In the mid-50s, the deployment of two belts of the S-25 "Berkut" air defense system began around Moscow. The positions of this multichannel complex were located with the possibility of overlapping the affected areas. However, the C-25 was unsuitable for mass deployment on the territory of the Soviet Union and allied countries. The bulky missiles of the first Soviet air defense system were launched from stationary concrete sites, and very serious capital investments were required to build positions. The air defense forces needed a relatively inexpensive and mobile complex. In this regard, on November 20, 1953, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree "On the creation of a mobile anti-aircraft guided missile weapon system to combat enemy aircraft." This decree set out the creation of a complex designed to defeat targets flying at speeds up to 1500 km / h at altitudes from 3 to 20 km. The mass of the rocket was not supposed to exceed two tons. When designing a new air defense system, it was considered possible to abandon multichannel, but make it mobile. Separately, it was stipulated that already existing tractors, cars and trailers were to be used as part of the air defense system.
The Ministry of Medium Machine Building designated KB-1 under the leadership of A. A. Raspletin. In this design bureau, the design of the system as a whole, on-board equipment and a missile guidance station was carried out. The creation of the SAM itself was entrusted to OKB-2, which was headed by P. D. Grushin. As a result of the work of these teams more than 60 years ago, on December 11, 1957, the first mobile anti-aircraft missile system SA-75 "Dvina" was adopted by the USSR Air Defense Forces.
Now there are not so many veterans who remember how the first SA-75 air defense systems with B-750 air defense systems differed from later modifications of the C-75. For all the external similarity of the missiles, in terms of their combat and operational characteristics, these were different complexes. From the very beginning, when designing the first mobile air defense system in the USSR with a radio command missile, experts planned that its guidance station would operate in the 6-cm frequency range. However, it soon became clear that the Soviet radio-electronic industry was not able to promptly provide the necessary element base. In this regard, a forced decision was made to speed up the creation of an anti-aircraft missile system, at the first stage to create its 10-cm version. The developers of the air defense missile system were well aware of all the disadvantages of this solution: the large dimensions of the equipment and antennas compared to the 6-cm version, as well as the large error in the missile guidance. Nevertheless, due to the complexity of the international situation and the apparent inability of the Soviet air defense in the 50s to prevent American high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft from flying over its territory, the 10-cm SA-75 after field tests, despite a number of shortcomings, was hastily launched into serial production.
As part of the SA-75 "Dvina" air defense missile system, the V-750 (1D) missile defense system was used with an engine running on kerosene; nitrogen tetroxide was used as an oxidizer. The rocket was launched from an inclined launcher with a variable launch angle and an electric drive for turning in angle and azimuth with the help of a detachable solid-propellant first stage. The guidance station was capable of simultaneously tracking one target and aiming up to three missiles at it. In total, the anti-aircraft missile division had 6 launchers, which were located at a distance of up to 75 meters from the SNR-75. After several years of operation for air defense missile systems carrying combat duty at overhauled positions, the following scheme for preparing ammunition was adopted: in addition to 6 missiles on launch, up to 18 missiles were available on transport loading vehicles without refueling with an oxidizer. Transport-loading vehicles were located in shelters designed for two TPM.
In the "combat operation" mode, the launchers were synchronized with the SNR-75, due to which the pre-launch guidance of the missile towards the target was ensured. The launchers could be towed by ATC-59 tracked tractors. The towing speed on paved roads was 30 km / h, on country roads - 10 km / h.
The first version of the mobile air defense system was a six-cab one, its elements were installed in the KUNGs on the chassis of the ZiS-150 or ZIS-151 vehicles, and the antenna post on the KZU-16 artillery cart, towed by the ATC-59 tracked tractor. At the same time, the mobility and deployment time of the CA-75 complex was limited by the need to use a truck crane for the installation and dismantling of antennas. The military operation of the SA-75 complex showed that the duration of the transfer of the complex from the traveling position to the combat position and from the combat to the traveling position was mainly determined by the time for the deployment and folding of the antenna post and launchers. In addition, when transporting the hardware over rough terrain, due to insufficient resistance to vibration loads, the likelihood of equipment failure sharply increased. Due to the difficulties in folding and deploying, the SA-75 complexes, as a rule, were used to cover stationary objects, and were redeployed to reserve positions 1-2 times a year during exercises.
The first divisions of the SA-75 air defense system in the spring of 1958 were deployed in Belarus, not far from Brest. Two years later, the Soviet air defense system had more than 80 mobile anti-aircraft missile systems. Due to the fact that the air defense system used its own radar means: the P-12 radar and the PRV-10 radio altimeter, the anti-aircraft missile division was able to conduct combat operations on its own.
