Angara: Triumph or Oblivion. 4 part
Now, dear reader, we are forced to temporarily move away from the main theme of our narrative. We will not advance a bit in the understanding of rocket technology until we reflect on a number of issues. It is possible to study the technical characteristics of launch vehicles for years, but one can never understand why the rocket is removed from production, although according to its characteristics it is perfect. Or vice versa: a seemingly unpretentious rocket turns into a legend.
Naturally, there are objective reasons for everything. But then why were these reasons ignored when the rocket was launched into the series? The answer is obvious: these reasons simply did not know, could not predict. The most effective way to predict the direction is to know the previous one. history preceding events.
Why does a raven, to drink from an incomplete jug, throw stones there? Because he, knowing the law of fluid displacement, predicts events that will occur. Let us and we, following the example of the crow studying history, will try to grope these laws of design.
In order to analyze historical events and draw the right conclusions, one needs to take an object for study, where randomness is minimized. What do you think, the fact that we released the most massive tank and aircraft in the entire history of technology, is it a coincidence? Obviously not. The reason for this was the principles of design and production of this technology. And of course, we will try to answer the question why this is not possible with Western designers.
We continue the theme of constructive reserve. There are many more examples, but we will dwell on the most evident, on the aforementioned T-34.
As is known, the German designers decided to create their own tank as opposed to the "thirty-four", which would not be inferior, and surpassed it in some indicators. And it turned out to be nonsense: a constructive reserve began to “evaporate” with the speed of dry ice already at the design stage!
The design “research” algorithm is approximately the same. A powerful, heavy, high-impact gun required an extensive armored turret. All this should stand on a massive armored hull, which, in turn, should be served by a heavy, with many rollers, chassis. And these rinks scrolled massive and wide tracks, otherwise it is impossible, because the tracks will get stuck in a children's puddle, or the tracks will break. Now there is not enough engine power? No problem. We deliver even more powerful and massive. They completely forgot where to shove the gas tank for such a "gluttonous engine"? Find a “brilliant” solution: increase the body tank and reduce the tank. It’s okay that a tank in such a fuel reserve will travel only 80 km on rough terrain, let’s put a fuel truck behind it. Well, the fact that the fuel truck, being a "red rag" for the Russian aviation, he doesn’t go over rough terrain, these are his problems, we are “constructing” the tank, not a tanker. The main thing is that everything was fabulously written in the memoirs of the German tankers, and the Russian liberal historians assented to them.
As you guessed, the story is about sad for the Wehrmacht famous "Panther". Now let's take a close look at the ugly brainchild, still born from the belly of the vaunted German industry.
As a result, the Germans, in their constructive "decisions", made ends meet. They turned out to be an “average” monster tank with a giant bouquet of “children's”, or even completely incurable diseases, 45 tons in mass! Tanks KV-1 and EC-1, which weighed less than him, somehow became uncomfortable to call "heavy."
Just think, Hitler postponed the operation “Citadel” several times in order to accumulate more such “masterpieces”, naturally, three quarters of the “masterpieces” remained to “sunbathe” on the Kursk fields. And many of them fell apart on the way to the battlefield! And at the beginning of 1944, the chief inspector of the Wehrmacht’s armored forces, Heinz Guderian, reported to Hitler that most of the tank’s childhood diseases had been overcome. True, in a matter of months, this “rosy-cheeked infant” began to have other diseases, but already of a “gerontological” nature.
The fact is that the manufacturer of 57-mm anti-tank guns began to receive compliments from the front, resulting in a pleasant bewilderment of our designers. It was about the fact that the anti-tank gun, which already worked perfectly against this tank, now began to pierce it at inconceivable distances. The casket was opened simply: the surface hardened rolled tank armor was made on the technological limit, and the slightest manipulations with alloying elements made it suitable only for a medieval knight. And the question is not in the deficit of alloying additives, but in the shortage of medulla in German technologists.
