Memories veteran KB-60M

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zemlyansky Igor Yakovlevich, 1929, born in September 1952, in the direction of the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute. V. I. Lenin went to work at KB-60M and resigned in February 1960. Later he worked at the Donetsk Institute "YuzhNIIGiproGaz" until September 1969, as an engineer, chief designer and head of the department for transport and distribution of liquefied gas. From September 1969 to March 2005 worked at the Institute of Mine Rescue as head of laboratories for oxygen-respiratory equipment and means of anti-thermal protection of miners and mine rescuers.

Now - retired. 60M began to write memories of his work in the 1997 year at the request of V. Listrovoy, but due to his employment he was able to return to this and finish when he retired now to the 80 anniversary jubilee of the Design Bureau. A.A. Morozov.

***
For a little more than 7 years I had the opportunity to work in a design bureau that developed the famous thirty-four, and then a whole series of more modern formidable cars. I came to him after college in 1952, when veterans from Tagil returned, and the department was quickly replenished with young specialists. It was called "Design Department 60M." The work in the department under the guidance of the chief designer Alexander Alexandrovich Morozov, who created a friendly and purposeful team, was a wonderful unforgettable school. These notes (memoirs) reflect the subjective perception of events. The situation of strict secrecy in which the work was conducted, as well as the lack of communicability of the author, led to the fact that some events either fell out of sight or appeared in a distorted form. This also contributed to the fact that after leaving the department my contacts with its employees were very limited. Over the years, much has been erased in memory. Nevertheless, many vivid impressions of the hard and exciting work to create a new tank, the design of which was later recognized as outstanding by our rivals - specialists in tank engineering of the USA and Germany.

Large room of the personnel department of the plant. A dozen employees are sitting at the tables, and in front of them several “clients” shift from one foot to the other. For them, not a single chair. I find the “head of the head” I need and report that I arrived at the plant in the direction after graduation. While he is digging through the documents, I take a chair from behind an empty table and sit down. The eyes of the "head clerk" are poured with blood, and his anger is so hot. Such familiarity is not accepted here. Having found my documents, he burns even more:

- You're late for six weeks! We have already prepared materials for you in court to hold you accountable for failure to appear to work by appointment!
Fill out the form, writing an autobiography. I wonder how I would do it, standing in front of the "head clerk"? My explanations, that I was in competitions at the championship of Ukraine and the Union, bounce off him like peas. Also, the words that I already have an agreement with Kirnarsky, the chief designer of a diesel locomotive building plant about working in his bureau as a designer, bounce him off.

“You’ll go as a technologist to the procurement workshop.”

- But I…

- With such a handwriting in the designers do not take!

I understand that arguing in this institution is useless. I go to the shop, deciding in advance to flatly refuse a technologist position. The foreman listened to me kindly and said:

- I will write in your direction that you are not suitable for us in terms of qualifications, and with the personnel department you can settle the question yourself.
Again, the personnel department. Fortunately, there is no "head". A woman sitting at the next table, indifferently rummaging in the papers, writes in the direction: "He is being sent to the 60M department for the position of designer." I don't know what 60M Department is, but the main thing is by the DESIGNER!

I find the necessary building, presenting the direction to the sentry, which is carefully studying it, and rise to the office of the head of the 60M department. I am met by a thin bald man with hard cheekbones. Stretching hand:
- Morozov Alexander Alexandrovich.

She offers to sit down, takes direction and asks to tell about herself. I talk about what I was taught, about the agreement with Kirnarsky, that I was late because I was at the competitions.

- We are not engaged in turbines. We design tanks, but I think you will be able to apply your knowledge in the field of turbine engineering and gas-hydrodynamics here. I will direct you to the motor group.

Our conversation lasted more than half an hour. Morozov’s friendliness contrasted sharply with the official boorish reception in the personnel department. The upcoming interesting work and, apparently, a good team, which I was immediately introduced to, inspired optimism.

At the institute at the military department, we studied the T-34 tank, somewhere I heard that this was a tank designed by Morozov, but so suddenly I had to meet Alexander Alexandrovich.

After defending my diploma, I consistently participated in swimming competitions for my native university KPI at the “Science” society championship in Kiev, at the Ukrainian marathon swimming championship in Odessa, and then at the USSR marathon swimming championship for the 25 kilometers in the city of Sochi, which took place at the end of August 1952. After that, having received a diploma and the last scholarship of the KhPI, I went home to Frunze, although I had an order to come to work at the plant number XXUMX on the first of September. I have not been at home for more than two years and have decided that there will not be a big sin if I have three weeks to go home with my mother.

Upon arrival from Frunze, I temporarily settled with my classmate Semyon Gurfinkel. At the factory I was promised to provide a hostel in the coming days. Four days later, I was told in the personnel department that there are no places in the dormitory for young specialists, but they may temporarily place me in a working dormitory on Ray. It is one block from the factory.

The room has eight people, no furniture, except for the table and three chairs. Residents simple workers behave restrained. The room is not an example of my former life in a KPI dorm, inhabited by 108 residents, quietly and decently, even in the evenings when people come back. Some are slightly tipsy, but the strict rules of living in a hostel do not allow the entrance to the building to be substantially drunk. In the hostel of men and women roughly equally. Women live on the third floor, on the stairs of which the janitor strictly observes that men do not penetrate to the female floor. But the two-storey extension has a roof starting at the window sill of the third floor, and the fire escape to the roof of the third floor passes nearby, and with it, with some risk, you can jump to the roof of the second, and then the entrance to the women's rooms is open through the open windows. Therefore, with the onset of darkness, on the iron roof of the second floor, the steps of the desired visitors continually thunder. Police attire catches them on the roof, and a commission of the trade union committee with a police officer on duty walks through the rooms and removes the male element from them. Toilet on the first floor. This is a spacious room, along the long wall of which on a small dais eight points are cut. No cubicles or partitions. The toilet is common for men and women and the needy sit in a row, mixed. However, all quickly get used to it. Even in ancient Rome there were such public toilets. There is no buffet in the hostel and you can eat in the dining room, on the contrary, which is open from nine to twenty hours. The factory has an excellent and cheap dining room, but you can get there only at lunchtime and at the beginning of the second shift. Of course, it is not recommended to store any valuable things in the living room. In winter, there is a dressing room on the first floor, and now, while it's warm, everything should be handed over to the storage room.

Having lived in such conditions for four days, I turned to Morozov, that I was not given a place in a specialist dormitory. The next day he called me and said that they would put me in this hostel in two weeks, but for now go to the collective farm. This turned out to be a good solution to the issue. The collective farm lived in a spacious and clean hut, fed well and the work was not too hard. Upon returning from the collective farm, I was immediately lodged in a dormitory of young specialists in front of the Balashevskaya factory entrance, in a triple room on the second floor.

Two guys live in the room - graduates of a factory technical school. On the first floor of the hostel there is a buffet, where you can dine sour cream with sugar, tea with breadcakes and other dry and cold ones, as well as stock breakfast items. The negative point is the high payment for accommodation - 125 rubles, which is almost ten times more than that at the institute. The front door of the hostel is located directly opposite the Balashevskaya factory entrance. At the factory strict orders. Being late even for a couple of minutes at the checkpoint is delayed and sent to the personnel department to explain the reasons for the delay. Once I slept and only managed to tighten the trouser belt and throw a coat over my shoulders. So, with non-laced shoes and all buttons not fastened, I reached the entrance point and slipped right into 800. Those three minutes that I walked through the plant’s territory before the department no longer played a role.

The 60M department was located in the administrative and economic block of building No. XXUMX in which there were showers and a canteen. Two-thirds of the building was occupied by mechanical processing shops in which gearboxes and guitars were made. The rest was occupied by the assembly line of the tank assembly, at the finish of which the gun was calibrated, for which the tank was placed opposite the open gate from which a chimney was visible, standing at a distance of about three kilometers. A cannon and a crosshair of sight were aimed at it through a trunk crossed by threads. This arrangement of the design bureau was convenient, since in order to get into the assembly shop it was enough to go down from the second floor. This contributed to the fact that I had studied the tank design and its assembly process well in a short time. Experimental workshop number 100 was located quite far away and when my main work was concentrated there, the trips to it began to take quite a long time.

***
The first acquaintance with the work, the device in the hostel, a trip to agricultural work and familiarization with the plant took about two months. Then came a series of routine design tasks: placing fuel tanks in a bridge laying tank, installing a boiler-heater, upgrading an air cleaner, etc. In February, I, along with an experienced tester, a driver, were sent on a business trip to tank units of the Leningrad Military District. The task is to collect comments on our technology. This trip has taught me a lot. I got acquainted with the operating conditions of the machines in the shelves. It was possible to decide in favor of the plant a couple of serious controversial questions about the reasons for the failure of tanks. There were quite a few comments on trifles, often irrelevant to the design of the car, and the main complaint in all parts of that very cold winter was the flow of antifreeze from under duritovyh hoses and engine cooling system clutches. In Eastern Siberia, they got used to this and for the period of severe frosts they simply poured antifreeze, but here, in the west, they encountered such frosts and antifreeze leakage for the first time.

After my return, Morozov set me a task - to find out the cause and eliminate the leaks. Simple calculations showed that the reason is a large thermal expansion of the material of durite, loss of elasticity in the cold and a weak collar, which secures it to the nozzle. The simplest solution is to make the clutch more powerful. After analyzing and drawing a few options, I went to the experimental workshop, got up to the workbench and in the day made two versions of the new powerful clamp, and the next day I showed them to Morozov. He liked the design. After a couple of months, the new clamps began to be installed on the manufactured vehicles and their kits were sent to tank units to replace the old ones.

My first serious work was the analysis and attempt to calculate the ejection cooling system of the tank engine "Item 116", the lead designer for which was a veteran of the CB-60М M.I. Tarshenov. The engine cooling system, similar to the B-2 engine, but only unfolded, so that the cylinders lay horizontally in one plane, was a series of large-section ejectors. The coefficient of ejection of such ejectors cannot be small, but at the same time the developed head is very small. The resistance of the radiator was great and there was a surge in the ejectors. The engine overheated and it was the main drawback of the product. The engine was provided with a compressor. AK-150, which fed the air into the ejector built into the breech gun providing blowdown of the barrel after the shot. Very soon after this, tank guns appeared with receivers on the barrel into which, when fired, powder gases enter the Kalashnikov assault rifle, and then they eject the gases remaining in the barrel.

I did the calculation of the ejectors, which showed that their cross section should be reduced by a third. However, by this time, as a result of a number of shortcomings, including those listed here, interest in the 416 product disappeared and no more work was carried out on its modernization. MASS MEDIA. I had normal business relations with Tarshenov, despite his isolation and taciturnity. It seemed that he was offended by something. Soon he left the KB, and I never met him again.

***
Once I was called to Morozov. Inviting me to sit down at a table in a corner of his office, he pulled out a couple of small books from a safe. Books turned out to be about atomic weapons and its effects on various objects. Today this can be read in textbooks on civil defense.

- Materials are completely secret. Books can not be removed from the office. Sit here and work. Don't pay attention to me. At the break and at the end of the book hand over to me. These materials will be useful to you soon.

Materials useful after three days.

In the department an unusual revival. Morozov and his closest assistants: Moloshtanov, Omelyanovich, Mitnik, Volkov, Stepanov - excitedly rush from the office to the holy of holies - the room of new developments and layout - and back. Soon they call me there. The department received a task - to urgently develop and manufacture a machine for reconnaissance of the explosion site and the zone of radioactive fallout for the next atomic test series immediately after the atomic bomb explosion. The conditions are very tough. Tank armor is too weak protection against radioactive radiation. Protection in the form of thick lead screens is required. Calculations show that the weight of these screens will crush the tank chassis.