The P-12 Yenisei meter-range radar could detect targets at a range of up to 250 km and an altitude of up to 25 km. The PRV-10 "Konus" radio altimeter operating in the 10-cm frequency range, based on azimuthal target designation from the surveillance radar, provided a fairly accurate measurement of the range and flight altitude of a fighter-type target at a distance of up to 180 km.
Although the hardware of the air defense missile system was still very raw, and the reliability left much to be desired, the probability of hitting targets flying at medium and high altitudes was much higher compared to batteries of 85-130 mm anti-aircraft guns. In the late 50s, a number of high-ranking Soviet military leaders opposed the allocation of significant resources for the large-scale deployment of air defense systems. Strange as it may seem, the opponents of guided anti-aircraft missiles were not only moss-covered ground troops, accustomed to relying on anti-aircraft artillery, but also the generals of the Air Force, who reasonably feared a reduction in funding for fighter aircraft. However, after the capabilities of the SA-75 were demonstrated to the top Soviet military-political leadership at the test ranges in the late 50s, the main doubts disappeared. Thus, in the course of comparative tests of the SA-75 with anti-aircraft artillery, firing was organized at an Il-28 radio-controlled target flying at an altitude of 12,000 m, at a speed of more than 800 km / h. At first, the target aircraft was unsuccessfully fired upon by two batteries of 100-mm KS-19 anti-aircraft guns with centralized radar guidance. After that, the Il-28 entered the zone of destruction of the air defense missile system and was shot down by a salvo of two missiles.
As already mentioned, the first Soviet mobile SAM SA-75 was very "raw". To eliminate the shortcomings identified during the operation of the first option, the modernized CA-75M complex was created, with the placement of the hardware in towed vans. Cabins on trailers were more spacious than KUNGs on automobile chassis, which made it possible to reduce the number of cabins. After reducing the number of cabins of the complex, the number of vehicles used in the anti-aircraft missile battalion decreased.
Taking into account the fact that in the 50s the air borders of the USSR were often violated by American high-altitude reconnaissance officers, the developers were required to bring the altitude of destruction of air targets to 25 km. Thanks to the forcing of the liquid-propellant engine, this requirement was met. The maximum flight speed of the rocket also increased slightly. The new missile, which received the designation B-750V (11B), soon supplanted the early modification missiles, which were primarily spent at training ranges during control and training firing.
Simultaneously with the creation of a 10-cm three-cabine modification, the 6-cm range air defense missile system, which received the designation C-75 "Desna", entered the tests. The transition to a higher frequency made it possible to reduce the dimensions of the guidance station antennas and, in the future, made it possible to improve the guidance accuracy of anti-aircraft missiles and noise immunity. In the missile guidance station of the S-75 "Desna" air defense missile system, a system for selecting moving targets was used, which made it possible to facilitate targeting to targets flying at low altitudes and in conditions of passive jamming by the enemy. To work in conditions of active interference, an automated restructuring of the guidance radar frequency was introduced. The SNR-75 equipment was supplemented by the APP-75 launcher, which made it possible to automate the development of a missile launch permit depending on the parameters of the target's flight path when it approached the target's affected area, which in turn reduced the dependence on the skill of the calculations and increased the probability of completing the combat mission. For the S-75 complex, the V-750VN (13D) missile was created, which differed from the V-750V missiles by the onboard equipment of the 6-cm range. Until the second half of the 60s, "seventy-fives" of the 10-cm and 6-cm bands were built in parallel. In 1962, the P-12MP meter-range radar stations were introduced into the modernized air defense systems.
After the adoption of the three-cab S-75 "Desna" air defense system, 10-cm complexes were intended only for export. For deliveries to the socialist countries, a modification of the CA-75M was built, and the CA-75MK was supplied to the "developing" countries. These complexes differed slightly in the equipment of the SNR-75MA missile guidance station, state identification equipment and performance that met the climatic conditions of the customer country. In some cases, a special varnish was applied to electrical cables to repel insects - ants and termites. And the metal parts were covered with additional protection that prevents corrosion in hot and humid climates.
