Father of the navy
Subjunctive is actually necessary for scientific, publicistic works and public discussions, when it is necessary to assess the scale of accomplishments by devotees - collectors-collectors of traces of the past and the phenomena of the present in any of the areas of knowledge, and only a fraction of them would be (by the way, the root the verb of the action - “to be”!) makes you wonder: if it were not for the chronicler Nestor ... and if not the successors of his works, Mikhail Lomonosov, Vasily Tatishchev, Nikolay Karamzin ... and if not the collector-preserver of the living p sskogo language of the nineteenth century, Vladimir Dal ?!
And finally, if not for Vadim Shavrov (1898–1976) - in aviation, creator of the fundamental two-volume work “The history of aircraft designs in the USSR until 1938” (materials on the history of aircraft construction).
There were no followers of his dream of creating an air-sea fleet amphibious flying boats, super-necessary for our country with its giant coastline and thousands of rivers, lakes, swamps - created by nature airfields for such universal vehicles that can fly, swim and roll dry, on snow, on ice.
Of the six vehicles created by him, it was fortunate to prove that only the amphibian Ш-2, which served in the Far North, in Siberia, in the Far East, had been in need for almost half a century. “Shavrushka” is preserved as an invaluable exhibit in the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic. One of the streets of the Primorsky District of St. Petersburg, at the request of polar explorers, is named after the aircraft designer and aviation historian VB Shavrova.
The third business of his life was collecting beetles from all over the world ... And it played a crucial role in his life.
I was lucky to see Vadim Borisovich in 1975, 17 in September, which witnessed an autograph on the donated first volume of "The history of aircraft structures ...".
On the instructions of the Model Designer magazine, I needed to write about the creation of the amphibian W-2. In a large spacious room of a communal apartment in the center of Moscow on the shelves lined up straight rows of folders with materials, photographs, schemes of aircraft.
But by virtue of my last name, my attention was riveted by a great many of the most diverse beetles in flat glazed boxes hung on the walls. From tiny wheat grains to giants from the palm, and in one drawer there is only a photograph of a huge exot, like no one, a woodcutter-titan beetle whose host has been looking forward to.
Admiring his “totem animals”, especially beauties of iris irons - water beetles, which, as Vadim Borisovich explained, both fly and swim and walk on land, explained to me, without question, the interest of a young aircraft designer Shavrov to build an amphibian aircraft. Then, when no one has ever heard such a word - bionics! However, the conversation began according to a conceived plan - with the works of Shavrov in the cinema.
... A film was made about Alexander Mozhaisky. Film director Vsevolod Pudovkin needed an aircraft pioneer of the Russian aircraft industry. Shot the film "served two comrades." Director Eugene Karelov needed “Newport” and “Farman-30”, who flew into the First World War and into the Civil War.
But ... Mozhaisky’s plane was sold piecemeal from the auction immediately after the designer’s death in 1890. “Newpores” and “Farmans” have not been preserved for years. Cinematographers were looking for people who could remember or see the first flying "shelves" with their own eyes, to know their device in detail, so that they could recreate lost machines using vague schemes and scarce technical materials.
“Mosfilm” was lucky: the aircraft designer, the aircraft engineer and the historian were found in one person - this is Vadim Shavrov. Plus, and this is generally a great luck, the sixty-year-old Shavrov volunteered to control the flimsy “bookcase” with two filmmakers, Oleg Yankovsky and Rolan Bykov, on board, of course, having flown around it alone. Remember that pilot - in a helmet, important, with a lush mustache?
... Ros Vadim Borisovich in the family of an artillery officer in the early years of the twentieth century, when fairy tales about boots-walkers and carpets-airplanes came true for universal admiration, horse-drawn transport was replaced by steam locomotives, cars, airplanes.
In 1914, he entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers. Once - it was already during the Civil War - students were sent with topographical parties to the Volga region and the North Caucasus to look for routes of railways - under the program of the tsarist Ministry of Railways.
The party in which there was a young Shavrov, worked in the following directions: Saratov - Chernyshevskaya, Abdulino - Kokchetav, Tsaritsyn - Vladimirovka. Nearby were fighting. Topographers were captured as spies, then white, then red.
