Taubin grenade launcher: how Stalin didn’t get a superweapon

Souls have beautiful impulses

Imagine yourself in the USSR in the 30s.
You are inventing a superweapon, the likes of which will not exist for decades. And Comrade Stalin... shoots you. For what? At that time, superweapon projects poured out of a cornucopia. From a howling bomb and a self-firing projectile to a certain project called “Blue Maskeet” (precisely with an “a”). And these are all real developments.

Among other inventors was Yakov Taubin. And he offered his native army an automatic grenade launcher of 40.8 mm caliber. Externally, it looks almost like a modern AGS (automatic easel grenade launcher).

In September 1936 - and then in September 1937 - the military carefully tested the thing proposed by Comrade Taubin at the training ground. And then they reported in detail. It turned out that when shooting at 1100-1200 meters, one grenade can cover six standing targets and two lying ones with fragments at once. Moreover, each target receives two or three lethal fragments.

Wonder weapon (photo source)

For comparison: a 37-mm cannon shell at a shorter distance (one kilometer) could hit... one standing target. Arriving head-on, roughly speaking. And the grenade launcher is also automatic - that is, it fires such grenades at the pace of a machine gun (436 rounds per minute, but the combat rate of fire is only 57). And it weighs much less than a gun - 45 kilos.

It would seem that this is it! Now the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army will show it to the imperialists!

But then “dirty” details surfaced.

For example, after each burst you need to put a separate cartridge into the wunderwaffe. And one more thing: they fired 473 shots - you get... 34 delays. The extractor and ejector springs were changed about thirty times for 587 shots during testing.

Imagine Anka the machine gunner from Chapaev or the heroes of the film Thirteen, who, instead of shooting at enemies, change springs right on the battlefield. The image of a miracle weapon has somehow faded, hasn’t it?

And then they slander. Like, “the proposed comrade. Taubin, the remote projectile, which is a modification of the Dyakonov rifle grenade, is unsuitable due to the lack of reliable sealing of the charge and insufficient strength of the walls.”

Yakov Taubin (photo source)

Alas, Comrade Taubin loved his inventions very much. Whereas the army liked engineers to use existing products. There’s a Dyakonov grenade, so why make your own? So you won’t be able to stock up on any factories! For Taubin personally, to produce millions of unique grenades? Where and on what?

Whatever one may say, the design needs to be improved. But Comrade Taubin was not like that! He started writing “up.”

First he wrote on his own, then with colleagues, then together with the party group of his design bureau. And what about?

Taubin grenade launcher: how Stalin didn’t get a superweapon

Do you want to offer Comrade Stalin a weapon that will kill all enemies?
And designer Taubin made such a weapon in reality. It would seem - this is it! Now the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army will show it to the imperialists. However, the wunderwaffe was never accepted into service. Why? Do you want to offer Comrade Stalin a weapon that will kill all enemies? And designer Taubin made such a weapon in reality. It would seem - this is it! Now the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army will show it to the imperialists. However, the wunderwaffe was never accepted into service. Why?

“Help Dasha find enemies of the people”

And he wrote that “the delivery of the automatic grenade launcher, the value of which for the army was recognized by the troops in December 1937, is being deliberately delayed. KB-16 employees consider it necessary to create a commission to verify the facts specified in the letter and identify the culprits who are artificially delaying the AG’s advancement into the army.” Like this. Deliberately. Artificially.

And it was just that year thirty-seven.

Nowadays, some comedians love to make jokes about “the billion people shot personally by Stalin.” And then, among the military and inventors, being shot was quite a common ending to a biography. Ordinary.

However, Comrade Grendal, deputy chief of the Main Artillery Directorate, was also no stranger. He fought in the First World War, and had already served time as a conspirator... So he mastered the art of kung fu by correspondence brilliantly.

Taubin writes that the Red Army does not have company weapons to engage the enemy on the reverse slopes? Vladimir Grendal answered extremely politely: the army has such a weapon and it’s called a mortar.

“In the future, to reduce correspondence, it would be desirable for your employees to receive clarification on all misunderstood issues directly from Artcom employees (daily from 2 to 5 p.m.), in the form of a live conversation.”