G.A. Omelyanovich suggests putting a cylindrical lead capsule instead of a turret into a tank, placing the crew in it, including the driver. In this case, the overload of the chassis is not too big. Gradually, the discussion centers around discussing the details of this option. A working group of designers is immediately created, a special room is allocated (an extremely secret task) and the decision is made - to work as during a war, for twelve hours. Managing the design of the capsule is entrusted to a young specialist, a former front-line soldier, the commander of an armored train, Yalovkin, who managed to finish the institute two years before me. Alterations on the hull and on the control system are entrusted to Stepanov, and the ventilation system and protection from radioactive dust to me.

Technologists and workers of workshops are connected to work. Developed drawings on the same day multiply on blue and go to the shop. It took less than two months to design, manufacture and test a new car. Its protective properties turned out to be much better than it was set, with full compliance with the main functional purpose - exploration of the area and sampling of soil and dust.

Soon I was transferred to the bureau of new design development and layout, headed by G.А. Omelyanovich. A designer with a rich imagination and imagination, a “generator of ideas,” a tactful and attentive comrade, Georgy Andreevich, could not imagine himself without everyday design work. Leaving for vacation on his “Moskvich”, he was already on the third - the fifth day losing peace and returning to his workplace. Experienced veterans worked with him in the office: an energetic and omnipresent linker and organizer of the production of models and models of machines developed by V.D. Listrova, specialist in armored cabinets G.P. Fomenko, virtuoso of his own business, copier M.Polyakova, selflessly in love with his work, a front-line soldier, a graduate of the Kharkov Automobile and Road Construction Institute, a linker A.Grositsky. The new generation of designers who came to 1952-1955 was represented by M. Baisov, V. Podgorny, V. Volobuev, A. Terekhov, E. Morozov and others. Replenished with young professionals and other divisions of the department. By the end of 1955, the department was a strong established design team.

Morozov returned from Tagil at the start of 1952. The design bureau at the Kharkov plant, evacuated to the Urals at the beginning of the war, began to revive along with the plant in 1944, and at first engaged in organizing the serial production of the T-44 tank and then the T-54 tank. A small group of designers engaged in new developments, sometimes the most fantastic. This period, local wits dubbed the "Thousand and One Nights" or "Tales of Scheherazade." The chief designer of tank construction was Schukin MN, formerly the chief designer of a machine-building plant in the city of Kirov. During this period, under the leadership of Tarshinov, the previously mentioned tank "Product 416" was developed. By 1952, only a few people returned from Tagil to Kharkov. Recruitment took place mainly at the expense of young professionals, the influx of which increased in 1952-1954.

The team at 60-M was a typical team of intellectuals of the fifties. The strict discipline of the military factory and the regime of secrecy made people more restrained, serious and obligatory. No doubt we were all patriots, in the best sense of the word. Everyone was aware of the importance of our work for strengthening the country's defense and gave all this power to this work. However, the situation of intelligence and humanity excluded or, at least, suppressed the appearance of hurray-patriots, demagogues and fanatics. As I recall, there was no partklykush in the department.

At the end of October, 1956, the staff increasingly gathered in groups, discussing the growing events in Hungary. Discussions were conducted from a neutral position, to the extent possible in an environment that has firmly learned that the USSR is a stronghold of peace and democracy. True, our confidence about democracy was somewhat undermined by the recent revelations of the Stalin cult.

After the invasion of Hungary by our troops, conversations were transferred mainly to the professional plane. We received information about the action of our tanks. It turned out that in urban conditions they are vulnerable from above. In this case, the most reliable means of protection is high-explosive shells from a sufficiently large distance to any suspicious window or attic. Listening to this professional conversation, Omelyanovich suddenly remarked: "But you are all in the soul on the side of the Hungarians." Nobody objected to him, and the discussion stopped by itself.

***
He was short, with a smoothly brushed head on a side parting, he was quickly moving his shoulder forward between the drawing boards. Morozov followed him. They stopped at the boards of leading designers and Morozov gave brief explanations.

- This is Baran Yakov Ionovich, Deputy Morozov in Tagil. Now he has returned to Kharkov, - my neighbor Fomenko told me. So I first saw Ya.I. The ram, with whom I later had to work, as with Omelyanovich, in close cooperation.

ME AND. Baran quickly joined the work, freeing Morozov from the many current affairs related to new developments. The man is extremely conscientious and punctual, he delved deeply into each design, carefully checked the drawings and was still busy with many things, staying in the department almost every day until 19-21 hours. Obviously, with the arrival of Baran, Morozov finally decided to undertake the development of a new generation tank. At first it was a machine without a name and number, then a 430 machine, then several intermediate modifications, and finally, in serial production, it received the T-64 index.

***
Tank T-54 was manufactured in series. As a result of the work of NTK, the Kharkov and Ural design bureaus, its design was constantly improved. Almost every year there was a modification that was significantly different from the previous one. The gun has changed - its stabilization appeared, at first only in the vertical plane, and then in both planes. Night vision devices were installed for the driver, the commander and the gunner, the oil radiator was replaced, a new air filter was installed, the ammunition and the design of the fuel tanks were changed. It took a lot of work to equip the tank for movement under water. Later, measures were taken to increase the resistance of the machine to the effects of a shock wave, hard radiation and radioactive dust during and after the atomic explosion. In the last two papers I had the opportunity to participate as a leader.

But with all this, the T-54 tank, developed immediately after the war based on the T-44 tank, remained a machine, the layout of which was rigidly tied at its inception, however, the machine was very successful, substantially superior to the foreign models that existed in the fifties.
The lead plant for the development of the T-54, and subsequently the T-55 tank, was the Uralsky plant, from where Morozov moved to Kharkiv at the beginning of the 1952 of the year. The Kharkov design bureau, evacuated to the Urals at the beginning of the war, began to revive when the factory was restored at the beginning of 1944, and mainly served the current production.

Obviously, Morozov had long had the idea of ​​creating a tank with a new layout that would allow, without increasing the mass of the machine, to sharply increase its impact force and armor protection. This idea could be realized only in close cooperation with the developers of weapons, instruments and engines. In a short time, Morozov managed to coordinate the efforts of allies, as a result of which the idea of ​​creating a new machine took on a real shape. The most significant moment of the initial development period was the selection of a fundamentally new layout of the engine compartment of the machine. Dizelists have proposed a new two-stroke engine to meet the moving pistons with a trailed exhaust turbine and a trailed supercharger. Actually, it’s not an engine, but its circuit, since a single-cylinder block still existed in kind. Perhaps, never before had the engine design been linked so closely with the layout of the engine compartment of the machine. More than a dozen options were drawn. Diesel engineers of the Altai plant joined in the competition. The deputy chief designer Petrov, working behind a drawing board near us, developed the next engine layout within one to two days. The chief designer Artyomov sketched the sketches of the following options right there, sitting in the corner of the room. And we entered these options in the engine compartment, comparing them with the options for the future engine. The Altaians relied on rich experience and assembled the engine from parts and assemblies of the renowned B-2 diesel engine. This was their strength and weakness at the same time, since the new engine created by the Kharkiv simply had to be better than a veteran with twenty years of experience.

Although I did not have to participate directly in the development of a diesel engine, but story its development deserves a special chapter.


Heart of tank


In the early 1930s, the first Soviet production tanks were equipped with gas-fired water-cooled engines M-5, and then M-17. Automobile engines were installed on light tanks. Abroad, the situation was similar. In England, Rolls-Royce, Leyland and Ricardo engines were used, in Germany - Maybach, Daimler-Benz, Argus, in France - Spanish-Suiza, Renault. All these were aviation liquid-cooled gasoline engines. At this time in aviation there was a surge in interest in diesels. For slow-moving aircraft with a large radius of action, a diesel engine, despite its large specific gravity, is more profitable, since it consumes one and a half times less fuel. With a flight duration of more than five to seven hours, fuel economy in weight exceeds the difference in the masses of the gasoline engine and diesel. The whole question is the reliability and durability of a diesel engine with a specific gravity of not more than 1,2 kg / losh.silu. In Germany, Junkers developed an original two-stroke aviation diesel engine with moving pistons, which aroused wide interest in all countries, including the USSR. However, the Germans were not able to bring this diesel to mass production. Both aircraft and tanks in Germany during the war had gas engines. At us, at the research and development aircraft engine institute, a young professor A.D. Charomsky. At the same time, four-stroke V-shaped diesels (D-50 and others) were developed. There were attempts to install these diesels on airplanes, for example, DB-240 designed by R.L. Bartini, but a small motor resource and frequent breakdowns forced to abandon them. The development of the 12-cylinder four-stroke diesel engine V-2 was started by him as an aircraft. At the Kharkov Locomotive Plant, where tanks were being manufactured at that time, they quickly appreciated the potential advantages of the diesel engine and continued to work on it with the goal of creating an engine for the tank. Since 1932, a special diesel design bureau and pilot production were organized in the old monastery in the city center.

I will not argue that Russia is the birthplace of elephants, but with respect to diesel engines, especially tank ones, it is necessary to show objectivity and justice. At the beginning of the century, due to the fact that Russia was ahead of other countries in oil production, the outstanding chemist, inventor and entrepreneur Nobel launched the production of diesel engines and oil mills at Russian factories in St. Petersburg, Kolomna, Bryansk, Tokmak and Sormovo. At this time, gas engines prevailed in Europe and the USA. As a result, the world's first motor ship with Kolomna diesel engines floated down the Volga. Russian submarines were first supplied with diesel engines instead of gasoline engines. In 1908, a two-stroke diesel engine was built in Kolomna to meet moving pistons, the scheme of which was later borrowed by Fairbanks-Morse, Junkers, MAN and others. The engines were built in-line: both horizontal and vertical. Later appeared diesel engines, built according to the scheme delta. But Russia's position in the field of diesel construction due to the general backwardness of mechanical engineering and the subsequent devastation as a result of the war and revolution were soon lost. Engineering firms in the West, especially Germany and the United States, took the lead. Millions of cars were produced, tens of thousands of aircraft engines, and ship diesel engines reached 30 thousand power. horsepower with a mass in excess of 1200 tons. Engine designs were improved along with their manufacturing technology. To maintain the technical level of engine-building, Russia and then the USSR were forced to purchase licenses from foreign companies: MAN, Sulzer, Hispano-Suiza, Dwarf and RON, Reith-Cyclone, etc. During World War I, domestic factories built no more than one-fifth of the engines used in aviation and cars made in Russia. In the late twenties in the USSR there were foreign concessions for the construction of motor plants, including the Junkers concession. At the beginning of the 1930s, concessions were liquidated, as firms did not fulfill their obligations. In the USSR, strong engine design bureaus were organized. Small semi-handicraft design groups existed before. Between 1920 and 1928 in the USSR, more than forty models of aircraft and automobile engines were developed, many of which were built in one or several samples, but none of them went into mass production. One of the first was the M-11 aircraft engine with the 100 horsepower, which was manufactured from the 1928 of the year in a large series until the beginning of the 50-s. In recent years, its power has been brought to 145 hp. Under licenses and simply copied were the M-5, M-6, M-15, M-17, M-22, M-25 aircraft engines and many others. All of these engines worked on gasoline and had a specific fuel consumption 320-380 g / hp. at one o'clock. Gasoline is extremely flammable and explosive. The diesel has a specific fuel consumption 170-210 g / hp. per hour, and in a barrel with diesel oil (diesel fuel) you can put out the torch. All this provides a diesel engine with a greater power reserve and lower fire risk.