But, finding out that instead weapons they have leveling pipes, student Shavrov also has a folding net and a lot of boxes with bugs and labels, and there is an order from the RSFSR Commissariat of Communications of the RSFSR to find the routes of the railways, they were released. Moreover, it happened, having fed and having given food with him:
“Seek, seek - it is a necessary thing, whatever the power in the country”. Someone from the topographers mowed typhus, someone could not resist the nervous shocks and left. However, the task was still done. Here is a state attitude to the cause of the many people in the country and contributed to the creation of a new power.
In the 1920 year, when the Civil War subsided and the invaders were driven out of the outskirts of the country, the work of universities, including the Institute of Railway Engineers, was resumed.
Shavrov recalled how he was struck by the layout of forces by faculty: on the ground - 1500 people, on the water - 200, on the new, air, - 6. Shavrov, “zhukolov,” or even jokingly, “fly-catchers,” as his friends called him, entered, of course, an “unpopular” air and graduated from it in 1924 as an engineer, receiving a diploma number 2.
Year worked as the head of the airport in the system of society "Dobrolet" on the first air lines of Central Asia. For lack of staff, he sold tickets himself and handed over the proceeds, or even loaded the luggage on the plane. And he carried the airfield service. More precisely, cleaned the airfield. A lot of troubles gave him an airfield: in the summer it was covered with sand and tumbleweed balls, in the winter it was flooded with water, and the air traffic stopped.
Perhaps it was then that the imagination first drew an amphibian plane in front of Vadim Shavrov, for which there is no need to build expensive airfields and keep the airfield service staff for which the airfield is the whole earth: its sands and snow, sea and lakes. At the end of 1925, when he deliberately hit the Dmitriy Grigorovich design bureau (the author was known for fighting in the Russian North with the English interventionists of the M-9 flying boat), who designed the seaplanes, his hand was involuntarily tracing silhouettes of new cars over the paperman - over the watery surface.
Vadim Petrovich had to realize his plans ... in his own spacious apartment in Leningrad. Here, together with the mechanic Nikolai Funtikov in April 1928, he began to build his amazing full-size W-1 aircraft - the first amphibian in the USSR. Curious citizens of Leningrad, having learned about the unprecedented "aircraft industry at home", poured into an apartment with a shaft, questioned, and even then the amphibian received the tacit name "Shavrushka".
Soon, pulling her through a window into the street, she was taken, accompanied by an escort, by the curious to the airfield, where she underwent weather tests on the Gulf of Finland, piloted by pilot Boris Glagolev and the brave inventor of the apparatus. And in September 1929 of the year, it flew safely from the rowing port of St. Petersburg to the Central airport on the Khodynsky field in Moscow.
After the tests on water, in the air and on land, the “Chavrushka” was transferred to the then famous OSOAVIAHIM (Society for the Promotion of Defense, Aviation and Chemical Construction. Later - DOSAAF) for agitation flights to distant towns and villages - with newspapers, posters, books, artists, lecturers.
The disgraced and exiled from the Air Force to OSOAVIAHIM for “air hooliganism” Valery Chkalov was appointed to fly it. Due to his characteristic courage up to the feast of February 26 1930, he decided to fly from Borovichi to Leningrad in very bad weather - snow, frost, blizzard. For orientation went along the October Railway.
But, as Vadim Borisovich said, “the snow and icing pressed the car to the ground, and it caught the semaphore with its wing ... Chkalov and the mechanic Ivanov remained alive, and it was decided not to restore the broken car, as the designer had already developed its improved version - Ш-2 ".
... The beetle rises due to the wing flies, and soaring, folds them five times. The Shavrushka, for the first time in aviation, had a strung upper wing, the consoles of which could be folded back! And it was not by chance that for the first time she had a lifted chassis, and the coarse calico cover was first covered with a dope for waterproofing. The author, creating a amphibian seaplane during the years of the Soviet Arctic exploration of the Arctic Ocean by storm, provided for the possibility of hanging the plane on a hook - for conveniently launching it from the ship.
Particularly bothered to increase the reliability of the water. In the event of an accident and breakdown, the lower wings with floats, consisting of 12 separate waterproof compartments, firmly supported it on the water even in a storm. From 1 on April, X-NUMX of the year W-1932 began to be mass-produced in the hundreds.