Learn. And then tests showed that almost a quarter of Taubin’s grenades... simply do not explode. Especially at high elevation angles.

Grenade launcher being tested

What does Taubin do? He writes that this is not a bug, but a feature (as they would say now). The weapon has this special feature. Peculiarity. After all, an angle of impact of grenades of 15-30 degrees is quite enough.

But for some reason the army wanted more. And she scratched her head thoughtfully, looking at the proposed wunderwaffe. This is not a company grenade launcher (the trajectory is too flat for mounted fire), nor a battalion gun. It turns out that the engineer’s creation is a kind of company gun-howitzer. Moreover, the nature of the shooting is closer to that of a cannon. To a gun with large side dispersion. And why is it needed?

Alas, in the reality of the 30s there was no need. The USSR of those years already spent too much money, time and effort on all sorts of brilliant “projects”. And I got... almost zero.

Taubin offered a wonderful weapon. But it fires only in conditions convenient for a fellow designer. And it was the mortar fans who were to blame.

Notes[ | ]

↑ 1 2
Armored collection 4'1997: Light tanks T-40 and T-60
(unspecified)
(inaccessible link). Retrieved March 5, 2011. Archived March 31, 2009.
Yakov Grigorievich Taubin / Yakov Taubin :: Biographies :: Famous people. Celebrities | Persones.ru (unspecified)
(inaccessible link). Access date: March 5, 2011. Archived May 20, 2014.
↑ 12
Attack aircraft "Ilyushin-2"
↑ 1 2
laspace.ru :: NPO im.
S. A. Lavochkina (unspecified)
(inaccessible link). Access date: March 5, 2011. Archived April 20, 2009.
T-40
Pashinin I-21
MP-6 23 mm aircraft cannon
Execution in the alternate capital

Road spoon for dinner

You can say: “In the USA they will make an automatic Mk-19 grenade launcher only in 30 years!” But we would have been under Stalin!”

Yes. But the United States made this grenade launcher in an era when people were getting ready to walk on the moon (and they did). Is the difference in the level of technology compared to the late 30s clear? Moreover, ' title=>Americans are still struggling with tricky grenade launchers.

And another small nuance: the Mk-19 - and later the AGS-17 - had belt power. The tape contains from 29-32 to 48 grenades.

By the way, Alexander Emmanuilovich Nudelman, a colleague of Taubin and the author of large-caliber aircraft guns, actively participated in the development of the AGS-17. And Taubin himself persistently made his own barrels into clips. For 5 (five! - yes, you heard right) shots.

Rate of fire? Automation problems? Let's remember the bug and feature - these are not shortcomings of the Taubin miracle weapon.

In addition, the engineer promised, in addition to the grenade launcher, many wonderful guns for aviation. “We’re ready right now.” But the luck of the wonderful designer ended there. But that is another story.

Result: harsh reality defeated another brilliant would-be creator. If you want to make your country happy with a superweapon, modify your creation so that it works not only in your imagination. And so that it could be released now, and not after thirty years of “finishing with a file.”

Experienced aviation machine gun AP-12.7 designed by Taubin (USSR. 1940-1941)

There was a lot of new and original in the design of the AP-12.7, but during testing the automation worked reliably within 100-200 rounds, and then delays appeared, mainly associated with the breakdown of individual parts. In pursuit of weight reduction, Taubin used many fragile parts in the design of the machine gun. On May 16, 1941, the NKVD arrested Ya.G. Taubin and M.N. Baburin, who were working on AP-12.7. On the same day, all work on the machine gun was stopped and OKB-16 never returned to it.

Source - Magazine "Equipment and Weapons" No. 3 for 1998

The greatest resonance was caused by Taubin’s work on the 12.7 mm AP-12.7 aircraft machine gun. By November 4, 1940, due to the extreme stress of the design bureau and the stoppage of work on the guns, the prototype AP-12.7 in the turret version was ready. It had automatic operation due to the short stroke of the barrel, magazine feed and weight of only 12.5 kg. Having a reserve of time before testing, Taubin began reworking the machine gun for the DShK belt (later it would become clear that the choice of belt was unsuccessful - the aircraft designers insisted on the loose belt of the UB machine gun). The AP-12.7 machine gun was shown to the Air Force representative, engineer I. Sakrier (he was later shot along with Taubin). Without conducting field tests, Sakrier reported the readiness of the weapon to the Air Force Main Directorate, from where this information went to the country's leadership. In fact, the machine gun was designed in such a way that it failed after 150-200 shots.

