"Tank Dyrenkova": everyone wants his own ceiling ?!
"Tank Dyrenkov" - photo.
It is known that sometimes punching qualities and self-confidence, or simply arrogance, help where there should be other talents. But the consequences are usually always sad, if not tragic. So in stories armored vehicles such examples are known. For example, Walter Christie had a very quarrelsome temper (plus a lot of self-confidence!), Although, of course, he was a talented design engineer. Moreover, the trace left by him in world tank building is simply huge, but not in the USA. He is very much there the military in his time spoiled a lot of blood.
SK was a good pushy one. Dzhevetsky - Polish-Russian engineer, designer and inventor, the author of a number of designs of submarine torpedoes and examples of this can be continued. But ... no less than other examples, alas, when people pestered ministries and departments with deliberately failed projects, which were not even drawings, but schemes, and demanded attention and money for the implementation of their fantasies. Has it happened that they succeeded and what was the result then? And what happened as a result of cooperation between Kurchevsky and Tukhachevsky is a story that has already become a textbook example of how not to take care of increasing the country's defense capability. But there were other examples and many ...
Here, for example, V. Lukin, a student at the Leningrad Technological Institute, in the 1928 year offered the Red Army his tank "Shoduket" or "Skorokhodovoy two-wheeled tanga" (exactly "tanga", not a tank!). In comparison with her, “Tsar-tank” Lebedenko would have looked just small, because the diameter of the wheels on it was assumed to be in 12 m! The car he had painted outside from several angles, however, the scheme of the internal structure, as well as how all the proper calculations for it were missing. The latter, however, was not surprising, since, judging by his letter, at that time he had already been expelled from the institute because of academic failure. True, he explained that the reason for such sad circumstances was the fact that all his free time he developed his "Shoduket", but he did not submit any detailed drawings or anything else. Well, the project went to the abandoned archive of inventions in Samara, where he is now, along with other equally odious projects that are still waiting for their researchers!
There was a project to prepare in advance the armor lining for buses and trolley buses, to keep these skins in stock, and with the start of the war and the invasion of the enemy, they should be immediately booked and used! And if the enemy does not reach this city? Or armor prorzhaveet?
"Shoduket"
And someone also offered “down armor” - they say, the bullet gets stuck in the feather bed, so you have to press down and down the plane with this armor! It will be easy (this is to the question of what is a kilogram of fluff or a kilogram of lead easier?), And the plane is flying! It is good that in this case the decision to point the inventor to the door is obvious.
You can’t say anything good about the Nambaldov wedge, although the designer provided for the possibility of anti-aircraft fire. He would cram him into such a thing and let him ride (and at the same time shoot!), And he would immediately recover from all his design ambitions.
Nambaldov's "Liliput" tanket.
But it also happened that the “woeful inventors” still managed to interest the military who were not too versed in this with their ideas, and then literally “down the drain” and a lot of money flew out from us (and abroad too!), Invaluable time was spent, human labor and materials. Something similar, for example, happened in the USSR with "a tank Dyrenkova ”, which for a long time was not even mentioned in any of the Russian directories on armored vehicles. The project belonged to self-taught inventor N. Dyrenkov, who had previously developed the D-8 and D-12 armored cars, as well as the D-2 artillery armored car.
It should be noted that Nikolai Dyrenkov had only elementary education, but, judging by the documents, he was a man of assertive and penetrative, and knew how to convince others that he was right. At 1918, he even met Lenin and reported to him about how he fought for production discipline in Rybinka, which Lenin even wrote about. Without a doubt, the ability to technology he had, and he was also a good organizer. However, to create driving armored cars then it was not so difficult. The main thing is to have a chassis. Then he installed on the layout of the reservation of plywood. Watched what and how. Then they put a frame from a corner on the frame and sewed it all up with rivet armor. CSKA supplied weapons, and the armored car was ready. Moreover, there was not even a tower on the D-8. A machine gun on it stood in the rear body armor sheet. The same thing happened with his moto armored car. Armored Izhora plant has already done. Epaulets and towers were ready. That is, Dyrenkov acted as a designer, no more. He took the finished chassis, sheathed his armor, put two towers on the available shoulder straps and got a good result. It is clear that for the end of 20-s it was a good job. Moreover, his "armored cars" fought even during the Great Patriotic War. That is, no one denies his feasible contribution. Well, I would deal with them further, especially since the customer had comments to him and needed to be removed, and the design itself was perfected to infinity. But ... if a person made an accepted by the BA army, and yes, a motor-armored wagon, then he could be considered a serious designer at that time and ... could aim a blow at more!
D-8.
Here it is in October 1929, and swung at the wheel-tracked tank of its own design. A report on his draft medium maneuverable tank was heard on 18 in November of the same year at a meeting of the PBC commission. We decided to recognize its construction as expedient, and to hand over the tank no later than 1 on April 1930 of the year.
And in December 1929 of the year at the Izhora plant in Leningrad, specifically for this designer, an experimental design and testing bureau of the Office of Mechanization and Motorization of the Red Army was organized, which Dyrenkov headed. KB took up the development of the tank, which received the designation D-4. Moreover, Dyrenkov began working on other projects at the same time: he designed armored cars, worked on armoring tractors, designs of chemical war machines, new motorized armored wagons, welded and stamped hulls for tanks, invented new armored vehicles, tracked all-terrain vehicles and transmissions. That is, at the same time in the reserve, he had about 50 of various designs (and much was made in metal), and all this within one and a half years! But natural ingenuity, of course, could not compensate for his lack of engineering education - almost all of his projects somehow turned out to be a failure.
