Creator of the armored legend: Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin
To the birth of the most famous tank of all time T-34 its chief designer walked a very winding path
There are geniuses whose fate is similar to a Bickford fuse: from a certain moment they burn, without ceasing, until death stops them. Such were, for example, Mikhail Lomonosov or Alexander Suvorov. And there are geniuses whose life (if you continue the sapper association) is like a bomb. The only moment comes when the charge is triggered - and the roar of this explosion is carried for decades. Such people include, for example, the creator of a backpack parachute, Gleb Kotelnikov. And the creator of the most famous tank, for all history armored vehicles - the legendary T-34 - Koshkin Mikhail Ilyich.
Designer Mikhail Koshkin. Photo: wikipedia.org
Now, three quarters of a century after his death, there is a great temptation to find those turning points in the fate of the future T-34 designer, who predetermined his “tank” future. But no. The fact that Mikhail Koshkin took up tanks was the result of a long chain of coincidences. And this very chain is a classic example, as Arkady Gaidar wrote, “an ordinary biography in extraordinary time.”
The apprentice caramel shop
As far as the ordinary biography of Mikhail Koshkin is, it can be clearly seen from the history of his childhood. This is where nothing is outstanding! The typical history of the peasant family of Central Russia. Born 3 in December 1898 of the year in the village of Brynchagi, Yaroslavl Province, Misha Koshkin was the third child in a small land family - which, in fact, explains such a small number of children. His father, realizing that he could not feed everyone with his land, had to constantly disappear in the out-of-work fields: logging and construction. And one day he simply did not return home: he overstrained himself on a felling of the forest and died.
That year, Mikhail Koshkin was six years old. Four years later, he left his mother and two sisters, straining at the farm, at home and went to work in Moscow for work. The first place of work of the future designer was the Einem confectionery factory - the future factory "Red October". In 1908, a smart and executive teenager from Yaroslavl Province became an apprentice in a caramel shop. And almost all the money earned by hard work was sent to mothers and sisters - and thus literally saved them from starvation.
In the red-brick buildings on Bersenevskaya Embankment, Mikhail Koshkin worked for nine years, until his turn came to be drafted into the army: For the third year Russia participated in a world war. Koshkin pleased the service right on the eve of the February Revolution, and therefore did not fight long. I went to the Western Front, where I served all the time under the command of General Anton Denikin, was wounded in August, and mobilized at the end of the year.
But in the Red Army, the military career of the future tank designer was different. In 1918, Koshkin volunteered for service in the Red Army railway squad, fought at Tsaritsyn, then at Arkhangelsk, did not get to the Polish front because of typhoid, but he managed to go to the South, where he already served as a political commissar.
Party worker from Vyatka
Everything that happens with Mikhail Koshkin after the Civil War also fits into the concept of “ordinary biography in extraordinary time”. As an active political worker, in 1921, he goes to study at the Sverdlov Communist University: the Soviet government needs its own managerial personnel to replace those lost in troubled times. Moreover, ideologically correct cadres: it was not by chance that the university occupied the same complex of buildings on Miusskaya Square in Moscow, where then the Higher Party School of the CPSU was located until the very end of the USSR.
University graduates, as a rule, quickly finished work in production and transferred to the party organs. So it was with Koshkin: a confectionery factory heading to Vyatka in 1924 (it must be thought, the distribution took into account the nine-year experience of the party agitator at one of the best confectionery industries in Russia), after a year he goes to work as the head of the agitation and propaganda department in the district committee of the Communist Party . For four years, Koshkin made a good party career, reaching the post of head of the department of the provincial committee of the CPSU (b).
Koshkin (right) in Vyatka. Photo: wikipedia.org
And then his fate made another unexpected turn. By this time, Mikhail Koshkin managed to get acquainted with the most famous in Soviet Russia, Vyatich - Sergei Mironovich Kirov. And, as the designer’s daughter Elizabeth recalls, it was Kirov who, with his personal order, included Mikhail Ilyich among the "party members" - the communists mobilized to study in universities: the country that started the industrial breakthrough required new engineering personnel.