Something fundamentally important and durable was laid by the designer in this low-speed - 145 km / h - seaplane. So what? Completeness and perfection of a design? Harmony of form and content? Need for people? Of course, first of all, need, if we recall the length of the coastline and the many rivers and lakes of our Fatherland.
The float Italian “Savoys”, English “Avro” and “Sopvichi”, German “Junkers” and “Dornier” came off the water aerodromes of the world, but their peers, reliable Shavrushki W-2, continued to fly. Scouted fish shoals, guarded the forest from fires, drove geological prospectors and oil workers, delivered patients from remote corners. They took with them ships on dangerous flights to the Arctic - Chelyuskin, Litke, Krasin. They were piloted by famous pilots - Mikhail Babushkin, Peter Koshelev.
The Siberian pilots say that on the Ob and Yenisei this seaplane could be found back in the 1970-s. So, almost 45 years in the ranks? Slightly longer than the official long-liver of the Soviet aviation Po-2. An unprecedented case in the aircraft industry, where designs are often outdated during the testing period, or even not having time to get off the drawings.
Although aircraft designers, even the most brilliant and breakthrough aircraft, a lot. But to load yourself with the truly titanic work of the collector bit by bit throughout the history of aircraft manufacturing - only a few devotees can take on this, painters and patient workaholics who are obsessed with the high idea of preserving memory among the people of his great the past.
... From the very first steps, the new historian of aviation faced the need to solve problems with many unknowns. That suddenly pops up a forgotten story, but a name worthy of memory, and there are no materials about it in the archives.
It is known that there was an original project for such and such, but neither the drawings nor the documentation was preserved. And the researcher interviewed witnesses and participants in the events, if they existed, meticulously reconstructed and brought together the time-damaged documents and drawings, if they were not, or became an aircraft designer to build the model of an unaffected aircraft itself, or even the entire aircraft in full size.
After the restoration of the life-size aircraft of Alexander Mozhaisky, helped by the preserved 1881 privilege (patent) of the year, it became clear that two steam engines with a boiler, if they helped to lift it off the ground for a moment, did not keep it in the air. A powerful gasoline engines simply did not exist!
Although the world championship of the naval officer of Mozhaisk already in how Shavrov summarized that he had found in 1880-s for some insight all the necessary structural parts of the future apparatus are heavier than air: the hull, wing, plumage, chassis, control and power plant. And after the first flying "shelves" of the early twentieth century, aircraft designers returned to the design of Mozhaisky! But with bitterness you realize that the seven appeals of the inventor to the minister and the king himself were followed by failures. He built with his own money, he went so far as poverty.
... Imagine only what patience Shavrov’s discovery in the ancient archives of Mikhail Lomonosov’s note about the successfully flying model he built in 1756, to lift a thermometer that measures heat in the upper atmosphere! With her, such a crumb, begins the history of Russian aircraft industry in the first volume of Vadim Shavrov.
After a century and a half, the “Russian Knight” and “Ilya Muromets” four-engine giants Igor Sikorsky’s flight history will reach the first Soviet fighters Nikolai Polikarpov I-153 (“Chaika”) and I-16 (“Ishachok”), where they learned to fight the recent peaceful workers 'and peasants' guys against the German fascists in Spain, against the Japanese militarists in China and Mongolia.
And they were able to knock down fascist vultures already in their skies, before the approach of new aircraft from Siberian factories that were included in the Terrible List of Victory Weapons of the second volume of the “History of Structures ...”: Yak-1941 fighters, Yak- 3, Yak-7, La-9, Su-5 bombers, Pe-2, Il-2 attack aircraft “flying tank” ... And then - the post-war first jet, combat and civilian.
The first volume ends with a description of DB-3 - long-range bombers, who responded to the treacherous bombardment of sleeping Soviet cities 22 June 1941, after just a few days with the bombings of the Romanian oil center Ploiesti, as well as Konigsberg and the fascists' den - Berlin.
