"Tsar-tank"
The birthplace of tank, which appeared and rapidly developing during the First World War, often referred to as the United Kingdom. Few people know that the first realistic projects of a cross-country armored vehicle on a tracked drive, equipped with artillery and machine-gun armament, appeared in Russia.
Project Vasily Mendeleev
Back in December 1911, engineer V.D. presented his project to the military department. Mendeleev - son of the famous chemist D.I. Mendeleev.
Here it is appropriate to make a brief excursion into history technicians. To begin with, the caterpillar is the most important part of any tank - First appeared on the banks of the Volga, in the Saratov province.
A native of the village of Nikolskoye Volsky County peasant Fyodor Blinov back in 1878, the patented "car with endless rails for the carriage of goods by road and back roads." This design has become the primary crawler propulsion. And the talented student of Blinov, Yakov Vasilyevich Mamin, in 1903, designed the internal-combustion engine that worked on heavy fuel. In fact, he created a tank engine. These inventions were used by the naval engineer Vasily Mendeleev when he began his work on the project of the world's first tank.
From his great father, Vasily Dmitrievich inherited an inquiring mind and a penchant for invention, which predetermined his life path. After graduating from the shipbuilding department of the Kronstadt Marine Engineering School in 1906, he worked from 1908 to 1916 at the Baltic and Nevsky shipyards. Although engines became his specialization, he became the chief designer of two competitive submarine projects, led the development of a mine layer and towing ships. Mendeleev’s designed naval mine of an original design was also adopted and soon played an important role in the marine defense of Petrograd from attacks by the Kaiser fleet. Finally, Vasily Dmitrievich proposed a ventilation device for a rescue diving pontoon.
But how did the gifted shipbuilder get the idea to create an all-terrain vehicle protected by armor for armed combat on land? That we do not know.
But there is no doubt that, watching the policies of the leading powers, the inventor foresaw the occurrence of a big war and, accordingly, thought about how to increase the combat power of the army of his Fatherland.
And it was not his fault that the proposed project of an armored vehicle first collected dust in the desk of the clerk of the War Department, and then became the property of British intelligence ...
The drawings of two versions of the Mendeleev tank, meticulously made by Vasily Dmitrievich calculations and a detailed explanatory note in which the inventor proved the feasibility of his project, have reached our time. Invented the car he intended to equip 120-millimeter (then 127-millimeter) naval gun, placed in the nose of the armored body, and a machine gun mounted in the turret, which was raised and lowered by pneumatic drive, and rotated 360 degrees.
In the second modification, the designer increased the number of machine guns to two. To the gun relied 51 artillery shot, which were placed in the fighting compartment.
Mendeleev has provided a powerful armor protection for the car body: in the frontal part with a thickness of 150 mm, and along the sides and stern - in the 100 mm. He designed the internal combustion engine power 250 l. with. allowed to reach speeds up to 24 km / h. The crew was supposed to be a 8 man.
The Russian inventor anticipated the most important technical solutions that were implemented decades later. Thus, Mendeleev placed gasoline tanks in the aft part of the machine above the bottom, in isolated compartments. Transmission, he designed the type of car, with four gears to move forward and one reverse gear.
It was assumed the use of pneumatic adjustable suspension. It provided a change in ground clearance (the distance between the ground and the bottom of the hull) from the maximum value to zero and the ability to work in two modes (locked and independent suspension). This invention allowed the tank to move with a half-lowered hull, and if necessary, stop the movement and completely lower the hull to the ground.
According to the inventor, the complete or partial lowering of the armor hull would protect the most vulnerable component of the vehicle, the undercarriage, from enemy fire.
Landing the hull on the ground was also needed in order to relieve the caterpillar propulsion from the harmful loads arising from the firing of the gun. Abroad, the idea of lowering the body of armored vehicles to the ground was implemented only in 1942, in the German 600-mm heavy Thor self-propelled mortar. In Britain, air suspension appeared in some samples of airborne tanks ("Tetrarch" and "Harry Hopkins") only at the end of the Second World War.
In general, Mendeleev sought, wherever possible, to use compressed air to facilitate control of the tank. Vasily Dmitrievich conceived to use pneumatic servo drives for the main clutch, gearbox and mechanism for turning the machine-gun turret. He also developed a system of pneumatic mechanization of the supply of gun shots, which allowed firing at a sufficiently high rate. Pneumatics was used by him and to adjust the tension of the tracks. All pneumatic devices were provided with the necessary amount of compressed air thanks to a special compressor that was constantly recharged from the engine.
For transporting the tank over long distances, Mendeleev proposed using a special device that would allow the vehicle to be installed on railroad rails and move under its own power or with the help of a steam locomotive. The author of the project wrote: “The adaptability of the machine to move along the railway line is essential for it, because if the existing pontoon and highway bridges do not support its weight (it had to reach 170 tons. - A. P.), then the railway the weight is fully maintained and the size of which is larger than the machine. ”
Finally, four control posts were provided in the Mendeleev tank, which allowed any of the crew members to control the movement of the vehicle in the event of a driver being injured or killed.