Apparently, precisely because the lists were approved by Kirov, Koshkin went to study at the newly opened Leningrad Machine-Building Institute, which arose on the basis of the machine-building faculties of the Polytechnic and Technological Institutes and was directly subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. It is curious that Mikhail Koshkin was one of several hundred LMSI students who spent the entire time of study at the walls of this university. In the 1934 year, when Mikhail Ilyich had already been distributed to the former Putilov factory, the institute was incorporated into the Leningrad Industrial Institute - the re-established Polytech.
Student tank builder
Mikhail Koshkin, a student of the military-mechanical department of the Leningrad Machine-Building Institute, worked at the Gorky Automobile Plant, where at that time they began to create their own tanks. And on the pre-diploma practice I got into the development engineering machine-building department - OKMO-Leningrad Plant No. 174 named after K.Е. Voroshilov, created on the basis of the tank production plant "Bolshevik".
Confident, perfectly getting along with people, Koshkin liked the management of GAZ, and the plant clearly lacked its design personnel for tank production. It is not surprising that even before Mikhail Ilyich went to pre-diploma practice, a personal call was made to Koshkin from Gorky to the office of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. But, apparently, he himself was well aware that he did not have enough knowledge for independent design work, and there was simply no one to get them at GAZ. And therefore, when the distribution commission reported on the Gorky “order” for Koshkin, he decided to seek an appointment to the OKMO.
Whose word can outweigh the request of the Gorky people addressed to one of the most penetrative commissars, Sergo Ordzhonikidze? Koshkin found such a person in the person of someone who had already turned his fate. With a request to leave him in Leningrad, Mikhail Ilyich turned to Sergei Kirov. And he respected the desire of his “godson”: the omnipotent leader of Leningrad, who had only a few months left, achieved that Koshkin was appointed to the place where he himself was asking. A few months later, already in 1935, the Leningrad Experimental Machine Building Plant No. 185, for which the future creator of the Thirty-Fours came to work, was given the name of the dead Kirov.
Leningrad graduate
It was here that Mikhail Koshkin, a graduate of the LMSI military-mechanical department, learned the basics of designing tanks. Among his immediate leaders were legendary tank designers, such as Semyon Ginzburg and Nikolai Barykov. And the fact that the design office of the plant number 185 was engaged mainly in medium tanks, and determined the future direction of his own work.
The first experience in the creation of medium tanks Mikhail Koshkin, who came to the position of designer, was obtained when the design bureau was developing the T-29 tank. Another legendary Soviet tank builder, the leading designer of the design bureau, Professor Nikolai Zeits, supervised the work in this area. And although the experimental medium tank built in five copies did not go into the series, the developments on it were used in the next project - the T-46-5 medium tank, also known as the T-111.
The basis for this armored vehicle was the light tank T-46, which was supposed to replace the well-proven, but no longer able to withstand the anti-tank artillery light tank T-26. When it became obvious from the experience of fighting in Spain that the battlefield of the coming war would belong to medium tanks, the design bureau of the 185 plant had been developing its own car with counter-booking for a year. And most importantly - and this was a fundamentally important aspect of the project! - without the possibility of driving only on wheels: Semyon Ginzburg and most of his subordinates have already appreciated the futility of the idea of a wheeled-tracked tank. The designers understood well: a purely tracked vehicle is distinguished by a much larger stock of modernization, it can be equipped with much thicker armor, and its design is distinguished by greater adaptability and simplicity.
All these ideas were incorporated into the design of the T-46-5 from the very beginning of work on it, in which Mikhail Koshkin participated. But he couldn’t develop the new tank for a long time: at the end of 1936, he was able to go from an ordinary designer to the deputy head of the design bureau in just two years and transferred to the design bureau of the Kharkov Locomotive Plant, the main manufacturer of the wheeled-tracked tanks of the BT series. It was here, in Kharkov, that his finest hour was waiting for him, that same explosion, the echo of which is still audible.