At the end of AD 1953, Charomsky created a special department for the development of tank diesel on the basis of Plant No. 75. From the first days, employees of this department developed diesel in close cooperation with the linkers of the 60M department. The basic concept of the layout was that the engine, having the form of a low parallelepiped, almost square in plan, was located in the tank's stern itself, so that the rear crankshaft was coaxial with two seven-speed planetary gearboxes, which are also planetary turning mechanisms. Above the engine housed water and oil coolers, battery ejectors and air cleaner. As a result, the layout of the engine compartment turned out to be very dense and at the same time providing quick and convenient access to all units. Although the basic concept of the layout was adopted very soon, it finally settled long and painfully. The location of the gas turbine and the centrifugal supercharger was changed several times, which, in turn, attracted the rearrangement of everything that was above the engine. In the first version, the engine was a four-cylinder horsepower 680. The service life of the engine was small. Pistons were burning and there were a lot of other, smaller troubles. In the cells of the old monastery, there was an endless overhaul of engines, and only occasionally did the hysterical roar of the motor being tested. Engine problems seriously delayed the transfer of the 430 tank to mass production. In this regard, it was decided at the Ural plant to continue the manufacture of tanks with the B-2 engine and after the start of production in Kharkov - the T-64 tank. The new model of the Ural tank received an index T-72.

The number of cylinders of the Charomsky engine was increased to five, the material of the pistons was replaced, the steel heads were put on the pistons, the flow section of the turbine was changed, the power of the HP 700 was limited. and in the early sixties, the engine could be considered finished and fairly reliable. Tank T-64 went into the series.

Work on the engine continued.

The adopted layout of the engine compartment allowed to significantly reduce the volume of the engine compartment and increase the size of combat. The diameter of the shoulder strap grew, because of which it was necessary to collapse the side, making them of armor of variable thickness. All this made it possible to place a more powerful gun while maintaining the mass of the machine within 36 tons.

Soon got a new gun. It was more than a ton heavier than a cannon mounted on a T-54 tank, with a massive breech. The unitary cartridges for it were much heavier than the serial ones, and it was possible to place all this economy only in an unusually large diameter tower. The number of devices that had to be placed in the fighting compartment, grew like a snowball. It was tempting to reduce the weight of the car due to the lightweight chassis. At the same time it was necessary to increase the smoothness of the car. As a result, the chassis has turned out completely new and unlike the T-54 chassis.

Chassis group under the direction of V.D. Volkova regarding the number of parts of the tank under her jurisdiction was quite numerous. So for many months the track of the caterpillar was occupied by N.K. Volobuev, the only one from the group whose workplace was in our new design room. Sloth also worked for a long time V.K. Duz, and shock absorbers and torsion bars a whole group. Only the caterpillar finger had no personal developer. Caterpillar remained all-metal. Various options with silent blocks and pillows on the tracks appeared later. The diameter of the rollers was reduced, and their number increased to six on board. which was the most noticeable difference between the new tank and the T-55 tank. The result of this painstaking work by the team of the chassis group, with the active participation of Morozov and Baran, was a design that was almost unchanged on subsequent models of tanks.

One of the most innovative knots of the car was the planetary gearbox. It is possible to construct it, as well as play a game of chess, in many different ways. Even if we discard the obviously vicious ones, there are many, at first glance, just excellent ones, but most of them are fraught with flaws that can only be revealed through painstaking and thoughtful analysis. An inexhaustible source of these options was the head. bureau of promising developments Georgy Andreevich Omelyanovich. Almost every morning for six months he, head. Transmission groups Levit, Baran and Morozov himself - all venerable "box makers" - heatedly discussed another option. “Pre-selector switch-on”, “power circulation”, “solonets”, “drove” and other specific terms hung thickly above this company, which often turns into a scream.
The discussion of the designs of other nodes was less expansive. Usually around the 16 clock Morozov appeared at the drawing board. He was often accompanied by Baran. Morozov usually sat on the nearest table, pressed his right leg under him, and with his knee another propped up his chin and looked at the drawing for several minutes. Then began the analysis of the structure and its comparison with the previous versions, as usually it was not the first. Morozov, as a rule, listened very carefully to the developer, carefully weighing his arguments. I also listened to everyone involved in the development of this site to some extent and, if time allowed, suggested that I think again. Such a discussion was often delayed until the 20-21 hour. Thus, each node was worked out in several versions and only after the design withstood the criticism of technological, technical and economic parameters, was the approval given for the development of working drawings. But this concerned only the nodes going to the car.

Innovative elements of the tank design were developed by their authors without undue interference Morozov and Baran. So, for example, the centrifugal blower-separator of air supplied to the fighting compartment of a tank during the passage of terrain contaminated radiation, I was allowed to develop and manufacture an experimental sample, and then test it in the laboratory of diesel operators almost without control from above. Only when I presented the test report the construction was examined in detail and I received a team to develop working drawings and transfer them to the workshop for the manufacture of a supercharger instance for an experienced tank. Thus, the freedom of creativity at the stage of the birth of the design was ensured.

I have developed a hatch for ejection of spent cartridges and an ejector for the engine cooling system. I also took part in the development of the air cleaner and the heating boiler. The disadvantage of the existing boiler was the need to manually turn the handle of its fan before installing batteries on the car, which in heavy frosts have to be stored in a warm room. I set myself the task to create a heating boiler, which required only a match and a short rotation of the handle for my start-up work. Such a vortex-burning boiler with an evaporator in the impeller disk was manufactured and tested in workshop No. 640. The first starts of the boiler were unsuccessful. But I quickly discovered my mistake. When calculating the Segner wheel, I incorrectly took the molecular weight of diesel fumes, counting on their dissociation. But the molecular weight turned out to be large and the vapor outflow at a low speed, which did not ensure a stable rotation of the fan — the Segner wheel. Only after I added water to the diesel, did the boiler work as it was calculated. The work of the boiler looked spectacular and I decided to demonstrate it to the military representatives and the management of the workshop No. XXUMX. The exhaust pipe of the boiler rose above it almost to the roof of the workshop, and it created such strong traction that the boiler was buzzing like a siren. Since there could not be such a pipe in a tank, I put a heavy steel disk on a flat pipe cut, which left only a small gap for the exit of flue gases. Spectators gathered in the aisle between the two tanks behind which stood the cauldron.

I started the boiler. The boiler fan spun up and sang in a high voice. For some reason, the supply of diesel to the Segner boiler wheel was interrupted and the flame went out. I found that the supply pipe is diesel squeezed. when I adjusted the tube in a hot pot a portion of diesel fuel arrived. Cotton happened. The sound was deafening. A heavy disk flew up and rumbled along the steel rafters of the roof, then fell on the turret of one of the tanks. I and the workers of the workshop were stunned, but remained in their places, and three military representatives immediately dived under the bottoms of tanks. Of course, after this incident, the discussion of the design and merits of the boiler took on a specific character.

When everyone expressed their attitude to the incident in words that I am missing here, it was recognized that such a boiler is of interest, but the need to add water makes its operation impossible, since in cold weather the water will freeze.
So my idea of ​​a boiler failed, although in other conditions the combination of Segner wheels with a centrifugal fan can be fruitful. R

Any innovative work involves inevitable risk. If everything that was conceived was perfect, then the number of employees in the design bureau could be reduced to three to five people, and the rest of the work should be assigned to computers and other office equipment.

As the general scheme of the new tank emerged, initially a relatively narrow circle of designers involved in the development expanded and soon almost all of the design department employees were involved, with the exception of the leading mass production. At the same time, the role of linkers and mockups, which were played by A.S., Grositsky and V.D. Listrava. To them from all flocked dimensions of nodes that changed, as in a kaleidoscope. Knots and devices clung to each other, mounted or not joined. Linkers patiently dismantled these debris, often resorting to the mediation of the Chief and his deputy, Jacob Ionovich Baran. As the construction was being completed in the experimental workshop, the model makers, under the guidance of Listrovsky, produced a wooden model, at first only the fighting compartment, and then the tank as a whole. During the development, models of one-tenths of life-size were fabricated, extremely carefully made, with all the details. Unfortunately, few could see this filigree work. For the models, special cases were made - cases with soft lodgements inside and padded locks outside. Obviously, and now these wonderful models are stored in the depths of the first department.

In the country during this period there were several design organizations developing tanks. Some of them were in a clearly privileged position, for example, the Leningrad design bureau of Joseph Kotin, which in terms of staff was several times higher than the Kharkiv Morozov bureau. Kotin, an energetic and punchy administrator, was all the time in full view of the ministerial authorities and the customer, and skillfully used it. And yet, as time has shown, Morozov KB won the competition. Developments of other design bureaus were gradually superseded by designs developed at Morozov Design Bureau. In my opinion, the obvious design talent of Alexander Alexandrovich and his chosen style of work and relationships with employees played a decisive role in this.

Morozov can not be called a democrat. Deeply delving into each design, he sought its thorough elaboration, giving the developer enough time and freedom, but he made the final decision himself, and in a peremptory form. Thus, the finished design of the tank was subordinated to a single creative idea and style - the style of Morozov. Taking us to various meetings and project reviews at the General Staff Scientific and Technical Committee or the Ministry, he repeatedly warned: “No matter what I say during a report or conversation with a customer, even if I speak an obvious absurdity, do not interfere in the conversation without my request.” For the design, he was solely responsible and never substituted his subordinates. Of course, such a style was possible only if there was unquestioned authority, design talent, hard work and the ability to select personnel. Relationship Morozov with employees were not always smooth. A number of his colleagues, possessing remarkable design abilities and a strong character, were forced to leave. Among them, M.I. Tarshinov, Trashutin, Kalugin.

This can be treated differently, but it is obvious that a solid technical policy in the KB can only be carried out with an authoritarian leadership. Two bears in one den can not get along. The most correct in this case is the use of capable, but not accustomed developers on other independent areas of the design front. So, by the way, they acted with the listed comrades, which does honor to the management of the plant and the industry.

As a non-partisan person and not inclined towards social work, it is difficult for me to judge the role of the CPSU in the activities of the KB. When I myself performed quite important tasks and being the lead designer, I did not notice its influence on my work. For a long time about the presence of a party organization in the KB I could guess. A.A. Morozov joined the party in 1944, at the age of forty, for five years being the chief designer. Prior to that, he, as a “rotten intellectual,” was obviously not invited to the party. Upon admission to the party A.A. Morozov said the phrase that SP Korolyov said under the same circumstances: “I enter because I do not think of my further activities outside the party’s ranks.” The phrase, frankly, ambiguous.
Partyorg department was the head. farm VI Sharov is a modest, serious and reasonable person. But the time came for the election campaign. Long before the meeting, one of the young designers - Belousov - began campaigning for his candidacy for the post of party secretary of the department. Some people sincerely rejoiced at this, as many did not want to occupy this post. Being elected, Belousov launched a stormy activity, which soon boiled down to attacks on Morozov. I did not know the details, but I saw that Morozov had changed a lot in a few days. He looked despondent, pale, and distracted. Obviously, he was deeply shocked by these unjust accusations. Most of the department’s staff sincerely sympathized with Aleksandr Aleksandrovich. Seeking to enlist the support of the “masses,” Belousov organized a general meeting of the department, hoping that there would be offended by the Chief. But the meeting split and it became clear to everyone that on the side of Belousov there were few idlers and buzotery, and on the side of Morozov they were the most active and qualified specialists. The decision, as far as I remember, was not taken, but gradually the passions subsided and Belousov was transferred to the party work with a rise, and Morozov came to his senses for a long time.

During the management of work on the modernization of T-54, I had to visit a number of organizations in search of the necessary materials and manufacture of parts, as well as obtain information about any work to improve the protective properties of screens made of various materials when exposed to severe radioactive radiation. Periodically there were rumors that a gamma-ray-impermeable material was found, but when checking it turned out that this was another duck. I had to periodically deal with protection from hard radiation until I retired. In the 2001 year, while developing protective clothing for Chernobyl victims, I visited the Yuzhny enterprise in Dnepropetrovsk, where ballistic missiles are made.

