Rightly and deservedly, the main worker of the Great Patriotic War among motorcycles is the heavy motorcycle M-72, which was produced in large quantities and was mass-produced in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1960. The motorcycle was originally created for the needs of the army, so for a long time it was unavailable in civilian sales. At the same time, already during the years of the Great Patriotic War, attempts were made in the USSR to create a more powerful motorcycle, including with a sidecar wheel drive, as in German counterparts. One of the motorcycles created in Tyumen during the war years was the all-wheel drive TMZ-53, which was produced in two prototypes.
A distinctive feature of the motorcycle was the sidecar wheel drive. This feature was spied on by the Germans, and they decided to implement it on new Soviet motorcycles. In the conditions of domestic off-road conditions, four-wheel drive was not at all a superfluous solution. Unfortunately, despite the promising development of the TMZ-53, it turned out to be very difficult to manufacture, it was not possible to master its production in wartime conditions, and the motorcycle did not go into mass production. It is all the more surprising that out of the two prototypes released to this day, at least one has survived, which today can be seen in the collection of the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow.
The situation with the production of motorcycles in the USSR
By the time the Great Patriotic War began, the motorcycle fleet in the Soviet Union remained small, only 7 motorcycle models were mass-produced at four motorcycle factories: Izhevsk produced Izh-7, 8 and 9, L-300 and L-8 in Leningrad, PMZ-A in Podolsk -750, in Taganrog TIZ-AM-600. Moreover, all these motorcycles were civilian models, they were not adapted for the war. In terms of their power and performance indicators, as well as cross-country ability, the listed models did not meet the requirements of the Red Army and were not very suitable for completing motorcycle parts.
At the same time, until 1932, the mass production of motorcycles in the USSR simply did not exist, and in total, from 1932 to 1941, about 60 thousand motorcycles were produced in the Soviet Union. The most massive production models were the Izh-7, Izh-8, Izh-9 and L-300 motorcycles, which were copies of the German DKW motorcycle of the Luxus 300 model of the late 1920s. At the same time, the only motorcycle with a sidecar was the AM-600, which was produced at the Taganrog Tool Plant (TIZ). This model was equipped with a four-stroke engine with a capacity of only 16 hp. Another motorcycle with a sidecar PMZ-A-750 was discontinued in Podolsk even before the start of the war in 1939. Thus, in the pre-war USSR, there were practically no army models of motorcycles, the Soviet Union was forced to meet the invasion on June 22, 1941 with the existing fleet of motor vehicles.
The third five-year plan (1938-1942) was to be a shock in terms of the production of motorcycles for the factories of the country, when it was planned to get close to the mark of 11 thousand motorcycles produced per year. At the same time, the Izhevsk Izh-9, which received a new 4-stroke engine, was to become the flagship model. The motorcycle was useful for communications and reconnaissance, but it was still not suitable for the role of the main army model, since it was not originally designed for installing a sidecar.
At the same time, at the beginning of 1940, it was decided to create motorcycle units, staffs, the composition of weapons and equipment of which were developed by the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army. At the same time, in the first half of the year, 15 motorcycles of various classes were tested, which were designed to identify the most reliable and durable model. The trials were won by the German motorcycle BMW R71, which by that time was already in service with the Wehrmacht and successfully established itself during military campaigns. Especially for testing and further copying, five BMW R71 motorcycles were anonymously purchased from Sweden. The fact that the specialized design bureau for heavy motorcycle building, created on the basis of the Moscow experimental plant Iskra, was also headed by NP Serdyukov, who had an internship at the BMW plant from 1935 to 1940, also played a role. In the Soviet Union, a copy of a German motorcycle received the designation M-72, and under this name the car went into series, becoming the main Soviet army motorcycle during the Great Patriotic War.
At the same time, by the beginning of the war, it was not possible to launch the new model into the series. Only two months after the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Moscow and Kharkov motorcycle factories were able to organize the production of the M-72 motorcycle, while the release did not satisfy the needs of the Red Army, and the catastrophic state of affairs at the front, which required the evacuation of enterprises, did not improve the production rate. So the head Moscow plant for the production of M-72 in November 1941 was hastily evacuated to Irbit, up to this point, MMZ managed to produce only 2,412 M-72 motorcycles. The situation was complicated by the fact that the cooperation of enterprises on the production of a new motorcycle model that had developed before the war itself was seriously disrupted.