Let us recall at least how our metallurgists "mocked" the Il-2 armored hull, especially when part of the mines for the extraction of alloying metals were in the hands of the Germans. After the forced improvements, the armor was not only not worse, but by some indicators it was even better, moreover, it was cheaper.
You can still tell a lot about this “exclusive” of the German military industry, but if we are talking about a constructive and technological reserve, you need to be sure to say that this reserve was just not enough to equip the “Panther” with a 88-mm gun, despite all the efforts of the Germans . As a result, the “Panther” with its 75-mm instrument became the owner of the infamous anti-record in the “nomination caliber / mass of the tank,” and the owner of this record with its 122-mm gun and the same mass as its counterpart, was EC-2 .
True, the "zombie historians" can argue that the caliber is one of the indicators. But this is the most important decisive indicator. Do not forget that the projectile must have decent high-explosive, fragmentation, concrete and many other properties. By the way, the EC-2 was designed, among other things, so that at a safe distance (with such armor and maneuver), almost any enemy of the enemy could be turned into a concrete crumb. And what could make the "Panther" gun? Flying at high speed "blanks" (which is not surprising for designers: extend the barrel and more gunpowder into the sleeve) made holes in the enemy's armor, but it is better not to remember about the other qualities of the projectiles.
Modern "tank experts" need to firmly grasp and record on their foreheads that in most cases a real tank is a maneuverable and protected unit for fire support of mobile connections, that is, the fragmentation-high-explosive effect of its projectiles tank produces havoc in manpower and equipment in the ranks of the enemy. It is especially good at suppressing firing points, and, of course, the tank unit produces the maximum effect when it enters the operational field, severing rear-line communications to the enemy. But the "shooters" between the tanks in the vast majority belong to the category of computer games. It is costly and unprofitable to let a tank into a tank, and the Prokhorov slaughter is an exception. In the fight against the tank, there are such means as anti-tank artillery, minefields, and finally, aviation.
Well, now, returning to the “Panther”, you need to ask yourself the question: didn’t the Germans have a rather expensive “anti-tank gun”? With reservations, it can be called self-propelled and somewhat conditionally (especially from the second half of the 44) protected. To compare, however, the "Panther" with the T-34 for the price is generally incorrect. We only note that the cost of "thirty-three", despite the quality modifications during serial production, decreased in 2,5 times.
Then, maybe, the Germans succeeded with the number of Panthers produced? It's even worse. Dear "toys" it is impossible to produce a large series, for each produced German "mastodon" our half-starved women and children gave out fourteen T-34!
"Thirty-four" became a legend, she turned the world tank building. It became clear that there is no need to release numerous classes of light, medium, infantry, heavy and super heavy tanks. The tank T-34 formed the world standard, the standard of the MAIN tank. And no "panther" can even come close to this standard! I would like all these "advanced writers of the new wave" coming from "Panther" to religious ecstasy and writing it into the best tank of the Second World War, to say the following: the most effective betrayal is when the "historian" because of his chronic lackluster thinking is sincerely convinced that writes the truth. However, the “fifth column” will be discussed below.
Doomsday Plane
Now I want to ask a question: what would Stalin do with such “panther” unfortunate developers? The answer is not original. In the best way for them, he would have sent these “developers” to develop pits in the far taiga with picks. Why did not Hitler do this, although the “design thought of the Third Reich” still didn’t run him so far around his finger, and he subsequently knew this very well? Yes, because in a different way all these German-Anglo-Saxons cannot do because of their “deep mentality”! Perhaps the designers of the West have their own design tenets? They are extremely primitive. The first postulate is the principle of a “round - roll, square - worn” loader who is dazed of alcoholism, the second is the principle of a three-year-old child “bigger, faster, more powerful - always better.”