One engineer, a resident of Dnepropetrovsk, as it later turned out to be a scoundrel with no specific occupation, acted as an intermediary between two authors of the development of a new material, c.t. n., the staff of KB YUZHNY and our research institute of mine-rescue business promising to create a material that with a thickness of 5 - 8 mm and a mass of one square meter no more than 8 kg weakened the hard radiation tenfold. He sought to conclude an agreement with an advance payment allegedly necessary for the acquisition of components of a new material and the creation of a laboratory installation for testing it. However, in a personal meeting with the aforementioned authors, I found out that they did not promise anything like this to our mediator. Only high elasticity is studied from known anti-radiation screens.European resonance protection is theoretically possible, but it is still a long way from its practical implementation.They do not know anything about the intermediary’s attempt to conclude an agreement with us, and he obviously wanted to get an advance and then lower the brakes.

Insulating and sealing materials were necessary for the upgraded tank. In search of such materials, I went to the Moscow Institute of Aviation Materials, having previously learned that it is in the area of ​​Radio Street. Going out on the corner of st. Radio and Bauman began to ask passers-by where IAM. The first counter told me that they do not know this. Another counter made a stone face and did not answer. The fifth and sixth said that this is obviously not here, but most likely in Khimki. Two more people could not tell me anything. During this time, I twice walked the neighborhood adjacent to the street. Radio, until I finally met an old man, who after hearing me said:

- You just fool around playing in secrecy. You walk around this institute. Here he is. and he touched the wall of a tall gray building towering above its neighbors, including the Zhukovsky Museum. “And his aisle and personnel department are located in the depths of the courtyard across the street, Radio Street. There, too, there are no plates, but you climb the wooden porch and immediately get to the pass office. ” Indeed, all turned out well. I quickly issued a pass, received instructions on how to find an entrance to the institute. In the laboratory of insulation materials I was greeted warmly and I agreed that they would give us insulation mats from their stocks, the funds for them should be obtained in Minaviaprom.

My subsequent experience as a designer or design manager in construction, in other organizations, faced with vicious practice, when, after finishing the development of the facility, its construction and testing, all funding for improvement and modernization was completely discontinued. It became especially tough to be observed after the introduction of the “Unified system for design documentation”. It is necessary to open a new job, change the numbering and indexes, in other words, completely disassemble the design documentation. In my tenure in KB-60M, the numbering system for the drawings was developed in the department by the normal controller with the agreement of the chief designer. It was widely practiced to borrow drawings from previous projects and fixes associated with various design changes or bug fixes. On some tracing paper, several tens of changes came up, and only then was the drawing processed, and a new tracing paper was made, which again became overgrown with changes.

This greatly saved the work of designers, although (partly) was due to the lack of drawing paper and tracing paper. We then drew on expired paper - blue or other similar. Whatman was used only for general general species. The main argument of the current paperwork with a complete rework of the drawings is the desire to show any work as fundamentally new, with new funding and, possibly, with a premium for new development. However, it should be noted that in KB-60M I was absolutely not connected with orders and financing.

After the completion of work on the object 430 KB gradually moved to the further development of the design of this machine. A drawing of a fighting compartment with a gun loading separate machine appeared on Grositsky’s board, a reservation system was being finalized, etc. So, gradually, began to create a tank T-64. Of course, the main work on the 430 object moved to the part of the serial production department, which at that time was headed by A.A. Moloshtanov. His first assistant was LK. Sorokina, who possessed an excellent memory and was guided in a mass of many thousands of drawings, as in her own kitchen.

In the spring of 1959, the Division suffered a loss. The main linker LK died. Grositsky, a big enthusiast of his work, who in three days could draw a new version of the layout of the machine on the scale of 1: 5 so that it could be shown to any bosses. He had many dimensions of various nodes, which he placed in endless variants on a general drawing. The rest of the staff, hardened by the war and relatively young, kept vigorously and even hurt infrequently.

As a designer, more inclined to work independently, I took a limited part in the main work of the department, creating the 430 product and beyond. I was assigned to work on the modernization of the T-54 tank, which subsequently received the T-55 index, in terms of anti-nuclear protection and underwater driving.

The equipment of the tank T-55 was started by the son of A.A. Morozov Yevgeny. He even traveled to Czechoslovakia to get acquainted with their experience in equipping a tank in semi-handicraft conditions. Czechoslovakians equipped and tested several vehicles, but it was necessary to make such changes in the T-54 tank that would simplify and make more reliable and less laborious preparation of the vehicle for underwater driving in the field. In addition, it was necessary to equip the machine with devices that reduce the impact of an atomic explosion on the crew. In the end, Morozov decided to entrust this work to me.

In Nizhny Tagil the same leader was D.K. Vasiliev. To check the water and air permeability of the crew compartment and the tank as a whole, we manufactured an air tube with a fan.

There were two options for sealing the shoulder strap: with the help of a pneumatic chamber, placed under the tower, and a rubber cuff, tightened around the shoulder strap. A fan on the engine bulkhead was developed to improve the engine's air supply during underwater driving, a system for ejecting spent cartridges through a hatch in the rear of the tower was developed, a system of emergency sealing of the crew compartment when exposed to hard radiation from an atomic explosion with a gamma radiation sensor and pyropatrons acting on the sealing elements . Developed a seal coaxial machine gun and cannon and sealing the roof of the engine compartment. I (at the level of the invention) proposed a centrifugal blower-air separator for cleaning from radioactive dust. Tests of the separator showed that the degree of purification reaches 99,8%. I decided to use it also for heating the fighting compartment of the tank, for which I made an air intake under the oil radiator. The subsequent test runs that I conducted with the participation of the representative of the General Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Kuleshov, showed that this was an unfortunate decision.

On a frosty night, when the supercharger was turned on, it became warm in the tank, but the supercharger was driving air with exhaust gases and it was possible to get angry in the tank. When driving in marching, it did not threaten the driver, since his head was outside, but the rest of the crew were exposed to this danger. This deficiency could be eliminated at the cost of alterations in the engine compartment, which was not the case. I had to transfer the blower to another place and refuse heating, which was especially appreciated by the driver, as the warm air warmed his back. A lieutenant colonel from the General Staff Kuleshov came from the General Staff with an order to conduct tests literally “yesterday”, therefore running tests at the landfill were conducted around the clock in four shifts, and during the shift work the previous tester lingered for an hour to transfer the shift without stopping the car. Every six hours it was supposed to shoot the squibs, controlling the tank sealing system and ventilation, which was mainly done on the go. The driver mechanics changed every six hours.

I Kuleshov and skated in the tank for twelve hours, occasionally replacing the driver for half an hour - an hour. Before that, I drove the T-34 tank for ten minutes, when I was at the training camp after the fourth year of the institute. The difference in driving the T-34 and the T-54 was very noticeable. The turns were made more smoothly and it was not necessary to give full gas when abruptly taking one of the levers towards you. The rest of the time I usually sat with the commander and took notes during the tests. Driving along the landfill area broken by tanks in such a way that it represented a wave-shaped road with holes and mounds between them up to one and a half meters was tiring, since all the time it was necessary to hold in order not to beat your head against the viewing devices of the commander's turret. Sometimes a test engineer from the experimental workshop No. 640 traveled with us. Total 1000 reeled kilometers without any breakdowns.

Sea trials were carried out for three days. After that, Kuleshov demanded two typists and a separate room. Two days later, a voluminous test report was written and intertwined. Night train Kuleshov took the report to Moscow.

Tests of the car in the movement under water were carried out later, in the division, lodging in the city of Cherkasy. With the military representative of the plant, I went to the division. When crossing the Dnieper bridge, we saw that there was a continuous stream of ice along the river. From the part we gave a telegram that, in connection with the ice drift, tests are impossible, and returned to Kharkov. A couple of weeks received an order - to conduct tests no matter what. Left again. This time, when moving across the Dnieper, they saw that it was tightly bound with ice, but the order was an order. They sent intelligence, which reported that seventy kilometers from Cherkasy there is a bay, which is partially covered with ice. We drove there in a column of two experimental tanks, a floating conveyor, a Studebaker and two jeeps.

Bay (estuary) was steep banks. I had to blow them up. The ice broke up the floating conveyor. We began to prepare the tanks for underwater driving. At sunset - and in the winter it comes early - they finished training by putting pipes-holes on the cars. The personnel were built, and the division commander began a speech in which he stressed the importance of the tests. The crew members standing before us in the ranks had a pitiful look, as they were pretty tired and cold over the day. They obviously didn’t want to go in the tank under the ice: this is the first time and the end is unknown. At this time the snow fell. I suggested to the commander to postpone the tests for the morning, with which he agreed.

The next morning, the building again and again the order "On the machines." Started to warm up the motors. I went down the tube into the tank. I look - the young guys are sitting pale and have a depressed look. They ask me the question: “Will you go with us?” “Yes,” I reply, “As an author, I must myself test my creation.” Those guys immediately thawed out, and they even began to smile: if the designer is with them, then it's okay.

Send for the first time. In the tube-laze, its strikes against floating ice floats resound. Came out of the water and drove around the meadow for half a kilometer, turning the tower to the left and right. The driver and I, sitting on the site of the commander, opened the hatches and closed them again. When moving under water, a small droplet leak was observed in them, which they considered acceptable. Then they replaced the manholes with snorkel pipes with a diameter of 100 mm and walked many times through the bay.
PE happened in the evening. According to the program, we had to walk along the bottom, go ashore, turn the tower on 90є to the left and to the right and go under the water again. In the morning frost hit. The surface of the bay and the tanks began to be covered with ice. When crossing the bay once again, I felt a jet of water hit me in the back. Water flowed quickly around the perimeter of the tower. When we passed the deepest spot (4,5 meters) and began to ashore, water rushed to the fan, and the engine choked. The gun was already sticking out of the water, and the commander's hatch was almost level with the surface. After some discussion, we decided to go out. Opened the hatch. The water rushed into him with a wide stream, and we quickly climbed out into a transporter standing nearby, pretty wet. They changed clothes for what they turned up, took a glass of vodka and went home, considering the tests completed. When the tank was pulled ashore, it turned out that the rubber inflatable chamber, held outside by hemp rope, froze and crawled out of the gap when the tower was turning and burst.

The next day, my partner, the military representative from our plant, suggested personally conducting an experiment to start the engine, which had stalled under water at a depth of 5 meters. This was not in the test program, and I, together with the regimental commander, dissuaded him from this risky undertaking. Later, in the summer, it was not possible to avoid the tragedy in the same regiment. Tanks crossed the Dnieper column. The bottom was very muddy and muddy. When one tank stalled, it followed him crawled on him and broke the snorkel. The crew did not have time to close the cap on the snorkel and drowned.

Several times I had to work with Kuleshov at the Kubinka training ground. It was very inconvenient to get there, because the train at that time on the Smolensk road did not go. There we were engaged in our sampling machine in the atomic explosion zone and the T-55, which had been under the explosion, and during the first inspection at the landfill in Semipalatinsk heavily faded, so the time spent in close proximity to them was limited to ten minutes (this is according to the old very free rules). Now the background has become much weaker and it was possible to work for half an hour. On one of the days when we were activating the state of the car, the adjutant came running with the order: "All the officers will gather in the assembly hall." I was left alone and went to Moscow. Upon arrival, I learned that the Minister of Defense, Marshal Zhukov, had been removed from his post. Then my uncle, a colonel who worked at the General Staff, told me how much trouble there was in their office. They removed the security of the building from the KGB officers and put officers of the General Staff on the posts. He himself was put on the post where the KGB sergeant was standing. Two tanks drove to the headquarters, arriving from the unit under the Kubinka. The whole division was alarmed, but only two cars were able to pass this way without delays and breakdowns. Then from this were made relevant organizational findings.