But at the end of November and beginning of December 1940, the NKV began preparing the AP-12.7 for production launch; aircraft designers were obliged to include a machine gun in the armament systems of promising aircraft. The “alarm bell” for the AP-12.7 rang at the end of December 1940, when it did not enter field testing. Meanwhile, by January 10, the factories had practically completed the development of machine gun manufacturing technology, and Factory No. 74 even produced several test samples.

Why was designer Taubin shot?

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Biography

Coming from a poor Jewish family. The date and month of birth are currently unknown.

My father worked as an accountant in the shipping office of the Gottlieb company.

Until 1915, Yakov Taubin was a student; after the death of his father - from 1915 to 1917 - a worker.

In 1929 he entered the Odessa Institute of Grain and Flour Technology, the design department (did not graduate).

In the early 1930s, he became interested in the idea of creating an automatic grenade launcher.

In 1933, to implement his plan, he was sent by the Main Military Mobilization Directorate to the Kovrov Tool Plant No. 2. Later, a group of specialists led by Taubin continued work in Moscow, where in the spring of 1934 an independent design bureau was organized - OKB-16 of the People's Commissariat of Armaments, where in the period from 1935 to 1938, under the leadership of Taubin, the world's first infantry automatic grenade launcher was developed.

The Taubin grenade launcher had a caliber of 40.6 mm and used ammunition created on the basis of the standard rifle grenade of the M. G. Dyakonov system. This weapon was magazine-fed and allowed firing in single shots and bursts, direct fire or along an overhead trajectory. Initially, the grenade launcher was installed on a tripod machine, later on a light infantry wheeled machine similar to the machine gun "Maxim". The idea of an automatic grenade launcher found opponents in the person of the head of the Artillery Directorate of the Red Army Kulik and some other military leaders. In 1937-1938, during comparative tests of company-level mortars and grenade launchers, the Taubin grenade launcher was rejected, preference was given to the lighter, more mobile, cheaper and more reliable 50-mm mortar mod. 1938, designed by B.I. Shavyrin, which was adopted for service. In November 1938, sea tests of the Taubin grenade launcher system were carried out on a D-type armored boat of the Dnieper military flotilla. Based on their results, the Navy Armament Directorate ordered a small series in January 1939, but soon abandoned this order. In limited quantities, the Taubin grenade launcher was relatively successfully used by the Red Army in the winter war with Finland, but soon all work on the automatic grenade launcher was stopped. Known for his vivid and biased books, artillery amateur historian A. B. Shirokorad directly called the people who put strong pressure on opponents of mortars the “mortar mafia.” In addition, Taubin, together with the leading designer of the Design Bureau M. N. Baburin, developed the following projects:

23-mm MP-6[1][2] aircraft gun (“motor gun”, also known as PTB-23[3][4], “Taubin-Baburin gun” and BT-23[1][5]. Used on experimental modifications of the Il-2[3] attack aircraft and I-21[6][7] and LaGG-1[4] fighters);
its “land” modification is the 23-mm tank PT-23TB (“23-mm tank gun of the Taubin-Baburin system”), modified for installation in the T-40 by A. E. Nudelman;
23-mm infantry anti-tank anti-aircraft;
12.7 mm AP-12.7 aviation machine gun.

The 23-mm cannon and machine gun were not completed within the time allotted by the design bureau, which was one of the reasons for the ensuing repressions.

On May 16, 1941, Taubin and several employees were arrested on charges of “mothballing unfinished weapons and launching technically unfinished systems into general production: a 23-mm air cannon, a 12.7-mm machine gun and others.”

On October 28, 1941, according to the conclusion of the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor dated October 17, 1941, he was shot without trial in the village of Barbysh in the Kuibyshev region (now the Gagarin Park within the boundaries of Samara).