How these principles work, we will now understand. For examples, I will always take the cult technique of the belligerent countries - because the display of these principles is very clearly visible on it. Take the famous stuck Yu-87 “Stuck”. Yes, it’s perfect with diving bombs, but in order to get out of the dive just as well, you need to give it a large wing area, which was done, but then the reverse side of this action opens: great aerodynamic drag, which gives low flying speed. It turns out that at the “facility” the “laptezhnik” works great, but the designers did not “foresee” how to safely get to the “work” and back. Rather, they, as always, solved the problem with one unknown. As a result, the "Junkers" were in the "trend" only as long as the Luftwaffe dominated the sky. As soon as the situation changed, the “blitzkrieg symbols” were blown out of the sky like a wind.
Can the designer solve problems with two or more unknowns? A Russian designer, having a dual dialectical thinking, which he inherited from our great ancestors, makes this work easy, as if playfully. As always, I will give an illustrative example of the legendary technology.
From the beginning of the 30 of the last century, the world's aviation thought was trying to create a frontline aircraft, a soldier aircraft, but one very serious problem arose. A low-flying plane that circled over an enemy crowd of people and equipment with a kite, everything fired - from tank cannons to machine guns and pistols, that is, the plane had to be booked. This is where the dialectical contradiction turns out, which is beyond the teeth of Western thinking.
A heavy armored plane turns out to be less speedy and maneuverable, so there are a lot of chances to get a shell in the “belly”. An airplane without armor is more maneuverable, but even one bullet at low altitudes can be fatal for it. There are two different design problems, seemingly incompatible. Not surprisingly, for one-sided Western brains this is a dead end; moreover, at the end of 30, the United States officially closed the research program as unpromising.
The great Russian designer Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin combined these diametrical opposites into a single whole, and the Wehrmacht received for his punishers the Doomsday machine, the “black death” - the legendary attack aircraft Il-2. For well-known reasons, I will not dwell on this super-airplane, but in order to deal with the triumph of the Soyuz and the future victorious march of the Angara on the example of this attack aircraft, it will be easy for us to learn the basic, integral principle of the Russian design idea.
This idea consists of four postulates. It can be (with some variations) formulated something like this. The most effective construction is an inexpensive construction, and for a construction to be inexpensive, it must be massive. Here, on two postulates, you need to stop and say that for the Anglo-Germans this is again a dead end, a vicious circle. They can not reach the cheapness of any fighter, if it is, say, the 5% segment of the Air Force of this country. You can really try to make it as good as possible, more qualitative, but these will be palliative measures, with 5% the airplane will go, say, to the 7% -th segment. Dramatically more “sales market” does not increase - this is not a civilian sphere, where zombized people cannot live without certain shampoos and floorcloths. Especially (by the example of Ukraine) it is impossible to get the market of a multi-million country entirely, because the situation when Hitler will sell tanks and planes to Stalin, leading a war with him will be absurd.
Let's return to the postulates. Russian design thought easily breaks this "vicious circle" and gives the third postulate - in order to increase the mass mass character of the structure, it is necessary to increase the segment of its functionality. Using the example of the Yak-9, I told how the series is increasing through the formation of functional modifications, but with “Ilyushin” it is a bit wrong.
The fact is that it is impossible to functionally modify the structure, being far from the original source, from the base model. Yes, the Yak-9BB could close the gaps in the missing bombers (it was necessary to quickly launch it into the series), but the Yak-9BB did not become a full-fledged bomber jacket, so it was a small-scale one. Sergey Vladimirovich went a little further, namely along the path of improving the basic model.
And here it is worthwhile to voice the fourth postulate, which was most clearly expressed in its attack aircraft: in order to increase the functionality of the structure, it is necessary to increase the functionality of its component nodes and assemblies, and then they will duplicate each other fully or partially. In turn, this means that composite nodes are either not placed initially, which leads to a reduction in the weight of the structure (this is very important for the aircraft) and a decrease in its cost (see the first postulate), or in the event of combat damage, the composite damaged node (unit) partially or completely duplicated by another node, which leads to an increase in the reliability of the structure. Sounds surprising, but nothing complicated. For example, armor plates are almost 100% included in the power circuit of the aircraft, and not hung like armor, which was done before in the aircraft industry. This made it unnecessary to put a lot of reinforcement elements, spars, and so on, but the most important thing is that apart from observing the weight culture, it gave savings to aluminum, which was sorely lacking.