The first foreign operator of the SA-75 air defense system was China. Until the early 1960s, the Americans were openly disregarding the inviolability of the air borders of other states. Taking advantage of the fact that the USSR did not have the means capable of stopping the flights of high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, they freely plowed the airspace over the socialist countries. In China, which got involved in a conflict with Kuomintang Taiwan, the situation was even more difficult. In the second half of the 50s, real air battles took place over the Formosa Strait and the adjacent territory of the South China Sea between combat aircraft of the Air Force of the People's Republic of China and the Air Force of the Republic of China, led by Marshal Chiang Kai-shek. Under the cover of aviation, the troops of communist China in 1958 tried to seize the Kinmen and Matsu Islands, located off the coast of the mainland province of Fujian. Three years earlier, thanks to massive air support, the Kuomintang were driven out of the Yijianshan and Dachen islands. After both sides suffered significant losses in the air, large-scale battles between Chinese and Taiwanese fighters stopped, but the Americans and the leadership of Taiwan zealously followed the increase in the military power of mainland China and regular flights of high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft RB-57D and U-2C began over the territory of the PRC. in the cockpits of which were Taiwanese pilots. The high-altitude scouts were provided to the island Republic of China as part of US gratuitous aid. But the motivation of the US CIA was not based on altruism, the American intelligence services were primarily interested in the progress of the implementation of the nuclear program in the PRC, the construction of new aircraft factories and missile ranges.
Initially, high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft Martin RB - 57D Canberra were used for flights over the mainland of the PRC. This aircraft was created by Martin on the basis of the British bomber Electric Canberra. The single reconnaissance aircraft had a flight altitude of over 20,000 m and could photograph ground objects at a distance of up to 3,700 km from its airfield.
From January to April 1959, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft made ten long raids deep into the territory of the PRC, and in the summer of the same year, RB-57D flew twice over Beijing. The top Chinese leadership took this as a personal insult, and Mao Zedong, despite his personal dislike for Khrushev, asked for the supply of weapons that could interfere with the flights of Taiwanese reconnaissance aircraft. Although by that time relations between the USSR and the PRC were already far from ideal, Mao Zedong's request was granted, and in an atmosphere of deep secrecy, five fire and one technical division of the SA-75 Dvina, including 62 11D anti-aircraft missiles, were delivered to China.
In the PRC, the positions of the SA-75 air defense system were placed around important political and economic centers: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xian and Shenyang. To service these anti-aircraft systems, a group of Soviet specialists was sent to China, who were also engaged in the preparation of Chinese calculations. In the fall of 1959, the first divisions, served by Chinese crews, began to carry out combat duty, and already on October 7, 1959, near Beijing, at an altitude of 20,600 m, the first Taiwanese RB-57D was shot down. As a result of a close rupture of a powerful fragmentation warhead weighing 190 kg, the aircraft fell apart and its fragments were scattered over an area of several kilometers. The reconnaissance plane pilot was killed.
In the destruction of the Kuomintang high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, the Soviet military adviser Colonel Viktor Slyusar was directly involved. According to the radio intercept station, which controlled the negotiations of the deceased RB-57D pilot, until the last moment he did not suspect about the danger, and the tape recording of the pilot's negotiations with Taiwan was cut off in mid-sentence.
The Chinese leadership did not publish information that the spy plane was shot down by air defense, and the Taiwanese media reported that the RB-57D crashed, fell and sank in the East China Sea during a training flight. After that, the Xinhua news agency issued the following statement: On October 7, in the morning, a Chiang Kai-shek reconnaissance aircraft of American production with provocative purposes invaded the airspace over the northern regions of the PRC and was shot down by the air force of the People's Liberation Army of China. However, the Air Force Command The Republic of China and the CIA officers in charge of the flights of Taiwanese high-altitude reconnaissance officers attributed the loss of the RB-57D to a technical malfunction. RB-57Ds from Taiwan were terminated, but this did not mean the curtailment of the program of high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the mainland of China.
In 1961, a group of pilots from Taiwan underwent training in the United States for retraining for Lockheed U-2C reconnaissance aircraft. The aircraft, created by Lockheed, was capable of reconnaissance from an altitude of over 21,000 meters. It could carry a wide range of photo reconnaissance and radio equipment. The flight duration was 6.5 hours, the speed on the route was about 600 km / h. According to American data, the Air Force of the Republic of China transferred six U-2Cs, which were actively used in reconnaissance operations. However, the fate of these machines and their pilots turned out to be unenviable, they were all lost in accidents or became victims of the Chinese SA-75 air defense systems. In the period from November 1, 1963 to May 16, 1969, at least 4 aircraft were shot down by anti-aircraft missile systems and two more crashed in flight accidents. At the same time, two Taiwanese pilots who ejected from aircraft struck by anti-aircraft missiles were captured.