Kharkov appointee
... 28 December 1936, the people's commissar of heavy industry Sergo Ordzhonikidze, signed an order by which Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin was appointed head of the tank design bureau of the plant No. 183 - the former Comintern Kharkov Locomotive Building Plant. In the CB itself, the newcomer, who arrived in the city in the first days of January, was viewed with doubt. An old party apparatchik, a recent university graduate, a man who managed to survive without arrest arrests and consequences in relation to several of his superiors at once ... In short, in Kharkov, Koshkin was taken wary. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the KB was seriously feverish. Former manager Afanasy Firsov, who paid for the unreliability of the gearbox of the new BT-7, has been removed from his post and works as a simple designer. The bureau itself is actually divided in half: while some engineers are developing new tanks, others spend days and nights in production to bring to mind already adopted weapons.
It is not surprising that first of all Mikhail Koshkin, whom Firsov himself instructed and brought up to date, decides to tackle the problems of the BT-7 on the conveyor. And pretty soon, with the help of lead designer Alexander Morozov and other colleagues, he manages to improve the reliability of the capricious BT transmission. And soon there is a solution for the problem of gluttony high-speed tank. Under the guidance of Koshkin, instead of a gasoline engine that has been depleted and requires a lot of fuel, the BT-7 engineers put the DB-2 “high-speed diesel” developed here. It is he who will soon receive the B-2 index and become the heart of the future T-34. He will be installed on the latest modification of high-speed tanks - BT-7M.
But neither the modernization of the BT-7 already in service, nor the design work on the creation of the next wheeled-tracked modification of the BT-9, was not a really exciting job for Mikhail Koshkin. Understanding perfectly well that the future belongs to tanks exclusively tracked, he was looking for an opportunity to prove his point in action. And such a chance presented himself to Mikhail Ilyich and his like-minded people from KB-24 in the fall of 1937. It was at this time that the Armored Directorate of the Red Army gave Kharkov citizens the task of developing a new BT-20 tank. The document, which envisaged the creation of a light tank with anti-missile booking, 45-mm cannon and inclined armor, was signed on October 13 1937. In fact, it is from this day that the fate of the T-34 tank can be counted.
Parent of the legendary tank
In the documents of the second half of the 1930-x development of each tank KB had a letter index. The first letter - A - was assigned to the products of Kharkov plant number 183. Therefore, the first prototype of a light wheeled / tracked tank, created as part of work on the BT-20, was called the A-20. At the same time, work began on the “initiative” project of a purely tracked vehicle, which eventually received first an A-20 (D) index, that is, a “caterpillar”, and later - A-32.
In February, 1939, both projects — and the ordered A-20, and the “smuggling” A-32 - were reviewed at a meeting of the Defense Committee in the Kremlin. The fact that there were two projects before the discussion, rather than one, was a great merit of the new plant manager No. 183, who came from the Kirov plant in Leningrad, Yuri Maksaryov, who arrived in Kharkov in October 1938. Despite the strongest pressure from the military, and above all, Deputy Commissar of Defense Marshal Kulik, personally presenting the projects, Mikhail Koshkin managed to insist that the factory be commissioned to make prototypes of both machines. As far as we know, such a decision was made only after the designer was supported by Stalin himself, by that time not so unequivocally as before, who looked at the prospects of wheeled-tracked vehicles.
Competition tanks passed tests in the second half of the summer of 1939, and were appreciated by the state commission. However, the commission members did not dare to give preference to this or that tank. Apparently, the cause of indecision was not so much the tactical and technical data of the tested samples (the tracked tank clearly proved its advantages), as purely political motives. After all, to give preference to one of the options meant to enter into conflict either with the leadership of the Red Army or with the leadership of the CPSU (b), which no one clearly wanted. So everyone decided the troop tests, on which the military clearly liked the purely tracked A-32.