At the same time, invulnerability and colossal firepower was paid for by the truly outrageous weight of the machine. And in combination with rather narrow tracks, it “doomed” the tank to low speed and low permeability. The invention of Mendeleev was actually a prototype of a super-heavy ACS that could be used to destroy fortresses and protect the coasts: the Black Sea and Gulf of Finland. Despite all the difficulties, the shipbuilders of Petrograd could put this project into practice. True, the cost of building one such machine approached the cost of a submarine, which, perhaps, was the reason for the cold attitude to the project of the military department. Obviously, the lack of influential patrons Mendeleev ...
Nevertheless, the design of the tank, proposed by Mendeleev, was in many ways revolutionary for its time. Many ideas and design solutions embedded in it, saw the light of the decade later. But in the Ministry of War, the project, alas, rejected, considering it unrealistic. But some of the innovative ideas of Mendeleev were later used by German and British tank builders ...
Tank of Nikolai Lebedenko
This model, also known as “Bat”, “The Bat” (for external similarity), “Mammoth”, “Mastodon” and “Tank Lebedenko”, was an armored mobile combat device developed by engineer Captain Nikolai Lebedenko in Russia in 1914 —1915's. The well-known scientist N. Zhukovsky and his nephews, B. Stechkin and A. Mikulin also took part in its development. Strictly speaking, this object was not a tank, but was a wheeled armored fighting vehicle, and the largest ever built ...
The design of the car was original and ambitious. According to the recollections of Lebedenko himself, the idea of this car was pushed by Central Asian carts, which, thanks to large-diameter wheels, easily overcome bumps and ditches.
Therefore, unlike the "classic" tanks using tracked propulsion, the Tsar-tank was a wheeled vehicle and, by design, resembled a greatly enlarged gun carriage. Two huge spoke front wheels had a diameter of about 9 m, while the rear roller was much smaller, about 1,5 m. The upper stationary machine-gun cabin was raised above the ground by about 8 m. The T-shaped box body was 12 m wide, protruding beyond the wheel surfaces. At the extreme points of the hull, sponsons with machine guns were installed, one on each side (the possibility of installing guns was also assumed). Under the bottom of the planned installation of an additional machine-gun turret. The design speed of the vehicle was 17 km / h.
The paradox is that with all the unusualness, complexity and huge size of the machine, Lebedenko managed to break through his project. The car received approval in a number of instances, but finally the audience decided the case with the emperor, during which Lebedenko presented the sovereign with a groovy wooden model of the car with an engine based on a gramophone spring.
According to the recollections of the courtiers, Nicholas II and Lebedenko half an hour "like small children" crawled across the floor, checking the model in the race around the room. The toy ran briskly around the carpet and easily overcame even piles of two or three puffy volumes of the “Code of Laws of the Russian Empire”.
Delighted with the car, the emperor ordered to immediately open funding for the project.
Work under the highest patronage went quickly - it was soon made in metal and from the end of spring 1915, the first model secretly assembled in the woods near Dmitrov. 27 August of the same year began its sea trials. The use of large wheels contributed to increased terrain - the car blew non-thin birch as a match. However, the rear roller, due to its too small size and incorrect distribution of the entire weight, almost immediately after the start of the tests, began to be tied up in soft ground. And extremely large wheels could not pull it out, despite the use of the most powerful propulsion system at that time, consisting of two captured Maybach engines for 240 l. with. each (much more powerful than other tanks of the First World War).
Tests showed a significant vulnerability of the machine (first of all, unprotected massive wheels) from artillery fire, especially from high-explosive shells. Therefore, the selection committee gave a negative conclusion, and the project was abandoned, especially as they were unsuccessful and all subsequent attempts to at least move the stuck "Tsar-tank" from the spot ...
Up until 1917, the tank was guarded at the test site, but then because of the political disasters that had begun, they forgot about the car and did not remember anymore. Experimental design work was no longer carried out, and the surreal collar rusted for a long time in the forest, at the test site, until it was dismantled for scrap metal in the 1923 year ...
"Tsar-tank", he appeared at the front, could become a powerful psychological weapons, causing the enemy a real panic ...
Captain Lebedenko believed that with his car it was possible to overturn the German front overnight and decisively tilt the scales to our side. And who knows, if Tsar Tanks (at least a few cars!) Were introduced into the Lutsk (Brusilovsky) breakthrough in the summer of 1916, Austria-Hungary could well have left the war ahead, putting Germany in an extremely difficult situation.