In 1942, the production of M-72 was able to establish in Irbit at the new plant IrbMZ, as well as in Gorky (GMZ), where they assembled 1587 and 1284 motorcycles, respectively, this was still extremely small, since according to the plan, the production of motorcycles was supposed to be 11 thousand units. At the same time, in Tyumen, where TIZ was evacuated, they could not master the production of the M-72 at all, having released only 187 AM-600 motorcycles, mainly from spare parts and motorcycles still in progress in Taganrog. The only year of the war when Soviet factories practically managed to fulfill the plan for the production of M-72 motorcycles was 1944, when 5380 M-72s were assembled in Irbit and Gorky (90 percent of the plan).
Creation of the all-wheel drive motorcycle TMZ-53
At the end of November 1941, the evacuated Taganrog Tool Factory, located on the territory of the Tyumen Brewery, arrived in Tyumen. For the entire 1942, the enterprise, which experienced a shortage of personnel and a shortage of machine tools, managed to transfer only 187 AM-600 motorcycles to the military. The new Tyumen Motor Plant (TMZ) was not able to establish the serial production of the M-72 in Tyumen. Despite this, it was in Tyumen that an attempt was made to create a domestic all-wheel drive motorcycle. The TMZ-53 model, developed by the plant's specialists in 1942, has become a bright page in the history of the enterprise. The motorcycle itself was a response to the numerous German sidecar wheel-drive counterparts encountered by Soviet troops at the front.
An experienced motorcycle of a heavy cross-country class was developed in Tyumen under the guidance of designer Ya. V. Kagan. The car could be called an all-terrain motorcycle. Judging by the surviving sample, in addition to the wheel drive, the TMZ-53 also received large-diameter wheels with a developed off-road tread. The new motorcycle was maximally unified with the M-72 model, which seemed to be a logical and correct decision. Like its predecessor, it was equipped with a boxer engine. The opposed arrangement of the cylinders (opposite each other) provided the motorcycle with a low center of gravity and excellent engine cooling with oncoming air currents. Like the M-72, the new model easily transported three fighters with small arms, and thanks to the all-wheel drive, the cross-country ability on all types of roads only increased.
At the same time, the two-cylinder four-stroke boxer air-cooled engine was boosted, its volume increased to 1000 cubic centimeters (the M-72 had 746 "cubes"), and the engine power increased to 28 hp. at a crankshaft rotation speed of 4800 rpm. This engine was enough to provide the TMZ-53 with a maximum speed of 90 km / h.
The main distinguishing feature of the motorcycle was the sidecar wheel drive (the wheel was sprung). Also in the transmission of the new motorcycle, in addition to the 4-speed gearbox and cardan drive, a reverse gear and a range-multiplier appeared. The rear axle differential on a new product from Tyumen could be blocked. The ignition system of the TMZ-53 all-wheel drive motorcycle had a two-spark magneto. The wheels of the new motorcycle were 6x16 inches, which provided the motorcycle with a good ground clearance of 180 mm.
The new all-wheel drive motorcycle TMZ-53 was tested in conjunction with the German motorcycles BMW R-75 and Zundapp KS-750, the Red Army had enough such trophies. The tests took place in summer and winter, including in difficult road conditions. In terms of dynamics, these motorcycles were equivalent, and on the off-road, the model designed in Tyumen showed even better results, especially on ascents of more than 26 degrees. The TMZ-53 was losing only to the famous "Tsundap" - in terms of efficiency and power reserve, a smaller gas tank was installed on the model. The tests carried out showed that the all-wheel drive motorcycle TMZ-53 could be used to tow a 45-mm cannon, and in some conditions it could pull even a 76-mm artillery system.
Especially for the new motorcycle, a sidecar version was developed with the ability to install a 7.62 mm DS-39 machine gun. Also, the designers presented a variant with a flamethrower - a flamethrower carriage (OM). These developments awaited the same fate as the TMZ-53 motorcycle itself, which, despite the good test results, did not go into mass production. It would be problematic to set up its production in Tyumen, where they could not cope with the release of the M-72, and launching production at other plants that could not cope with the plans for the production of the M-72 was also not the best decision in a war. In addition, at the beginning of 1944, the plant was forced to move again, now to Gorky. Another attempt to create an all-wheel drive motorcycle during the war years was the M-73 model, the first tests of which took place in 1944. This model also did not go into series. According to the commission, the increase in the complexity and cost of production made the release of a new motorcycle unprofitable, and the all-wheel drive motorcycle had no serious advantages over the serial M-72.