***

In 1957 I was called to retrain for military training, which took place on the basis of the Kharkov Tank School in the form of lectures. On the first day we read the general provisions on the organization of the garrison service. On the second day there was a lecture on the design of the T-54 tank and the features of its operation. Finally, on the third day, we proceeded to study the T-55 tank. The lecturer, the lieutenant colonel at the story of the T-55 was confused all the time and covered many things vaguely. Where he got information about the tank is unknown to me. I did not write the instruction manual. Obviously Vasiliev did it in Tagil. My comrades, who knew that I was the lead designer for the T-55, when the lecturer stuttered and confused, pushed me in the side and demanded that I prompt the lecturer. On the fourth day, Morozov called me to himself and asked me what we were doing there at the training camp, called the school and asked me to be released from the “call”.

Our department was mostly a male team. Few women, besides those mentioned earlier .... Sorokina, Gindina and Polyakova did not play a noticeable role in the work of the department. In 1954, two girls appeared in the department - N. Kurochkina and Inna Berezhnaya's technicians, and in the 60-T department their girlfriend Vita Volkova, the daughter of our leader of the chassis group. They soon all got married: Kurochkin - for his son A.A. Yevgeny Morozov, who worked at the table next to mine, Inna, for the designer of 60-T department, Peter Sagir, about whom I write quite a lot. Vita Volkova married Victor Pikur. A little later, two more girls appeared in the department - Vera Sitokhina and her friend whose name I do not remember. The latter was distinguished by the fact that from the first day and all the following for several years she walked with a tear-stained face, constantly groaning and wiping away tears. The reasons for this remained unknown to me. Most likely the unhappy love ... Sitokhina also walked with a sad face and, despite the fact that she was a slim girl with a pretty face and figure and appearance, she was at a high level, did not cause sympathy for herself. It was obvious that she was not indifferent to me, but at that time I was married, and other women did not interest me. When my Vovka was born and I grew up a bit, I brought a photo of Sponge with my son in my hands to the department. The photo was very successful. Sitokhina glancing at the photo sighed heavily and said:
- Well, now everything is clear.

From that day on, she no longer showed her interest in me. There was also a nice and extremely energetic Valentina Zorchenko, who was openly interested in all men. But her vigorous energy and striker style scared off potential suitors. A few more women of the department were married, did not show any activity and did not remember me.

***
I visited the institute, where cumulative ammunition was studied and tested. As the lab staff told me, these munitions sometimes behave unpredictably. They were tested on the surface of sand poured into a metal tank. Sometimes a cumulative jet leaves an intricate trace in the form of a zigzag or spiral in the sand. Sometimes it punches the side wall of the tank. They expressed the opinion that our tricks with tilting armor and screens cannot always guarantee impenetrability.

In 1958, the design bureau was assigned to develop on the basis of the T-55 tank, together with the office of V.S. Grabina tracked rocket carrier - tank destroyer, armed with guided missiles. Leading by our design bureau appointed me.

The projected rocket carrier could be considered as an experimental one for testing the rocket design and checking the tactical and technical characteristics of the rocket carrier on the basis of a combat medium tank. Therefore, the rocket carrier's armored elements were made of structural carbon steel.
Since successful prototype missile-fighters of tanks were absent, the work began with the study of a variety of layout options, mainly dictated by the deployment of missiles, the dimensions of which exceeded those of unitary artillery shells. The target base — the T-54 tank — did not allow the missiles to be placed in horizontal stacking, and a slight increase in the fighting compartment due to the elimination of a twenty-nasal projectile lay-up could not be used, since rocket tilting was difficult when it was laid on the launcher. I have drawn half a dozen variants, but not one of them was satisfactory. At this time, an adjunct from the General Staff lieutenant colonel Barabashev was interning in our department. He was actively involved in my work, but his options were no better than mine. In his versions of the rocket had to make a complex trajectory. At the same time, he could not offer real mechanisms capable of performing this task. Finally, already when we received the final dimensions of the rocket with folding stabilizers and wings, we could place the installation commander and loader 15 or 16 rockets vertically standing on the turntable in the ring. From that moment on, the construction acquired a real shape. I proposed a lever device for lifting rockets above the turret to the launch position, which in principle eliminated the need for a loader.

Three times we went to Moscow in trinity: Baran, Omelyanovich and me. As it turned out, we all three are deaf in my left ear. Therefore, when we were walking along the street, each of us, in order to hear the interlocutors, tried to go to the right. So we went alternately running over to the right side.

The development of the technical design of the tank 430 came to an end. Ahead there was a detailed study of the machine components and an assessment of the ergonomics of the crew workplaces. To this end, the construction of a wooden model was organized in the model shop. V.D. Listrava.

The commission of the General Staff headed by Major General Sych and three lieutenant colonels arrived to take the model of the tank. General Sych, handsome, slightly fattening, about two meters tall, compared to which his companions looked particularly small.

Demonstration of the new tank began with the display of drawings. Drawings made on Whatman paper were hung along the walls of the room with a flat horizontal ribbon. A swivel chair was placed for the general in the middle of the room, and we moved in a flock around the perimeter of the room so as not to close the drawings shown at this time. The general, sitting in a rotating chair, turned to face Alexander Alexandrovich as he went from drawing to drawing. At some point, an orderly entered the room and, going up to the general, began to whisper something in his ear. The general frantically turned his head, and the orderly was spinning around him trying to whisper to him all in the same ear. Omelyanovich stepped on my leg and whispered: "Look, our brother is one-eared",

The wooden model of the 430 tank was built in the extension to the model workshop by a brigade of three people. Worked modellers very quickly and accurately. All parts of the hull, turret, gun and numerous devices were made in full accordance with the general views of these elements.

After getting acquainted with the drawings of the tank and discussing its tactical and technical characteristics, Sych and his companions proceeded to get acquainted with the wooden model of the tank, made in full size with all the details, except for the undercarriage. After an external inspection of the layout, the general climbed over to it and, not without difficulty, squeezed through the hatch of the commander's turret. After sitting on the site of the commander, he climbed into the place of the driver and climbed out through his hatch. After this, his assistants performed the same exercise. The last to get was a lieutenant colonel who was no more than sixty meters tall and weighed about fifty kilograms. He climbed the layout for a long time, moving from the commander to the gunner’s place, and then to the loader. In the commander's hatch, he spread his elbows to demonstrate its insufficient, small size. At the same time, he roared in a cocky voice that he was crowded, that he could not get out of the hatch, with his hands on his sides. Sych kept watch over his actions. The lieutenant colonel continued to make noise even after he got out of the layout. Morozov, clearly angry with this behavior, the lieutenant colonel turned red, and suddenly he straightened up and adopted a formidable commanding posture, loudly shouted at him and said: "Let your opinion be expressed to the general." He, without going into details, said in a firm commanding voice: "If I managed to crawl through this hatch and climb out through the hatch of the driver, then their dimensions are quite satisfactory.

To accept an experimental sample of the 430 machine, a commission arrived in the same composition as it received the wooden model. The same lieutenant colonel also corrosively criticized the car as a whole and especially the jobs of the commander and loader. He demanded to load the tank with ammunition in accordance with the report card, and he himself extracted the shells from the ammunition and loaded the gun. After that, he stated that the loader would not be able to provide a rate of more than four shots per minute. The objection of Morozov, that our master gunsmith Leib can provide a rate of twelve rounds per minute, he said that not everyone like your gunsmith. Let any of your designers try to do it. Listrov and I tried twice to carry out this operation and actually to roll the shells in the close space of the fighting compartment, which was cluttered with a breeder of cannons and shells on the sides of the turret, was not an easy task. Due to the time spent on unloading the cannon and placing the projectile into the ammunition, it was difficult to judge the possible rate of fire in a combat situation, but the timing of the individual stages of charging allowed us to hope that even such inexperienced loaders as we are able to ensure the rate of fire from three to four shots per minute.

For shooting guns and machine guns went to the landfill in a deep gully near the village Fedorytsy. The first five shots are enhanced by charges in the absence of a crew in the car. Observers are at a sufficient distance from the tank, and the shooter hides behind his stern and pulls the descent rope. Reinforced charges are prepared by heating them over an ordinary stove, on which workers of the landfill boil a kettle and warm up the brakes. A shot with a deafening metallic ringing painfully hits the ears. The sound of machine gun shots firing long bursts is not too deafening, but somehow unpleasant. We shoot at the steep slope of the beam, the shells - the blanks leave deep holes in the slope, and the traces of machine gun bullets are almost invisible. Then shooting a cannon with the crew in the tank. I sit on the site of the commander. Leyba charges, and the colonel in the gunner's place with a stopwatch in his hands. Team “FIRE”. Five seconds later, Leiba’s “READY” Shot. Again “READY” Shot “READY” shot. Stopwatches stopped, Shooting time - twenty one seconds. When the shot is heard deaf, the uterine sound and the tank is swinging like a wave. Almost immediately, the clang of the spent cartridge case on the flap of the flap for its release to the stern of the tank and the fighting compartment is filled with smoke powder, which rises to the fan on the roof of the tower and goes to the engine bulkhead. After three shots, despite all the measures to remove the powder gases, breathing becomes difficult. Gases from the barrel of the gun are removed by the ejection system, a lot of gas goes along with the discarded sleeve, but that time to get out of the breech with such intense shooting the fans do not have time to throw out. General Sych is pleased, but he says: “This is your Leiba record holder. And how will an ordinary tanker do it? Your Leib has been doing just that for a dozen years. So we can not train an ordinary tanker. Well if he reaches a rate of nine rounds per minute. Here are your designers who rubbed around this car can hardly achieve four shots of fire. ” Morozov: “Let's see, here is the designer Zemlyansky, who designed the shell ejection device. He tried to load the cannon with training shells. ”

Four armor-piercing shells (blanks) are loaded into the tank and I climb into the loader's place. Shells in the front styling, where to get them most convenient. Team "FIRE". I grab the first shell and strongly beat my head against the roof of the tower. Then I try not to crush my fingers and send the projectile, and the shutter closes with a click. "READY" - a shot. I charge again, then more. Breathing is hard. Again, I beat my head and knock down a finger. Finally the fourth round in the barrel. Team "DISPOSAL". I can hardly stand. I could not repeat this at once. Trying to bring my breath to normal. I hear in the headset "Do not hurry, rest." After a minute, I open the hatch and get out onto the tower roof. Morozov is satisfied. I managed to load the gun four times in one minute. More, the lieutenant colonel didn’t touch this topic. Before that, I had to shoot only from the T-tank 34-85 from a twin machine gun with single shots. Shooting a cannon is expensive. At that time, one hundred-millimeter shot cost 600 rubles with an average salary at a 950 factory rubles.

For coordination of work on the rocket carrier to us from VG Grabin was visited by the head of the artillery fire control apparatus department VG Pogosyants, the head of the ballistics department N.P. Astashkin, leading engineer Alexander I. Shuruy, They approved the layout of the missile carrier adopted by us and the mechanism proposed for putting the missile into a launch position. Sasha Shurui was my colleague at the institute. He graduated from KhPI at the same time with me, but the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Later, when I was no longer working at KB-60M, it turned out, quite by chance, that Sasha Schurui was married to my wife's childhood friend and she even attended their wedding, which took place the year before my meeting with my future wife.

Two weeks later, I, Baran and Omelyanovich paid a return visit. At the pass office we were announced that we would be able to get passes only after three days, when we were checked with a special card file. Our admissions to secret work for their office were inconclusive. I had to do other things. I had unresolved issues at the Kauchuk plant and at VNIRP related to the development of the T-55 tank for underwater driving. My companions had their own affairs. Our arrival coincided with the transfer of VG Grabin his farm S.P. Korolevu. Formally, Grabin was removed from his post for divorcing his secretary and wife 6, but apparently the main one was the need to expand the economy of Korolev, who was reaping the fruits of his launch of the first satellite, and Grabin was in a certain disgrace, like his favorite . Grabin's economy by this time was already engaged, mainly with rocket technology. When we passed from the entrance to the administrative building along the spacious hangar, we saw in it a series of rockets standing vertically, ranging from small lengths of about four meters to giants below the ceiling, twenty meters high. To my question: “What is this?” Shuruy said that these are mockups and dummies, which are taken to the parade for mass. To our surprise, our colleagues managed to make a model of the mechanism for putting the rocket to the launch position from sheet plastic. The model worked as it was intended, so that further coordination of the work went very quickly and the next day we went home. When we and our colleagues were engaged in the coordination of work, the whole building became excited, which was audible even in the isolated room where we worked. It turned out Grabin transfers the economy to Korolev and they walk through the territory of the institute. The weather was sunny and warm. Through the open window, we observed how this couple slowly moves across the area between the buildings of the institute and Grabin says something to Korolev vigorously gesticulating, while the latter listens to him while observing monumentality.