The Dmitrovsky Kremlin Museum-Preserve still holds a miniature model of the Tsar-Tank, the one that the emperor admired. The 1915 picture of the year has also been preserved. It is curious that the people standing on the tank armor, in comparison with the dimensions of the experimental model, seem just bugs. And today it seems almost unbelievable how, at the level of the technology at that time, they managed to secretly take this colossus into the woods, and assemble, launch, test ... there
Recently, enthusiasts from the research society "Kosmopoisk", which throughout the country is hunting for ufological and historical sensations, during an expedition to the thicket of the Dmitrovsky district examined the so-called. The “forest of the tank”, a legend about which the locals handed down from generation to generation, and indeed, they found some traces of the presence of the Nikolai Lebedenko building ...
"Rover" Porokhovshchikova
At the very beginning of the Great War, in August 1914, the master of the Russian-Baltic machine-building plant in Riga, Alexander Porokhovshchikov, also turned to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief with the original design of a high-speed off-road combat tracked vehicle. 9 January 1915, at the reception of General Danilov, Chief of Supply of the North-Western Front, the inventor presented drawings and estimates for the construction of a combat vehicle, which he called the All-Terrain Vehicle.
Preliminary calculations Porokhovschikova liking the military leadership, because in addition to high traffic the inventor promised to provide more buoyancy of the machine. The project was approved, the required 9660 rubles 72 kopecks were allocated for the construction of a prototype of the Rover.
Already 18 in May 1915, the Porokhovshchiki tested his car in a run on a good caterpillar track, its speed reached 25 km / h (neither English nor French tanks initially had such speed). An official demonstration of “Rover” took place on July 20 1915.
The machine was controlled by two steering wheels located near the sides. In Porokhovshchikov’s tank, for the first time, side friction clutches were installed — mechanisms that later began to be installed on most tanks.
The tank went on solid ground, leaning on the wheels and the driving drum, and on soft ground it switched to a track, that is, it had a combined wheel-tracked propulsion. This was ahead of the achievements of British tank building for at least a few years.
The powderboxes made the tank hull waterproof, as a result of which he could easily overcome water obstacles. Unlike the excessively bulky models of Mendeleev and Lebedenko, Porokhovshchikov’s car was much smaller: 3,6 m long, 2 m wide, 1, 5 m high (without a tower). Its final weight was assumed to be within the entire 4 tons, the crew - 1 people. "All-terrain vehicle" was equipped with a machine gun and had to have bulletproof booking.
Porokhovshchikov proposed a unique armor of his own design: "Armor is a combination of elastic and rigid metal layers and special viscous and elastic gaskets." Of particular importance was the cheapness of his armor, the ability to bend and cook it.
At the next test of 29 December 1916, Porokhovshchikov's tank reached an exceptionally high speed on the highway - 40 vers per hour.
However, in the winter of 1916 / 17, the military department stopped funding Porokhovshchikov’s work. The official reason was called a significant (two-fold) cost overrun: total 18090 rubles were spent. The Defense Ministry thought of ... obliging a talented designer to return to the treasury the money allocated for the construction of the machine (!), And to hand over its only sample for permanent storage to the Main Military Technical Directorate ...
But, it seems, the real reason for the cessation of work on the promising model was by no means financial.
Insidious "allies" - the British and French - jealously followed the progress of the nascent Russian tank building and did everything possible so that the Russian army, already determined by influential Anglo-Saxon and other circles to the slaughter, did not intensify in the general offensive for the spring - summer 1917 of the year by domestic tanks.
And they, as we see, were significantly superior in many respects to British cars, which began to be put into service in the fall of 1916 ...
It is known, by the way, that the drawings of Porokhovshchikov's “Rover” were in England and formed the basis of new models of British tanks. In any case, the suspicious similarity of the body shape of the All-Terrain Vehicle and the British tank Mk I speaks, at a minimum, of the detailed familiarity of overseas tank builders with the Russian project ...
* * *
In the bloody turmoil and chaos of the Civil War, all three talented engineers perished: Mendeleev, who died early from typhus, and Lebedenko and Porokhovshchikov, whose further fate has not been fully clarified. True, Porokhovshchikov's assistants left a noticeable mark on Soviet science: Academician Mikulin became famous as a designer aviation engines, Academician Stechkin worked fruitfully in the field of hydro-aerodynamics.
It must be said that the sad fate of the inventions of the first Russian tank builders is largely due to the fact that at that time there was not only established canons for designing land combat vehicles on tracked engines, but also their concept as such. This partly explains the fact that, for example, the Lebedenko project, which received the most august approval and brought to the sea trials, in the dire situation of the world war was obviously a failure ...
However, it cannot be denied that these projects have become important milestones in the history of Russian and world tank construction. The highest design culture, exceptional conscientiousness and thoroughness with which all three models were developed, as well as the original and progressive ideas embedded in them in large numbers, honor Russian technical thought and underline the timeless merits of Russian authors in the development of world military technological progress.
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