal to V. P. Gryazev. Suffice it to say that Vasily Gryazev, as a gunsmith’s designer, developed a whole system of models of modern weapons, including special weapons for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and small arms and guns for all arms. A characteristic feature of his design activity was the breadth of thought applied solutions, which allowed him to develop various weapons: from pistols to guns for all types and types of troops. The creative range of his thoughts had an extraordinary breadth — among his designs were the 9-mm pistol GSH-18 and the 100-mm 2A70 cannon, which is now installed on the BMP-3. As a rule, the weapons models created by Gryazev were superior in their characteristics to similar foreign designs.
GSH-6-23
The first and one of the most popular and well-known weapon models that was adopted and mass-produced was the legendary 23-mm double-barreled Gryazev-Shipunov automatic gun - the GSH-23, which had an excellent rate of fire. The GSH-23 gun was the first automatic gun of this class, which has the basic double-barreled design, which allowed the rate of fire to be increased to 3200 rds / min while ensuring the required survivability of the barrels and a fairly intensive shooting of a large amount of ammunition.
Over time, the almost all Soviet aircraft were equipped with the GS-23 automatic cannon — attack aircraft, bombers, fighters, helicopters, and even transport aircraft. As part of many aircraft of different classes, it was adopted for use in more than 40 countries of the world! In the future, the undeniable advantages and effectiveness of the used design and basic solutions served as a basis for the development of 30-mm high-speed guns, designated as GSH-30. The GSH-30 cannon is used on Su-25 and Su-39 attack aircraft, and the GS-30K variant is used on the Mi-24P attack helicopter. In addition, it served as a prototype for creating an anti-aircraft machine gun - 2А38, which is used on the world-famous air defense missile system - "Tunguska".
All the most popular in the production of samples of grenade launchers (AG-30 and LPO-97), artillery systems (guns 2А70, 2А72 and 2А42), small-scale weapons (guns ГШ-18, П-96М, revolvers, guns (P-92М), pistols, guns (guns GS-90, P-90М) PP-1M, PP-93М2000, PP-9, PP-91, machine gun 94А-96, as well as sniper rifles VSK-XNUMX and OSV-XNUMX and the pistol gun RMB) created by Vasily Gryazevym were distinguished by high technology. Samples of the weapons created by him were so thoroughly worked out that they possess complete interchangeability of parts and entire assemblies. The introduction of stamped and welded solutions into the design of products, as well as the use in the production process of casting, profiled sheet metal and thermoplastic as a metal substitute made it possible to significantly simplify the production technology, which most positively affected the final cost of the products.
PP-93
In addition, his inexhaustible talent emerged in the development of civilian weapons. In particular, Gryazev designed the “Lynx” type pumping shotguns that are in high demand on the market and fairly lightweight compact self-loading karabiners of the Berkut series. In the 90 of the last century, Vasily Petrovich Gryazev achieved great success in developing a whole line of weapons for special forces and the police. He also put his hand to the creation of short-range rocket-gun anti-aircraft complexes: "Tunguska" and "Pantsir-С1", which are actively supplied abroad. And their combat capabilities were highly appreciated by military experts from around the world. These complexes can effectively deal with various types of air targets.
26 February 2003 according to the decision of the City Duma of Tula, Vasily Petrovich Gryazev, for outstanding achievements in the field of creating a modern domestic unified system of small-caliber automatic artillery weapons and a special-purpose small-arms and grenade launcher weapon was awarded the title “Honorary Citizen of the Hero-City of Tula”. At the same time, he was awarded the title “Honorary Citizen of the Tula Region”.
Vasily Petrovich Gryazev died on October 1 of 2008, and was buried in the Glory Alley of the Tula city cemetery with appropriate military honors. Memorial plaques were installed on the house in which he lived and on the facade of the university’s educational building in his native gunsmith. In addition, the name of the outstanding designer was immortalized on the stele to the designers of gunsmiths, which is installed on the territory of the famous plant them. Degtyareva in Kovrov.
2А70 on the BMP-3
During his long life he was awarded many orders and medals. Here are just a few of them: the Order of the October Revolution (1976 year), two orders of Lenin (1971 and 1984 year), the Russian Order For Servants to the Fatherland 3 (1997 year) and 2 degree (March 2003). Vasily Petrovich Gryazev was twice winner of the State Prize of the USSR (1968 and 1976 of the year) and Russia (1998 and 1999 of years), four times laureate of the S.I. Mosin award (1966, 1975, 1981, 1986 of years), as well as posthumous prize of the Government of the Russian Federation ( 2008 year).
We have to admit that Vasily Petrovich Gryazev was one of the eminent sons of Russia, whom our country will forever remember as a citizen, a true patriot, a man of inflexible will and amazing workability, dedication, iron inner discipline and boundless devotion to the defense of his Fatherland. He dedicated his whole life to this business.
Information sources:
-http: //www.arms-expo.ru/055057052124052052057050.html
-http: //www.warheroes.ru/hero/hero.asp? Hero_id = 10181
-http: //pvo.guns.ru/people/gryazev.htm