Then I learned that the leader of the work on rockets and satellites was Sergey Korolev, who was very classified at the time. It was declassified only three years later. Six months later I was again at Podlipkah, now at Korolev. Pogon (n) t reported to Korolev about our work, and I and Sasha Shurui modestly stood against the wall.

It was decided to make a wooden model of the combat compartment of the rocket carrier in full size. When examining the drawings before it was made, Morozov noticed that the copier directing the movement of the rocket table has very little curvature. “What if a copier is made in the form of a straight ruler? Calculate what will be in this case the error of the position of the rocket from the nominal one and is it permissible? ”This was the whole of Morozov. Any detail he considered primarily in terms of its manufacturability and ease of manufacture. He paid much attention to the question of possible increase in tolerances on the dimensions of parts, if this did not affect their work. He always meant the motto “Every product must be made as badly as its conditions allow”. Only in this case, the labor intensity of manufacture may be minimal. However, the technological service of the plant also adhered to this slogan, which often led to a heated discussion between the designer and the leading technologist. As a result, a compromise was reached, and further tests of the product, as a rule, confirmed the correctness of the technologists.

For the manufacture of the model in the experimental experimental workshop №640, I was allocated a corner that was covered with a tarpaulin. Modellers, young smart guys perfectly read the drawings and for the week built the middle part of the machine with a fighting compartment. I only had time to make sketches of parts requiring mechanical turning. In addition to the missiles, the commander and the gunner, it was necessary to place two Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, twenty shops for them and twenty F-1 hand grenades in the fighting compartment. The Kalashnikov assault rifle was considered a secret weapon at the time. There were no his drawings at the factory. In the first section, I was given under receipt something resembling a primitive wooden prosthesis that imitated the main dimensions of the automaton. When I handed this product to one of the modellers who recently came from active service, he measured the length of the prosthesis with a sarcastic grin and said that it was ten millimeters larger. In addition, there is no dagger bayonet layout. “You can return this stick to the first section.” Two days later, he presented me with a wooden model of an automaton, made with all the details, right down to the slot of the single screw in this design. The second copy of the model of the automaton was made much rougher, but it still could not be compared with the prosthesis I received in the first section. At the same time, modelbooks used very rough and primitive tools.

At the end of the work shift of modellers, I checked the integrity of the canvas canopy and sealed it with five plasticine seals. One day, when I arrived at the shop in the morning, I found that the three seals were damaged and clumsily stuck into place, with fingerprints clearly visible on them. I immediately called the security chief and a commission of three testified to the damage to the seals. When opening the canvas curtain, the theft of all tools belonging to the modellers and the traces of boots on the surface of the model were found. Everything else, including the layout of the machine, was in place. In further work on fine-tuning the layout and putting it, I still did not find out about the abductors of the instrument.

Four weeks later, an experimental model of the missile carrier was made based on the T-55 tank and sent to the Kubinka range. There they installed rocket control equipment and a launch pad on it. The rest I know from the words of Sasha Shuruya:

“The first test launches with the participation of representatives of the landfill were satisfactory. At a distance of two kilometers were hit in the shield imitating tank. Then shooting was initiated with the participation of the authorities, both from tank crews and missilemen. Shuruy was the gunner. After launch, the rocket steeply went up and a minute later fell in a hundred meters in front of the rocket carrier. The launch observers were frightened and hurriedly hid in a dugout. Our work was rejected, recognizing it raw and unpromising, since after the launch of the rocket the gunner had to follow her flight through the carmine lights on her tail and correct the direction. In the thick smoke or fog that suddenly appeared between the rocket carrier, the goal of adjusting the flight direction was impossible. In addition, in a combat situation, the gunner, under stress, is not always able to bring the missile to the target, since it has to be controlled for 12 - 18 seconds. ”

By that time, Shuruy was already engaged in the development of the Molniya space satellite and work on the missile carrier was stopped.

During my business trips to Moscow, I resumed contacts with my friend for joint studies at a school in the city of Frunze, Andrei Kramarevsky. I had free days while waiting for a pass to Korolev's office or when waiting for parts to be manufactured at the Kauchuk plant. By the patronage of the Muscovites - my swimming colleagues, I received a free pass to the winter pool in the Luzhniki Stadium and at every opportunity I swam in it. I did pass and Andrew. He had just returned from touring to England. Andrei still danced in Frunze in the ballet of the Kirghiz Theater, where his father worked as the chief choreographer, while Andrei also danced in the Bolshoi Theater and solo parts. Andrew is beautiful and physically well developed. He brought flippers from London, which we had not yet seen in the USSR, and we swam in flippers in turn, attracting the attention of the few who were present in the pool at this late time.

Later, in the summer, I met in the Luzhniki Stadium my acquaintance in the Kharkov Basin, A.S. Casing - swimming coach. He and his wife coached their students, children at the Spartak society. His wife in our time (2001) brought up the record holder and world champion Klochkova, and his students were champions of Ukraine and even the Union. Naturally, I swam with him without restrictions. My friend at work in the mine, Volka Krushelnitsky, was not in Moscow, because after graduating from school, he was sent to a distant garrison, a young lieutenant.

Unlike the office of Korolev, the pass system at the General Staff was extremely simple: I came to the pass office, called the officer I needed, he called the duty officer, who issued the passes, and on presentation of my passport and admission, I was issued a pass. It took about ten minutes. At this time, the person interested in me or his assistant came to the pass office and we went to his office. All responsibility for the visitor was assigned to the host.

Our changes in the modernization of T-54 in T-55 were accepted by the Tagil Bureau as the head office and soon the plant received the drawings of the T-55, in which our and Tagil designs were implemented.

At this time (in 1959), most of the department staff worked on the lightweight 432 machine. I was engaged in anti-nuclear defense and ammunition. At this time, my mom got sick. This, of course, affected my production activity, all the more so since I had a serious housing problem. A young specialist, Alexander Terekhov, worked with me for the third year. Very diligent and executive, he was my good assistant. But suddenly I noticed a sharp change in him. He became absent-minded, apathetic, and reticent. To my question: “What is the matter?” - he answered that he was going to quit. It was not the 1948-1953 years, when our passports were stored in the personnel department of the plant, and in order to go on a business trip, you had to write an application for a passport and immediately pass it on arrival from a business trip. Self-dismissal was a problem then. Now the administration of the plant was obliged to dismiss the employee within a week after submitting the application. But, as before, the administration had strong levers with which it was possible to prevent dismissal. I asked Terekhov where he was going and where he would work. He told me that his mother lives in Stalino (now Donetsk), who occupies a prominent post in the regional committee. She arranged for him a letter of challenge from the Gipropodzemgaz Institute. The letter said that he could be hired as a senior engineer with a salary of 1500 rubles (we had 1080 rubles) and he was given a two-room apartment. At this time, many of our veterans of the KB lived in communal apartments, having 5-6 м2 per person. A year earlier, the most energetic and penetrative our employees organized a cooperative for the construction of a sixteen-apartment two-storey house on the condition that all materials and salary to highly qualified builders pay for the plant, and they do their own unskilled work and ensure the “getting” the materials needed for construction. To do this, they were released from work in the KB with the salary on 9 months. They received land for construction in the village of Artyom not far from the checkpoint. Of course, they did not include the leading designers, on whom the main burden of 432 development lay, since they understood their responsibility for the work they were doing and could not leave it for nine months. At the end of our conversation, Terekhov told me that Gipropodzemgaz is now expanding and needs workers. The institute built a house for their settlement, especially those arriving from other cities. On the same day I took time off and told my wife that I was going to Stalin by a night train. From the station to the city was traveling by tram. It was raining lightly. Outside the window stretched dilapidated squat barracks, wastelands, warehouses and waste heaps. My first thought: “Where have I come?” But now, finally, a city with decent buildings. Found an institute. The director sent me to the head of the department of mechanisms and metal structures of gas enterprises Kacedadze. I told him about myself. He did not listen very carefully and in conclusion said that he did not have a vacancy in his department.

- Where did you work, except for KhPZ?

I replied that I came there from the institute and worked for more than seven years.

- And all the time in one place? He asked me.

- Oh, then you come to us. Go to the director.

The director ordered the secretary to prepare a letter of guarantee that I would be accepted for the position of senior engineer with a salary of 1500 rubles and I would be provided with a two-room apartment. Having received the letter, I took a photo for the questionnaire in the nearest photo and looked at my future home. He was not far from the center and from the institute. Finishers paint the floors. In the morning I was at the factory. I wrote a letter of resignation and went to Morozov. He began to persuade me to stay, but I said that I would not refuse an apartment in Stalino, but in Kharkov I had nowhere to live with my family. Morozov said he was coming down to the director and talking about the apartment. The next day he told me that the director promised an apartment in six to ten months at Kagaty. I replied that I did not agree with this. Morozov said that he had the right to delay me for a week, and during that time I should think. A week later, I quit.

Simultaneously with my dismissal, the same order sent him to retire Charomsky, who turned 60 years old.
Morozov didn’t let Terekhov, who seduced me to Donetsk, as a young specialist who hadn’t spent his three years. He settled in a year, but did not appear in Donetsk.

Seven years later, while I was in Kharkov on my dissertation, I called Alexander Alexandrovich. He was very kind and invited me to his home. Over a cup of tea, we sat for about three hours, recalling episodes of our work together. “The apartment today is a serious matter. I hope that you will be fine. " The 1960 incident of the year has been exhausted. At the same time I visited Ya.I. A ram on his apartment. He has been a disability pension for several years. His nerves were no good. The unhealthy glitter of the eyes, the convulsive nervous movements of the hands and the jerky speech betrayed his painful condition. Therefore, intimate conversation we did not work. After spending about ten minutes, I left. Later I learned that Jacob Ionovich died that same year.
Three or four years later, I called Alexander Alexandrovich to work. It was audible in his voice that he was tired and lacked communication. We talked for a long time on the phone, and he still did not give a reason to end the conversation. I never had the opportunity to meet and talk to him.

In 1998, I visited my old friend V.D. Leaf. He looked sixty years old in his 80. Moving, with a clear and correct speech, he perked up at my arrival. We had a long conversation. He gave me his book “Designer Morozov” with a dedication and offered to set out his memoirs about our joint work in writing. He had no children. Korital old age with his wife in a one-room apartment, Khrushchev, where at one time I was promised an apartment in 1960 year. He thought that everything was good with him, he only complained that his wife abruptly passed: her memory was hard and weakened, so she should not be let go to the store or to the market, as she forgets to buy and forgets about surrender.

With Nikolai Petrovich Fomenko - by that time the oldest representative of the pre-war collective of the design bureau - I met at his apartment after agreeing to meet by phone. Before that, he was at the 70th anniversary of the KB. He looked decrepit and depressed. Recently, his beloved wife died - a reliable friend and comrade. Once the divorce from his first wife and a new marriage he was expelled from the Party and removed from his post as head of the group housing. The punishment is too severe, but, obviously, there were some other reasons for this, about which I know nothing. Petrovich worked with me for a long time and we understood each other well.

