Automotive Intelligence Center
The creation of special design bureaus or SKB at the car factories of the Soviet Union became a requirement of the Ministry of Defense. The bureau initiated the development of new all-wheel drive military equipment, which the army was sorely lacking. In particular, at the Minsk Automobile Plant, the secret SKB-1 was engaged in heavy vehicles of the MAZ-535/537 family, which were later relocated to Kurgan, freeing up capacity for the legendary MAZ-543. At ZIS (until 1956, ZIL was named after Stalin), a special bureau for military development was formed on July 7, 1954. The reason for this was the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1258-563 of June 25, 1954, which regulates the creation of a special bureau for the design of military equipment at all automobile and tractor plants. It was this decree that gave rise to the development of unique projects in the field of the military automotive industry.
The Soviet Union was, if not the first in the world, then at least it was in the top three for 40-50 years. The technological breakthrough made by the engineers of various SKBs is difficult to overestimate. Since the late forties, the automotive industry has creatively rethought foreign obsolete designs. A striking example of this is the ZIS-151, which was an unsuccessful copy of the Studebaker. But after only a few years, experienced, and later serial machines appeared, largely unparalleled in the world. And the Likhachev plant was at the forefront of these changes.
Even before the SKB was opened in 1954, the plant workers tested the centralized tire inflation system. Engineers were not the first in the world with this development. In the United States, even during the war, a similar system was mounted on wheeled amphibians of the Marine Corps. The troops were delivered to the landing point in the holds of land boats, which, in turn, were housed in self-propelled sea barges. Leaving such a ship near the coast, the amphibian with the help of propellers reached the land and, having dropped the tire pressure to a minimum, rose to the swampy coast. As a rule, the Americans on land did not adjust the pressure in the wheels.
A similar system was developed in the early 50s in the ZIS experimental workshop, but only to equip the ZIS-485 amphibian. When the idea of installing pumping on exclusively ground vehicles came up, the engineering headquarters of the plant was divided into two camps. Opponents believed that such a system was too heavy and complicated, and besides, the pneumatic tubes and hoses sticking out outside could easily be damaged in the forest belt. Nevertheless, on an experimental basis, the BTR-152 was equipped with pumping (the initiators were the legendary Vitaly Andreevich Grachev and his deputy Georgy Alekseevich Materov) and achieved comparative tests. Yes, not just tests, but in comparison with the T-34! In the winter of 1954, at a tank training ground in Kubinka, in the presence of the head of the GBTU, General Alexei Maksimovich Sych (his attentive VO readers remember from a series of articles about testing captured equipment during the war years), the BTR-152 on flat tires twice in a row bypassed a tank stuck in the snow.
Of course, such a failure of the famous tracked vehicle was more likely an accident, but, nevertheless, the experiment was indicative. However, this did not convince the GBTU management of the need to equip wheeled vehicles with such centralized pumping systems. Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov saved the day when he was personally convinced of the patency of such machines and actually forced the ZIS management to put the BTR-152V on the conveyor in the fall of 1954 with pumping. You can read more about this exciting test in the series of articles about the ZIL-157. After such a success, it became logical to appoint Vitaly Andreevich Grachev as the head and chief designer of the newly created SKB.
Unusual 8x8
Among the main tasks of the SKB was the creation of a family of vehicles with an 8x8 wheel arrangement, performing the functions of an artillery tractor. These were heavier vehicles than the developed ZIS (ZIL) -157, which, we recall, also belonged to the class of artillery tractors. The first prototype of the ZIL-135, albeit very distant, is the prototype ZIS-E134, dated 1955. It was the first four-axle all-wheel drive truck of the Moscow Automobile Plant, largely unified with the ZIS-151.
Designer Vitaly Grachev on this copy checked the very possibility of creating such a complex technique on a domestic aggregate base. And it turned out, I must say, not bad. The chassis consisted of four equally spaced bridges from the BTR-152V, of which the first two were steerable. The frame and cockpit were borrowed from the ZIS-151, the wheel inflation system was taken from an armored personnel carrier. The appearance of the car was unusual: a long hood, under which an inline six-cylinder 130-horsepower ZIS-120VK engine was hidden, and a short cargo platform. A torque converter from an experimental ZIS-155A bus was docked to the motor, and then a mechanical 5-speed gearbox was mounted. From the gearbox, the propeller shaft transmitted torque to the transfer case, then two power take-offs distributed power to the 2nd and 4th, as well as to the 1st and 3rd axles, respectively. The engineers turned the rear axle over, so its drive was organized from the parasitic gear of the power take-off.