It is noteworthy that in the same volume, Shavrov literally resurrected many original ideas and decisions of the authors of the apparatuses, who did not take off or did not go into the series, but who knows - in demand, perhaps with time. This is the electrolyte of the inventor of the electric light Alexander Lodygin - with screws in the front and on top. These are the planes of Stepan Grizodubov, the father of the famous pilot, who built his first plane only on the film of the Wright brothers flight.
This is one of the aircraft of Alexander Porokhovshchikov, the ancestor of the famous film actor, with a chassis on a crawler track (for landing even on swamps).
Shavrov describes all the projects and devices of his like-minded creators of hydroplanes and amphibians: Igor Chetverikov, George Beriev, Robert Bartini ... When reading, you discover that it was him, Shavrov, who was invited by famous designers to modify their aircraft in the float version: Nikolai Polikarpov - for R- 5 and MP-5, Alexander Yakovlev - for AIR-2 and AIR-6.
However, Shavrov himself, after the triumph of the X-2, was awaited by inexplicable failures in the implementation of new ideas ... Even with the projects most needed by the country, the leadership initially accepted "with a bang."
It is regrettable that in the conversation of that distant 1975 year it did not occur to me to ask why this happened. He himself talks about this in a two-volume book, but diplomatically, streamlined, speaking of himself in the third person. Although the causes of failures can be read between the lines.
Well, for example, its W-3, the first all-metal passenger triple monocoque limousine in the USSR, was built upon the order of an interesting organization — USR (Special Work Administration) of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Engineering, which employed prisoners. At the head of the USR was a well-known author of dynamo-jet guns (future “Katyushas”) Leonid Kurchevsky, who was denounced by the mid-1930-s under suspicion of state security agencies. In February, 1936 was eliminated and the manager was arrested.
... And in 1937, Vadim Borisovich’s brother, Kirill Borisovich, an ethnographer engaged in the education and elimination of the illiteracy of northern peoples, the editor-in-chief of the Leningrad branch of children's literature, was arrested. From materials posted on the Internet, we find out that a certain group of ethnographers have named such a nickname ... It can be assumed that the fate of Vadim Borisovich both of these arrests could have been reflected in those years. Whether he was arrested is unknown. And what is known? Let's see the cupolas in both volumes of “The Planes of Shavrov”.
Failures, it turns out, began as early as 1933 – 1934, when Shavrov's Cartographic Administration (recalling an aircraft designer with a Topographer-Cartographer back in Civilian), who was extremely necessary for an extensive program for compiling detailed USSR maps. And today, the aircraft engineer and cartographer will note in the project W-5 important specific features: the presence of a wide viewing angle (144 degrees) for the camera lens, as well as certain viewing angles for the pilot and the photographer.
Because the chassis was low, so that the wheels do not fall into the field of view devices.
Even in 1930, an entire scientific research institute for aerial photography was created, it turns out! Under the supervision of Academician Alexander Fersman. The project of Shavrov's photo flight got into the plan of the EE Design Bureau. Richard A plant of experimental designs soon began building the car ... However, according to the requirements of various departments, an amphibian photo airplane, designed for a pilot and a photographer, added 1934 to passenger seats and eight stretchers by 12 just in case. In the end, to him, devoid of the original intention and appearance, interest was lost ...
Sadly, the plane for the specific purpose of aerial photography in the USSR was never created. This made it difficult to compile accurate and detailed maps of the country, which undoubtedly affected, as veteran pilots recall, and military historians confirm the lack of accurate maps in military units of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. But the occupiers had more accurate maps. My father, the commander of the squadron of the 105 Guards Air Regiment of the Civil Air Fleet, which flew to our guarded parts and the partisans, told how they were rescued by high-quality German maps, obtained by the partisans. And it was they who had to shoot before our attacks the German fortified areas on the non-adapted for the Po-2 filming, and therefore in front-line newsreels, taken from a bird's-eye view, we invariably see in the frame of the wings box.
The mystery of the fate of the W-5 remains unresolved. Although in the tragic 1937 year (further I quote from the second volume) “... Shavrov initiated the creation of a long-range maritime reconnaissance officer - MDR-7 was approached by the command of the Far Eastern Military District (V.K. Blucher, FA Inganius and plant manager KD) Kuznetsov) ".