According to the project, completed by the beginning of February 1930, the “Dyrenkov tank” was a 12-ton combat vehicle, with 15-20-mm armor, two 45-mm guns of the Sokolov system and four more DT machine guns. All this was placed in two towers (270 degrees angle of shelling of each tower) and in the bow of the hull. But the "highlight" of the tank D-4 (he received this designation in the documents) was his chassis, in which the wheel-tracked propulsor was used.
Outside it was closed armored screens, between which and the actual body of the car were two massive steel riveted boxes, on which were mounted skating rinks and springs. The driving wheel was in the back, the guide was in the front. Between them there were three twin support rollers of large diameter, and there were no supporting rollers. The wheel course consisted of four automobile wheels on the axes of the driving and guide rollers located on the outside of the screens. The front pair was controllable. From a track to a wheeled (and vice versa) tank was transferred with the help of two jacks working from a tank engine, which either raised (or lowered) a box with support rollers located between the bulwark and the hull. That's how the tank and got up on the wheels (or caterpillars). However, this seemed a little to the designer, and he proposed to mount another pair of railway rollers under the bottom. Thanks to this, the D-4 could drive along rails like an armored rubber, but also force water obstacles with the help of equipment for underwater travel! Agree that even now the project of such a machine would require long and hard work of a large team of experienced engineers. But then a lot was decided by the “cavalry attack!” - “and everything is available too, eh-ma, now for our mind!”
The engines for the tank were imported: two Hercules hp 105 engines that worked on one common gearbox. The control of the tank was facilitated by the presence of hydraulic amplifiers, and the installation of the reverse stroke allowed the D-4 to move back and forth at the same speed. The driver was given to monitor the state-of-the-art strobe device.
However, the complexity of the work, and most importantly the fact that Dyrenkov could not make all the necessary calculations himself and did many things ... “by eye, on a whim,” led to the fact that the production of the D-4 was delayed. He didn’t accept any help from anyone and was constantly distracted by the development of new inventions, he took on a new one, before he could finish the old one. It happened that the same drawings had to be redone several times, and just after that, the details of this ill-fated tank also had to be redone. Dyrenkov himself blamed the plant and the engineers for everything, that is, he was engaged in the usual business for such people: “he poured it from the sore head to the healthy one”.
The D-4 was finally assembled in Moscow, where at the beginning of 1931, it was transferred to the design bureau. Already in March, the D-4 drove through the factory yard for the first time, and it was immediately clear that it had failed. Yes, the mechanism allowed to move from tracks to wheels worked, but it turned out so cumbersome, so complex and unreliable that the serial production of a tank with such a chassis and could not speak. The tank weight also turned out to be higher than the calculated one (around 15 t), which is why the D-4 moved on wheels with difficulty even along the concrete floor in the factory floor, and what would happen to it on the road? But he didn’t drive better on the tracks because of the poorly designed transmission, which in addition was constantly breaking down. And the speed in 35 km / h on the tracks, declared Dyrenkovym, also failed to achieve!
"Tank Dyrenkov" on tracks and on wheels.
At the same time, seeing that the miracle machine did not come out, the inventor immediately began working on a new tank, the D-5, and suggested putting a new turret with an 76-mm gun on the BT-2 tank. But then it became clear to everyone with whom, in the person of Dyrenkov, he had to deal with that about a million rubles of people's money was wasted for nothing, so in the end he was “pointed at the door”. However, it was enough to just look at the tank just to understand that he would not ride on wheels, they were so disproportionately small in relation to the tank itself, which, by the way, the designer himself did not see from the very beginning!
However, he did not calm down even here, but turned for help to M. Tukhachevsky, a well-known amateur of all military wonders, and ... he gave the green light to build the next tank D-5! By November, 1932 had built its full-size model, prepared drawings and a number of parts and mechanisms. But then the military's patience finally came to an end, and the Dyrenkov Design Bureau closed 1 on December 1932, and all work on the D-5 was stopped. It is clear that “nothing bad” N. Dyrenkov did not want. However, fate did not forgive anyone in those years. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that 13 of October 1937 of the year he was arrested on charges of participation in a sabotage and terrorist organization, and 9 of December 1937 of the year, that is, on the day of the trial, was shot at the Kommunarka training ground in the Moscow region, where he was buried.
Then, of course, he was rehabilitated posthumously, but this hardly pleased Dyrenkov himself. And he was only summed up by a lack of education: in 1908, he graduated from the parish primary school, in 1910 - the first class of the Karyakinsky school, and in 1910-1914 - the vocational school at the mechanic-technical school ME. Komarov and ... everything! By the way, according to a similar principle, although technically and on a more advanced level in the USSR in the 60s of the last century, the wheeled-tracked infantry fighting vehicle "Object 911" was made. Calculations showed that due to the high speed of movement on wheels on roads with hard surface, with the help of such machines, it will be possible to create superiority in forces on certain sectors of the front, sufficient for a successful breakthrough of the enemy defense. But ... because of the additional costs of manufacturing the machine and the difficulties with a double propulsion vehicle, this weaponry was also not accepted, as was the "unfinished" tank D-4.
Tank BT-2 with Dyrenkov Tower.
However, Dyrenkov had every chance to go down in the history of domestic military equipment exclusively from the positive side, since he designed and built railway armored tires and very much succeeded in this, since they were put into service and later they fought. That is, to stop him on this. Get a good engineering education ... But, as they say, it is useful to do things that I didn’t understand very well and the sad results did not take long to wait! The vigorous energy and the attempt to embrace the immense played with this, in its own way, undoubtedly, a talented person, a very bad joke and as a result became the cause of a tragic death. Apparently, he had enough technical knowledge for armored rubber, but he didn’t have tanks. No wonder it was very correctly said that every person strives in his development to reach the threshold of his incompetence. That Dyrenkov it and reached!
Fig. A.Shepsa
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