The resulting car in many respects was better than tracked vehicles off-road, while the speed, efficiency and, most importantly, the resource of the running gear were much higher. Interestingly, eight soft tires perfectly dampened off-road irregularities, so semi-elliptical springs with hydraulic shock absorbers practically did not work. This car, although it looked quite unusual for its time, was built according to the classic generally accepted patterns. However, the avant-garde thinking of the chief designer of the SKB Vitaly Grachev took ZIL engineers in the future in a completely different direction.
Unlike the official history of the now non-existent Moscow Automobile Plant, saturated only with good memories of the talented designer, there is another point of view. It was expressed by Evgeny Kochnev on the pages of his book "Secret Cars of the Soviet Army". In his opinion, Vitaly Grachev is undoubtedly a talented automobile designer, winner of two Stalin Prizes, even for his time developed outdated designs with a large number of programmed flaws. And if you can still agree with the last statement (the ZIL-135 twin-engine scheme is an example of this), then the prototypes being developed at SKB were definitely not archaic. The original and high-tech design solutions of Grachev, for the most part, simply did not find much understanding either in the automotive industry or in the Soviet Army. The main competitor of the Zilovsky SKB was the Minsk Automobile Plant with its SKB-1, headed by Boris Lvovich Shaposhnik, the author of such machines as MAZ-535 and MAZ-543. By the way, they were borrowed from the Americans to a certain extent. The sturdier and more massive design of traditional Minsk vehicles turned out to be more reliable than Grachev's four-axle prototypes. For the first time, two SKBs were knocked together by their heads during comparative tests of the MAZ-535 and the ZIL-134 artillery tractor (it is also called ATK-6).
The Moscow prototype lost joint tests in 1958 in Bronnitsy. MAZ occupied the niche of heavy artillery tractors, tank carriers and rocket carriers for many years. What did the military dislike about the ZIL-134?
Firstly, the experienced V-shaped 12-cylinder ZIL-E134 carburetor engine was unreliable and often only worked on 10 cylinders. As you know, the MAZ-535 was equipped with the Barnaul diesel engine D-12-A-375, which was a descendant of the tank V-2. Why didn't Vitaly Grachev put the same diesel on his car? There is still no clear explanation for this. Most likely, as an automotive engineer, he understood the limited service life of a tank diesel engine. But there was no suitable engine of such power, and we had to develop our own version. Moreover, it was a carburetor one, since there were even greater problems with the development of a diesel engine: at ZIL they did not know how to do this at all. Naturally, the design turned out to be crude and outright lost to the proven diesel engine from Barnaul. Secondly, MAZ-535 was larger than its rival (more than 1.5 meters longer), more powerful and had a more durable design. Although, with a comparable carrying capacity of 7 tons, the ZIL-134 in the version of an airfield tractor was almost two tons lighter than MAZ, and even knew how to swim.
When Vitaly Grachev and his SKB lost the competition of the Ministry of Defense, it was decided to switch to the design of floating vehicles in the class of four-axle trucks. By the way, the first ZIL-135, which appeared in 1958, was an amphibian with a very characteristic appearance. It was on this machine that a very rare layout solution with close wheels of the 2nd and 3rd pairs appeared, which later became the hallmark of the Zilov missile carriers and carriers of the Uragan MLRS. But for the first time it was tested on late model copies of ZIL-E134 No. 2 back in 1956.
This car had an open platform and a relatively short hood, a sealed body adapted for swimming, and no suspension: the hope was in elastic, low pressure wheels. After the engineers did not like the way the car overcomes ditches and trenches, it was decided to lengthen the wheelbase. For this, the front and rear axles were spread further from the center, and the 2nd and 3rd axles were left in their places. The problem of maneuverability was solved in a unique way - with steerable wheels on the front and rear axles. The rear wheels turned in antiphase to the front ones. Naturally, this seriously complicated the steering design, but, when compared with Minsk four-axle trucks, it increased maneuverability and reduced the number of ruts when turning on soft soils and snow. As a result, it was this technical solution that became decisive when choosing the layout of future machines of the 135 series.