But Shavrov himself at that time worked, as he complements, at this factory, which was distant from Moscow and Leningrad, which produced the long-range bombers DB-3. Recall that it was on the DB-3 of a special modification that records were set of long-distance non-stop flights by the crews of Mikhail Gromov, Valentina Grizodubova and, up to America itself, Valery Chkalov. In order to save public funds and time, Shavrov suggested building a naval long-range reconnaissance aircraft, using 60% constructive parts of the time-tested DB-3. With general approval, the work has begun to boil ...
However, it was suddenly discontinued at the end of 1937. Shavrov in the text does not explain the reasons. Although we know: Vasily Blucher and many of his entourage were arrested and repressed. And during the years of the Great Patriotic War, when sea convoys with military equipment, weapons, food from England were lend-lease (for which the USSR paid with gold and blood of its warriors) went to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, our planes often died from fire .
Would float, could float. And would the MDR-7 ... Coincidence, ill-intentioned or malicious intent prevented Shavrov from introducing into the Red Army's air force a far-off reconnaissance man so necessary in our northern (and eastern and southern) seas on reliable floats? Once again you realize that we too primitively understand the period of repression of the 1930-s, and this is an iceberg ...
The same question - why? - arises after the announcement of the fate of another unavailable Shavrov flying boat - W-7. It seems that the arrest of the brother and the leadership of the Far Eastern District only ricocheted Vadim Borisovich: in the second volume he reports on the amphibian apparatus designed and under construction for the Northern Sea Route and Aeroflot in 1938 – 1940 according to the latest technology. With special equipment for night vision (!), Which was badly lacking for pilots flying only at night to the rear of the enemy - for reconnaissance, to surrounded parts, to partisans.
With the receiving-transmitting radio, which was not the first two years of the war, even on fighters, and the pilots gave each other signs with their hands or swinging their wings. And in the event of a war, a TT-7 rifle installation on a ShKAS machine gun with 1 ammunition was envisaged in the Sh-300 - for protection from behind. No matter how many misfortunes and deaths happened, whether such equipment was in aviation during the war years ... But W-7 also did not go into series. Shavrov explains: they say, "war prevented." However, the prototype passed successfully all the tests a year before the fascist invasion - in the summer of 1940! And he, the only and extraordinary one, flew on the Volga as a transport - from Astrakhan to Saratov and the year burning in the autumn of 1942, the year of Stalingrad (in winter - on skis).
During the war years, the aircraft designer himself worked in the department of new equipment at TsAGI - the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute near Moscow. Although he no longer offers any new technology, as if his hands were hit. Writes research papers, develops GOSTs and normals. Of the besieged Leningrad is rare, but letters from the wife of Natalia Leopoldovna and daughter Evgenia reach. They, fortunately, survived. Daughter, like her mother, graduated from the Faculty of Geography of Leningrad State University. Her letters and diary about the terrible days of the blockade can be read online today.
And again, I am infinitely sorry that then, on 1975, I, by frivolity, did not question Vadim Borisovich and his spouse, who treated me to tea, about their long family life, about the war, about the blockade. I remember talking to her on the phone with a friend and said very loudly, clearly to the ears of the imperturbable 77-year-old Vadim Borisovich, with whom they seem to have been in tiff, the words:
“I understood that I need Vadim, and Vadim needs me!”
Yes, it is not easy to be the wife of such an immensely busy and enthusiastic person with large-scale affairs ...
It is known that after the death of her husband, her husband gave a huge collection of iris beetles and most of the beetle beetles to the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The collection of scarab beetles came to the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University. But the manuscript about beetles with a brief "biography" of the genus, species, habitat, food, habits, their "portraits" by the author’s hand remained unpublished. And here he wanted to contribute to the piggy bank of the national science - entomology. The two-volume book “The History of Aircraft Designs in the USSR” was reprinted only in 1988.
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I remember the reasoning of Vadim Borisovich that experience teaches: "The history of technology for a thinking person is not a report about the past, but a means to understanding the future, to find in it the right ways, to avoid the mistakes made once before."
His books are a complete and brilliant chronicle of the contribution of the Russians to the conquest of the fifth ocean by mankind, which is forever with us. Although many pages of the history of aviation could have been irretrievably lost if it had not been undertaken almost 65 years ago for their work of Shavrov.
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