Another example. The height trimmer on the "Ile" is designed so that in the event of a rudder damage, the pilot put the "wounded" plane on the trimmers. There are many such examples. IL-2 - this is truly the highest aerobatics of design ideas! Anyone, it seemed, his lack of Ilyushin turned into dignity.
Let us dwell only on one “shortcoming”: a large wing area, allowing a heavy “Ilu”, on the one hand, to increase the combat load, and on the other hand, it did not add speed and playfulness (that is, it flies like an iron). However, let the fighter compete with such an “iron” in a horizontal maneuver - in the second bend he will get a deadly “fairing” from the “humpback”. Moreover, the large wing made the “Il” phenomenally stable in flight, which in turn allowed even a poorly trained pilot to master the flying flight, which became the hallmark of this attack aircraft. Indeed, such “visits” to the Germans became an insoluble headache for them. The “shaving” IL-2 radar, visually and even by sound, is almost impossible to detect, which gave the newly appeared “Stealth” the main advantage in the war - surprise.
Do not forget that the armor "Ela" on the "shaving" not only protects against accidental bullets, but also allows you to make an emergency landing "on the stomach" in almost any terrain. And finally, steady in flight, “IL” “allows” to make such holes in itself, a small part of which would drive absolutely any other aircraft into the ground. Cases were recorded when the “Il” was landing on the airfield, having received more than 500 hits!
The combat use of IL-2 is an endless theme, and I have to summarize.
Thanks to the brilliant design "policy" IL-2 has become the most massive aircraft in the history of world aviation. He unceremoniously “devoured” dozens of series of pretty good planes, or at best left them on a meager production ration. And it is not surprising that from more than 20 of the large series of planes fighting on the front, the number of “silts” reached the absolute number of 1 / 3. Functionality, mass, simplicity and reliability - these are the four pillars on which our great record holder's pedestal rests.
Considering what has been said in this chapter, it will be much easier for us to predict the "space" policy of the West and to understand whether it is so terrible. Of course, it will be easier to understand the genesis of the Russian space and analyze its development trends.
And we will try to answer the question about the intellectual and technological potential of the West now. Yes, by impotence and malice, they can, on orders, turn bombers into a lunar crater cemetery where the Thirty-Fours father MI Koshkin is buried, or kill our missile scientists with blunt cynicism, disguising it as a terrorist attack in Volgograd. Anything smarter? They made smarter, for example, especially strong armor for knights, which, being beautiful, heavy sarcophagi, buried these dogs at the bottom of Lake Peipsi. They made the “Dora” cannon, for the maintenance of which only the gun crew needed “just something” 5000 people, and its seriality had “as much as a whole” one copy. You can recall the Supertank "Maus", which in principle could not be routed, but in principle, he also could not fight. Or recall the super-expensive and unnecessary stealth bomber stealth, which was invisible only for impressionable American housewives who have fantasy.
This list is endless, and since their one-sided brain is not capable of “creating” in another way, they, believe me, will still delight us with their “innovations”. And some of their cosmic “know-hows” with which they are trying to intimidate us, as Gorbachev intimidated at one time, we will examine in detail in the following chapters.
Concluding the section, I would like to admit that the industrial and technical potential of our overseas "friends" and their strategic puppets is huge. How and how to beat them, we already guess, the more we don’t have to be wise, we have a military space program, bequeathed to us, as the tablets of a dying prophet, the Soviet Union. Our task is to prevent these tablets from being “trampled on the fifth column,” and let us think about how to do this in the next chapter.
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