Petrovich during the war, engaged in the housing, went to the front lines to study and analyze tridtsatchetvorok damage. He was on a tank field at Prokhorovka. Inspection of tanks showed that 40% of armor-piercing shells hit the towers. If we consider that the tower of the T-34 tank is relatively small, we can assume for the T-54 tank and the following percentage is equal to 50. Petrovich sacredly secreted the regime of secrecy and spoke very little about his work. And during our conversation, when we sat for a couple of hours and “prigolubili” a bottle of dry, as soon as the conversation concerned the work of the department, he immediately closed and it was clear that he would not give out military secrets. By this time, he was retired 25 years, and I retired from the 39 department years ago. At that time, they were able to keep military secrets. With this mystery occurred funny cases.

Somehow, during the pre-Christmas cleaning behind one of the cabinets, they found a drawing on a Whatman secret label. It was obvious that he had been there for years. In time for Listrova, not looking at its contents, offered to burn it. When the drawing was carefully examined, it was found that he took it from the first section of Listrova. Without raising noise, the drawing was handed over to a secret archive. But a year later another drawing disappeared in a secret archive. This time the case took a serious turn. The head of the secret archive was fired and everyone in the department was strictly warned. A funny incident occurred at the Charomsky Design Bureau, which was placed above the accounting department, and the windows overlooked Plekhanovskaya Street. At that time I was trying to develop a draft design of a gas turbine starter with the possibility of connecting it to the gearbox to ensure that with a stalled engine to overtake the tank at low speed in the nearest shelter. This idea came to naught, but as I was working at that time with minders, I had to be an eyewitness to the scandalous events. It was summer heat, and the windows were wide open. One designer removed a secret drawing from the board and put it on the window sill. A gust of wind picked up the drawing, and it fell almost across the street. There was a panic. They all popped out of the windows and immediately sent messengers who had a “deer” on the pass, i.e. free entry and exit in working hours. The passers-by were frightened away from the drawing by wild cries. The drawing was returned, and everyone calmed down. But Charomsky somehow found out about this case and the next day he strictly warned the whole team, so that no one would even approach them when the windows were open.

Because of the secrecy regime, in these years I did not take a camera on business trips, to factory events and did not keep extensive records in notebooks.

***
I made an attempt to contact Nikolai Petrovich in 2000. For the first time, he warned me that if I wanted to visit him, I had to call and warn me about the time of arrival. I called him several times, but no one answered the calls. What happened to him I did not know - or died, or bedridden. When I came to his house, no one opened my calls and knocked on the door. He had a daughter, but he lived alone in the apartment.

My fellow student, Volodya Popkov, worked at KB-60M until 1962, when he was unsuccessfully operated, after which he became disabled and very rarely left the apartment. When talking on the phone, he did not express a desire to meet with me.

I never met Terekhov, whom Morozov did not let go as a young specialist who had not worked for three years, I never met again. Obviously, he did not appear in Stalino.

In the city of Stalin, working at the Gipropodzemgaz Institute, as early as the next year, 1961, I was sent to England and France to study their experience in the field of the gas industry. This surprised me, since a little over one year had passed, as I had access to many of the secrets of the tank and missile industry.

Swimming

The KhPZ had a swimming section, organized and headed by two enthusiasts of this sport - P.I. Sagir, later Chief Designer, 61, and PD. Pedenko, later director of the Cherkassy Design and Technological Institute. The swimming section was at the Metalist stadium, and classes were held in the winter pool of the bath next to the Hammer and Sickle Factory.

Immediately after entering the 60M department, I became involved in the section and soon became Sagir’s double, taking over the training of a part of our factory swimmers, having become a coach at the factory. Classes in the section were held in 9-10 hours of the evening. Usually I came earlier for an hour and trained myself before the arrival of my charges. Soon our section became noticeable against the background of the city swimming federation, as we had some success women, men pulled up, and our trinity was the main force: Sagir, champion of the city in swimming in the style of "brass", Pedenko, who took second or third places on city ​​competitions, and I am the champion in swimming at a distance of 400 meters.

Classes were held three or four times a week. In the summer, when the pool closed, we successfully performed at regional competitions in Lozovenki. From mid-June, the pioneer camp of the plant opened in Zanki, during which the rescue service on the waters was organized. Its chief was appointed PI. Sagir The team was assembled from members of our section.

Factory pioneer camp “ZANKI” was located in a pine forest on the high bank of the Donets. The camp consisted of a kitchen with a dining room under a canopy and light panel houses in each of which housed half of the detachment - girls and boys, just 15 people - 17. The number of units reached 20 in each of which were children of about the same age, from six years to eighteen year old graduates of the school. The task of the OSVODA team was to prevent the unorganized bathing of children, including older ones, who were allowed to swim under our supervision in the section of the river designated by buoys. For bathing young children, a floating pool on pontoons measuring 10 x 4 meters and a depth of 0,7 meters was moored to the beach of the pioneer camp so that children of seven or ten years old could stand on its wooden floor. On weekends, many parents of children came to the summer camp and simply wanted to swim in the river. Our task was to monitor the swimmers and assist them. During my work at OSVODE, we had to save the drowning three times and one was a death case not related to bathing. The deputy chief accountant of the plant rode a boat and when he came out of it slipped, fell into the water and died of a broken heart. We had two flat-boats, and in the second year of my stay at OSVODA, we bought the outboard Veterok engine with a power of eight horsepower. There was a fuel depot at the camp, so there were no problems with gasoline and oil. Our area of ​​responsibility included a coastline of about fifty meters long, half of which was a sandy beach, and another fairly steep clayey shore with great depths at a distance of two to three meters from the shore. In the absence of pioneers, we preferred to swim in the pool. When starting from the side of the pool, no one ever crashed into its bottom, although while swimming in a crawl, the fingers of the hands scraped the bottom of the pool. Later we made a fifty meters long track across the river, putting shields for turns on stilts, but after that we preferred to swim in our shallow pool, as it was possible to start, take turns and take into account the distance traveled.

There the incident happened to me and caused a lot of noise not only in the camp. I was on duty at the beach of the senior, when a company of three guys and six girls of seventeen, a summer camp, came down from the camp. There was no one on the beach besides them. They, of course, ignored our swimming pool and climbed into the water somewhat lower. It was obvious that the girls swim very badly or do not know how. I approached them and warned that swimming in this place is prohibited. At a distance of two to three meters from the shore, the depth of the river increased sharply, and as we saw from a recent example, it represents a great danger. A student who arrived with a company of comrades drowned a couple of kilometers downstream. From that place it was closest to the train station and they swam across the river and decided to swim on the beach. The sandy beach in this place went smoothly under the water, but at a distance of three to four meters from the coast it was sharply cut off to a depth of eight meters. Suddenly hitting the depth, the guy was confused and although he somehow knew how to swim could not swim. His comrades came running to help us, but when we arrived at the site an hour after the incident, they could not save him, and they dived into the tangle of deer in this deep place for a long time. Find it failed.

The company ignored my warning. One of the guys was especially brazenly holding on, who dismissed me and told the girls not to pay attention to me. I repeated the warning and then the guy began to approach me with a threatening look. When he came close, brazenly staring into my eyes, I moved his right hook to the jaw, and added a backhand. The whole company shied away from me and quickly went to the top of the camp. Half an hour later, the chief came running from the camp, accompanied by three tutors, and took me into circulation. It turns out the guy beaten by me was the son of the first secretary of the Sobol Kharkiv Regional Committee, who two years before was the director of our plant. The camp commander was terribly frightened and scared me. That same evening, the camp was a meeting of all the staff of the camp and they began to stigma me.

But I must pay tribute to the fact that two tutors stood up to my defense and noted that if not OSVOD, drowned people could not have been avoided. I had to repent of exceeding my authority, and the meeting was limited to censure. The next day, Sobol himself arrived at the camp. The camp leadership was scared to a pulp. But Sable, without saying a word, dressed in swimming trunks and went swimming. Ambient began to shun me like a plague. But Sable left, and the incident began to be forgotten. From the analysis of my act and the behavior of members of our team, I realized how quickly a person assigned to the post of policeman becomes him.

On the beach three times our fights with alien companies, which all ended in our victory. Our main force was the brother of one of our swimmers - Chaika. The Seagull is the champion of the region in heavyweight boxing, who usually came to swim on Sundays. Even when we were in the minority, he was packing two or three rivals. In this case, I tried to lure my rival into a water by a false retreat, and there I did what I wanted with him. On the shore, he went out over water, slightly alive.

Especially responsible was the bathing of the little ones, who appeared in the camp in great abundance together with the parents who arrived. We ran fifteen people into the swimming pool and three of our swimmers were watching so that one of them did not slip and did not drown. Parents were run only with babies under six. Once I took the baby in my arms about three years old and carried it to my mother on the side of the pool. Having slipped, I began to fall directly on the baby, but already falling, as the cat managed to wriggle out and fell on its back holding the child high above itself. How I managed so far is still unclear.

We appeared on the beach after breakfast, at nine o'clock, and were on duty, exercising at every opportunity until late evening with a lunch break for which we walked in two shifts. At lunch and at breakfast, they ate three to five pioneer servings. My wife at that time worked in the camp as an educator. I brought my self-made kayak to the camp and we often swam in our fragile canoe, managing to even change places. In preparation for the competitions, I swam four kilometers every day and several times downstream and back six to eight kilometers.

Outboard motor was fond of Pavel Pedenko. He often made short trips, rolled passengers and dug into the engine when he refused to work. I was not fond of this by clicking on swimming training. Back in the winter, in the meantime, I developed and manufactured a diving cap in which it was possible to stay for an indefinitely long time at a depth of up to ten meters when the hand pump was pumped through the air. The cap was brought to the winter pool and we plunged into it until we were tired. Once Pedenko frolicking in a motorboat in front of the bathhouse, laid a steep turn. The passengers panicked and turned over the boat. All knew how to swim and safely floated to the shore. But the engine broke from the boat and sank. The depth of the Donets River opposite our beach is from two and a half to four meters. In the confusion, no one noticed exactly where the boat overturned. They began to dive, but the motor was not found. The next day they brought a diving cap, searched the bottom in front of the bathhouse, but to no avail. I decided to lead the search in a more organized way. On both banks picket lines were marked with poles with a step of 1,2 meter. Stretched a rope across the river and let a diver along it. To the rope lying on the bottom tied to her railway crutches. After the passage of the diver moved the rope to the next picket. The bottom is flat, sandy and the diver reliably combing the next strip. The first day of the search gave no result. Moving downstream, walked about sixty meters. Although Pavel assured that the motor had broken right here, I insisted on continuing the search the next day. Another forty meters passed and finally found. Pavel assured that the motor drifted away, but the current in this place was almost unnoticeable.

Pavel and I made a one-day trip on my one and a half canal kayak. They carved a new paddle, and threw two pioneer pillows under them. We went to breakfast and took turns rowing with an oar intensively, because it was one. Four times stopped to swim on especially nice beaches. The water that day was so clear that even without a mask you could see about three meters.

During the month of training in the CAU, our team noticeably tightened. Having left our swimmers in the OSVODE, which were unsatisfactory results, at the end of July, we left ten people at the Avangard society championship in Nikolaev.

In Nikolaev, we were coached by the head coach of the Avnvgard Society. We settled in the yacht club in 50 meters from the Bug, which at this point with a minimum width of four kilometers. Classes were held in the fifty-meter pool of Dynamo society. We ate in a cafe right above the pool, and there were only three times in the city, because although it was less than half a kilometer before the tram stop, the tram went so rarely that it was a hopeless case to wait for it. At the tram station was a stall, where they traded in beer and milk. Beer in Nikolaev, like all drinking water, is quite salty. At the kiosk there was usually a crowd of people queuing and drinking beer. We crowded in line, took a mug of milk, what surprised us around drinkers.