The final decision on the fate of the new tank was made in December 1939. December 19 The Committee of Defense under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopts Resolution No. 443ss. This document decides to adopt the Red Army 11 new models of tanks, armored vehicles and tractors. The first item in the resolution is the Leningrad KV tank, the second is the T-32 tank "tracked, with a B-2 diesel engine, manufactured by plant No. 183 Narkomsredmash". The same document prescribed the following changes to the tank design: “a) increase the thickness of the main armor plates to 45 mm; b) improve visibility from the tank; c) install the following armament on the T-32: 1) F-32 76 mm cannon, coupled with a machine gun of the 7,62 caliber mm; 2) separate machine gun caliber 7,62 mm radio operator; 3) separate machine gun caliber 7,62 mm; 4) anti-aircraft machine gun caliber 7,62 mm. Assign the name of the specified tank "T-34".
Pre-war tanks produced by plant number 183. From left to right: А-8 (БТ-7М), А-20, Т-34 of model 1940 with a gun Л-11, Т-34 of model 1941 with a gun Ф-34. Photo: wikipedia.org
And the third point was "BT tank - with a diesel engine B-2, manufactured by plant number 183 Narkomsredmash." Moreover, the fate of this tank - the first created by the factory design bureau under the leadership of Mikhail Koshkin! - was put in direct dependence on the production of T-34. Because in the same resolution, plant No. 183 was instructed: “a) to organize the production of T-34 tanks at Kharkov Plant No. 183. Comintern; b) produce an 2 prototype prototype of T-34 tanks for 15 in January 1940 of the year and an installation batch in the number of 10 units for 15 of September in 1940 of the year; c) to release at least 1940 T-200 tanks in 34; d) to bring the capacity of plant No. 183 for the production of T-34 tanks on 1 in January of 1941 to 1600 units; e) until the full development of the serial production of T-34 tanks, to produce a BT tank from 1 in December of the year with the B-1939 diesel engine installed on it; e) to produce at the factory number 2 in 183, at least 1940 BT tanks with a diesel engine B-1000; g) In 2, discontinue the BT tank with a B-1942 diesel engine, replacing it completely with the T-2 ... ”.
Immortal constructor
Two prototypes of the T-34 tank were required for troop testing. And if not by mid-January, but by February 10 the tanks were ready and handed over to the military, who confirmed: the novelties fully justify the hopes placed on them. A month later, the same two cars under their own power went from Kharkov to Moscow to participate in the demonstration of samples of new equipment, adopted by the most famous decree.
This stage, during which Mikhail Koshkin himself spent a lot of time on the levers of new products, has long become a legend. The same as the words of Stalin, who allegedly after the demonstration of T-34 in the Kremlin called him either “the first swallow” or simply “swallow” ... But what was definitely not a legend was the most severe pneumonia with which Koshkin returned back to Kharkov from this run. It was she who brought the thirty-four creator to the grave. Neither emergency surgery to remove the lung, which was performed by surgeons who came from Moscow, did not save, nor intensive treatment: 26 of September 1940 of the year of Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin did not.
At the funeral behind the coffin of the chief designer of the design bureau of plant number 183, as the eyewitnesses later recalled, the whole team went. For four years, Koshkin managed to love everything: direct subordinates, masters, and simple workers. And no one that day knew that they were not just burying the designer of a tank — they were burying the man who created the most famous car of the Second World War.
After less than a year, T-34 was baptized in combat, and five years later it became the main symbol of victory in World War II. And they forever immortalized the name of their creator, which, however, was far from immediately widely known. The Stalin Prize for the creation of T-34 Mikhail Koshkin was awarded posthumously only in 1942 year. And half a century after his death, in 1990, he was awarded the highest labor award - he was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor.
T-34 in Berlin, May 1945. Late 1944 production vehicle. Photo: waralbum.ru
By this time, there was not even the grave of the famous designer in Kharkov. The Germans destroyed it during the occupation - apparently, quite deliberately: not being able to revenge Koshkin himself, they destroyed the memory of him. But the "thirty-four" avenged their creator and immortalized his name. After all, this winning tank is more often than any other found on pedestals of many monuments to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. And each of them is a monument not only to the fallen heroes, but also to the person who created the tank legend, the most massive and most famous in the history of world tank building.
Information