It is quite natural that the Chinese leadership wanted to cover the maximum number of defense, industrial and transport facilities with highly effective anti-aircraft complexes at that time. To do this, the Chinese comrades asked for the transfer of a package of technical documentation and assistance, with the deployment of serial production of the modernized SA-75M in the PRC. The Soviet leadership found it possible to meet the ally halfway, which, however, increasingly demonstrated its own independence, growing into hostility. The growing Soviet-Chinese disagreements became the reason that in 1960 the USSR announced the withdrawal of all military advisers from the PRC, which was the beginning of the curtailment of military-technical cooperation between the USSR and the PRC. Under the prevailing conditions, further improvement in the PRC of anti-aircraft missile weapons took place on the basis of the policy of "self-reliance" proclaimed in the country in the early 1960s. Despite great difficulties and a significant time delay, in the PRC at the end of 1966 it was possible to create and adopt its own complex, which received the designation HQ-1 (HongQi-1, "Hongqi-1", "Red Banner-1"). Simultaneously with the development of an anti-aircraft missile system on the basis of the Soviet two-coordinate surveillance radar P-12, the most massive Chinese mobile radar station on duty YLC-8 was created.
This became possible due to the fact that in the 50s thousands of Chinese specialists underwent training and practice in Soviet higher educational institutions and research institutes. Soviet material and intellectual support made it possible to form its own scientific and technical base in the PRC. In addition, in the design of the B-750 anti-aircraft missile, which had high characteristics for that time, materials and technologies were used that could well be reproduced by the Chinese industry. However, the political and economic campaign “Great Leap Forward” announced in 1958 by the Chinese leadership and the “Cultural Revolution” that began in 1966 had an extremely negative impact on the production of high-tech military products in the PRC. As a result, the number of HQ-1 air defense systems built turned out to be insignificant, and it was not possible to cover a significant part of important defense and administrative facilities on the territory of the PRC with anti-aircraft missiles in the 60s.
Since in the 60s military-technical cooperation with the Soviet Union was practically curtailed, China lost the opportunity to legally get acquainted with Soviet innovations in the field of air defense. But the Chinese "comrades", with their characteristic pragmatism, took advantage of the fact that Soviet military aid was coming through the territory of the PRC by rail to North Vietnam. Soviet representatives have repeatedly recorded the facts of the loss during transportation through Chinese territory: radars, elements of anti-aircraft missile systems, anti-aircraft missiles, MiG-21 fighters, aircraft weapons and centralized anti-aircraft gun guidance stations. The leadership of the USSR was forced to put up with the disappearance of part of the goods that occurred during delivery by the Chinese railway, since the transportation of weapons to Vietnam by sea lasted much longer and was quite risky.
The Chinese outright theft also had a downside. In the 60s, quite effective anti-aircraft systems were created in the Soviet Union, intended for the Air Defense Forces of the USSR and the Air Defense of the Ground Forces, and this technique has positively proven itself in the course of hostilities in the Middle East. However, the Soviet leadership, fearing that the latest air defense systems would end up in China, almost until the end of hostilities in Southeast Asia, did not authorize the supply of new anti-aircraft systems. So, the main air defense system at the disposal of the air defense of the DRV was the SA-75M, which by that time was inferior in a number of parameters to the already adopted 6-cm range complexes of the C-75 family. As you know, the air defense systems supplied to the air defense forces of North Vietnam had a certain impact on the course of hostilities, but they could not fully protect against the devastating raids of American aviation. Although Soviet specialists, relying on the experience of confrontation with American combat aircraft, continuously improved the SA-75M air defense systems supplied to the DRV and anti-aircraft missiles for them, the use of more advanced anti-aircraft weapons could inflict heavier losses on the Americans, which of course would affect the timing of the end of the war.
Despite the lack of Soviet assistance during the Cultural Revolution, albeit with a slippage, the PRC continued to create their own weapons. One of the ambitious programs, brought to the stage of practical implementation, was the creation of an air defense system, the guidance equipment of which worked in the 6-cm frequency range.
In this case, there was a great merit of the Chinese intelligence, which was able to gain access to the Soviet S-75 complexes supplied to Arab countries. It is also possible that some materials on promising anti-aircraft missile systems were nevertheless shared with the Chinese side before the termination of military-technical assistance.
One way or another, but in 1967, at the missile range northeast of the city of Jiuquan, in the Gansu province, on the edge of the Badin-Jaran desert (later a cosmodrome was built in this area), tests of the improved HQ-2 air defense system began at site No. 72 … The tests ended with the adoption of the complex for service, but it began to enter the troops en masse only in the early 70s.
In fact, Chinese specialists repeated the path traveled before by Soviet designers, using ready-made missiles from the HQ-1 complex and adapting new radio command equipment to them. The missile guidance station has undergone much greater changes. In addition to new electronic units with other vacuum tubes, more compact antennas have appeared. For rolling up and deploying which no longer required the use of cranes.
Complexes HQ-2 of various modifications for a long period of time were the basis of the ground component of the Chinese air defense system. They were exported and participated in a number of armed conflicts. However, this, and the options for the development of clones of the Soviet S-75 air defense system produced in the PRC, will be discussed in the next part of the review.