It was a fierce heat, in the rooms of the second floor it was so stuffy at night that it was impossible to sleep. But we found a fully equipped basement, moved our beds there and lived with maximum comfort in a pleasant coolness. The trainings were very intensive - twice a day. In addition, we sailed three times to the other side, which is eight kilometers. In August, competitions were held, as a result of which the Avangard team was formed to participate in the USSR Championship. It was entered by our trinity, four people from Leningrad, and one each from Nikolaev and Tbilisi. USSR Championship was held in Chisinau. We went by steamer to Odessa and then by plane to Chisinau. Chisinau turned out to be a green, cozy town with a friendly population. We were settled in a triple room of the best hotel in the city in the very center, which in those times was the ultimate dream. Of course, at the USSR Championship, we had no chance to win prizes, but we were not the last. Sagir in the breaststroke entered the top ten.

The next stage was the primacy of Ukraine, held in Kiev. It was already the beginning of September. In Kiev, in our summer clothes, we were cold and wet in the rain. I had to urgently buy raincoats. Competitions were to be held in the outdoor pool on Trukhanov Island. Due to the cold weather, the jury decided to move the competition to the winter 25-meter pool. Since it was going to repair, the competition was delayed for three days. The pool was not yet equipped with stokers, and volunteer athletes in the morning took wheelbarrows to carry coal into the boiler room and stood as stokers to the boilers. Competitions began with a distance of 1500 freestyle meters. I was in the first swim. Team: “At the start! Marsh! ”, And I jump into the icy water. Not having reached the turn of a meter and a half, I get into boiling water with a temperature of 80 degrees. Turn - and I'm back in the icy water. It is necessary to swim forty pools. With each turn at the far wall I mix hot and cold water. By the end of the swim the warm water was already on the far half of the pool. After the end of the swims on the 1500 meters the pool water was completely mixed, slightly cool.
When I returned to Kharkov, I still had a two-week tariff leave. I went to Stalingrad, and hung out for a week in Kharkov.

In January, the regional sports committee sent me and Sagir to fees in Baku. We lived in a hostel in the park to them. Bottoms and trained in the pool mechzavod. The ceiling of the pool was covered with spherical shades, which, occasionally breaking down, fell from a height of 8 meters. One such lamp fell when I swam, and the blow fell on my hand, but, fortunately, everything went without serious consequences. Returning to Kharkov, we got straight to the city championship and became its champions: Sagir in breaststroke swimming, and I - a crawler. It is also successfully performed the third luminary of our team - Paul Pedenko, took third place in the race 100 meters crawl. Pedenko worked in the 1600 workshop, but a year later he transferred to our 60M department. Here he worked as a designer until 1962, after which he moved to Cherkassy, ​​where he worked as a senior engineer, and later became director of the design and engineering institute for local industry.

Next summer I was again in the Osvoda team at the pioneer camp. Month of training at Donets, and then - fees for competitions at the championship of "Avangard" in the city of Poti. We live in a central hotel, in a good quadruple room. The air is so humid that clothes can be dried only under the rays of the sun. Swimming pool in the port waters, at the southern breakwater. In the port - several warships and a large military transport, the base of the submarine "Volga". Coach-Georgian chasing us in training to exhaustion and all the time chewing the bitter capsicum. One day a storm broke out on the sea, such as happens only in the winter months. The waves overlapped the breakwater and plunged into the pool. The three of us jumped from the pier into the open sea and swayed on the waves for our pleasure. To go back to the pier there was nothing to think about, since the waves broke on concrete tetrahedrons, thrown along it for greater strength and against erosion of the bottom. We tried to sail to the port gate, but the strong current carried us back. Having resignedly, they sailed along the coast to the other side. Seeing that the coast is clean and, apparently, sandy, floated to him. At the coast, the waves were higher. On the wave you rise about five meters, and then you fall from this height. Another wave raised me, and suddenly I fell through her crest and splashed on the sand. The water spun me but, making a dash to the shore, I was already covered by a weaker wave that rolled onto the sandy beach, and was soon on land. My comrades went ashore nearby.

Having sailed the championship "Avangard", we went to the championship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in Odessa. Sail on the ship "Georgia". On the deck of the ship was a small pool. In it, we sailed for three days, as they walked with taps in Sochi, Novorossiysk, Yalta and Sevastopol. A small roll on us did not act. In Odessa, we swam in the open pool in the park and, having lost two members of the team who dropped out of the competition, flew to Chisinau for the USSR Championship.

At the end of November, the regional council again sent me and Sagira to monthly fees in the city of Lviv. At the training camp for the first time in these years I met my colleagues in marathon swimming at the USSR Championship in Sochi.

In the summer, everything repeated, except for the fact that I, Sagir, and Pedenko went to the Avangard Championship in Kherson with my wives. Three weeks trained in our familiar Nikolaev and a week competed in Kherson. The swimming pool was on the other side of the Dnieper, and there it was necessary to cross over by boat. To prevent water from flowing through the broken nose, we were located closer to the stern. Once we, as usual, floated home. Suddenly a slight wind rose along the river and drove the wave. Our boat began to sink from the stern and we had to shift to the bow. The flow of water intensified, and soon we would have gone to the bottom, but on the way there was an anchored barge with a moored boat, to which we hurried and unloaded our own. The rest had to pick up the second flight. At the water station by the pool, there was a boathouse with sports kayaks, so narrow that when we tried to swim in it, we, having made two or three strokes, turned over. Only one of us, a Leningrad citizen, was able to swim on it indefinitely. It turns out that he was engaged in rowing.

Before leaving for the competition, I took a tariff leave, which by then I had a month. From Kherson, my wife and I intended to fly by plane to Odessa and then by boat to Batumi. A cruise plane flying through Kherson in transit did not consider it necessary to make a landing in Kherson because of two passengers. This was announced to us after two hours of waiting. I made a scandal, and an hour later we were provided with a personal U-2 aircraft. Having squeezed into a cramped cabin together, we slowly flew to Odessa, looking at the landscapes sailing beneath us and talking with the pilot. This flight was much more interesting than a flight on a scheduled plane. From Odessa to Batumi we went on the Lensovet turbo-electric ship. There is a smaller pool on it than on “Georgia”, but you can swim.

In the third year, when Morozov prevented my business trip to the Zanki pioneer camp, I went there on a motorcycle weekend. Then there was still no road to the Serpent through Vasishchevo. From the airport to the village of Water was a rut on quicksand in which the bike literally buried. Therefore, forty-five kilometers could drive a motorcycle for three hours and at the same time be on the opposite bank from the camp and cross the boat. Therefore, I preferred to go through Chuguyev, which was two and a half times farther away, and when I tried to reduce this distance, driving through the swamps of the left bank was not at all easier than driving along the sand. Several times went with Casket - his future wife. Usually we left on Saturday at dusk and then, in total darkness, strayed along the field roads, orienting ourselves by the stars. As we managed to leave a little earlier and I decided to shorten the path despite the fact that at the same time I had to go along the sand, and then along the footbridge across the Donets and further along the swamp. Motorcycle skidded on the sand and I have twice lost casket, and discovering it does not immediately and passed on about fifty meters - one hundred. They came to the bridge when I; already stupefied from tense driving in the sand. Without stopping, at low speed we entered the bridge and safely reached the opposite shore, where I stopped to take a breath. Turning back, I saw that the bridge, thirty meters long, was a few boards and poles laid on shaky piles. There is no railing and it is not clear how the locals walk along it balancing on poles. It is even more incomprehensible how I could ride a motorcycle with a passenger through it. At this time it became dark, and then riding through the swamps was no easier, but I didn’t lose Casket again.

***

In 1957, the films “In the world of silence” and “The Blue Continent” appeared on the cinema screens, in which I saw scuba gear. The principle of scuba operation was understandable even from film frames, and the design, with a certain desire, is quite easy to develop. From trimming a water pipe, a bolt with two nuts, two covers from oil cans, a motorcycle knitting needle, a speedometer drive ball, a cylinder with a capacity of 5 liters already a week after watching the movie, I made my own aqualung. On Sunday, I hooked him to a motorcycle, put my wife in the back seat and drove into the pool. My wife took a book with her so as not to be bored while I was swimming, sat down on a chair and started reading, and I dived into the pool and swam under water for more than half an hour, trying to save air. Only when I got out of the pool, I told her that I was engaged in testing the scuba gear made by me. So for the first time I went underwater with an aqualung and confirmed the full working capacity of the design I developed. In the future, a difficult problem was charging the balloon with air. The compressor worked at the factory, but it was risky to take the balloon out of the factory. I took it out on a tank going to the landfill. In the summer of 1958, I rested with my family in a wild way with submariners from the Institute of Low Temperatures. We lived in tents right on the beach. They had three scuba gear, made on the basis of an aviation high-altitude oxygen apparatus. Their scuba dives had no advantages over mine.

The following year, when a letter from the KhPZ trade union committee and regional sports council came to the 60M department about my secondment to the OSVOD of the pioneer camp and to competitions of various sizes, A.A. Morozov decisively refused me, saying that it was time to do business. The following year I did not train in Zanki and went to competitions on account of my tariff leave. This, of course, immediately reflected in my sports results. I continued to train myself in the winter pool at the “Hammer and Sickle” factory, often called “at the bicycle factory”. But in January of 1959, I bought an old American 1939 car of birth, the Chrysler. With this car I was not up to the training, and soon fell ill mother, and that was my intense activity in the field of finished swimming.

Thesis

After returning from Tagil, Morozov established the order in which, after the end of the working day, everyone goes home. Exceptions are made only in special cases, when there was an emergency operation, for example, the development of machines for soil sampling in the vicinity of a nuclear explosion. But this concerned a narrow group of designers engaged in this topic. Before that, everyone worked in Stalin, i.e. who will reside whom. From the very beginning I went to work with my head, and, being busy in the evening in the pool, I did not have free time and did not think about anything else. But when Morozov excommunicated me from swimming and I reached my ceiling in the conditions of the design bureau, I began to ask myself: “What next?”.

The department got my classmate Vladimir Fedorovich Podgorny, who finished KPI in "Internal combustion engines". After working in the department for a couple of years, he applied for a calculation. It turns out that he enrolled in full-time postgraduate studies at the KPI at the engine-building department. His example made me think about scientific activities, but since I did not want to part with my work, I chose correspondence postgraduate studies at the same KPI at the Hydraulic Machines department. I was well received at the pulpit. The topic I have outlined is related to amphibious tanks. Academician G.F. Proskura. But above all it was necessary to pass the postgraduate exams: dialectical materialism, the English language and fluid dynamics.

Dialectical materialism was easy for me. After visiting three or four consultations, I passed it to the "excellent." I had one of the questions on the exam: “How many pages are there in the work of V.I. Lenin "Two tactics of social democracy in the socialist revolution"? ". It so happened that I kept this brochure the day before, at the last hour of preparation for the exam. Having estimated the thickness and weight of the brochure from memory, I said that it was about 150 pages. This answer finally convinced the examiners that I knew the subject perfectly. (When I checked how many pages in the brochure actually were, it turned out to be 151).

The English language was more difficult, because the requirements for his knowledge were much tougher than at the institute. For perfection it was necessary to read the special literature. At that time, getting literature in English was not an easy task. The library of the plant had large albums on internal combustion engines and diesel locomotives, but in order to obtain them, it was necessary to have the permission of the party committee at the request of my boss. This question was resolved quickly, and I sat down to read. I soon achieved some success, but I found that I could not read fiction with my knowledge of English. And yet I passed the exam successfully.

It was necessary to prepare for the exam in fluid dynamics. But before that, finally decide on the topic of the thesis. This was delayed for half a year, and then my mother became seriously ill, and I was not in a state of graduate school. Soon I had to leave for Stalino, and my graduate school was interrupted for four years, because it was necessary to get comfortable and gain a foothold in the new work and find the appropriate topic.

Comments

[Tankist_1980]

Thank you, Igor Yakovlevich! Many thanks. For your work. The article is very interesting.

[RoTTor]

Thank you!
You are well done!!!
And it’s written interestingly

[Eula]

Great, thanks a lot! The atmosphere of those years is well read between the lines.