In the Soviet Union, Belarus was responsible for the development of heavy multi-axle military equipment. It was in Minsk in 1954 at the Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) that a special design bureau was formed to develop multi-axle high-traffic vehicles for the needs of the country's military and civilian economy. In 1991, this production was separated into a separate enterprise - the Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant (MZKT). The multi-axle wheeled vehicles manufactured in Minsk are used today in the armies of Russia and other post-Soviet countries, and are also actively exported to other regions of our planet.
The unusual projects of Minsk designers include the giant 140-ton 12-wheeled chassis MAZ-7904, created as part of the Celina project. The carrier for the promising missile system was built in Minsk in a single copy, but the developed chassis became the starting point for a whole family of heavy wheeled vehicles, which simply did not exist. So, within the framework of the Celina-2 project (a mobile soil complex based on the RT-23UTT rocket), a 24-wheeled MAZ-7907 monster was created in Minsk, the design of which was based on the developments on the machines of previous projects.
Prerequisites for the creation of the wheeled chassis MAZ-7904
The emergence of a new six-axle vehicle cannot be imagined outside the context of the Cold War. The Celina project itself was a response to the emergence of new American intercontinental ballistic missiles and a consequence of the next round of world tension and the arms race, which accelerated in the 1980s on the wave of aggravation of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. The promising development of the Minsk designers was supposed to become the basis for a new ground-based missile system.
The machines created within the framework of the Celina project remained secret developments for many years, for the first time they really started talking about only in the 2000s. Automotive equipment created in Minsk was distinguished not only by its colossal dimensions, but also by the use of new layout solutions, new designs. The UGK-2 (Second Department of the Chief Designer) of the MAZ plant was engaged in the detailed study and production of multi-axle wheeled vehicles of increased cross-country ability, headed by Vladimir Efimovich Chvyalev, who later became the general designer of the enterprise. It is believed that the new car was created as a carrier of the new RT-23 "Stilet" ICBM, on which the engineers of the Yuzhnoye design bureau from Dnepropetrovsk worked. The missile, equipped with a multiple warhead, weighed over 100 tons and carried up to 10 nuclear charges over a distance of 10 thousand kilometers.
Specially to solve the task set by the military, another 100 designers with their families were sent to Minsk, who were provided with apartments at the expense of the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, the chief designer of SKB MAZ Boris Lvovich Shaposhnik, who at that time was already a man of age (the designer died in 1985 at the age of 82), became the owner of a personal lift to the office, located on the third floor of the administrative building. It is important to understand that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union spared no money and other resources to create and develop nuclear deterrence forces. The multi-axle wheeled tractors created in the 1980s by the engineers of the special design bureau of MAZ still impress everyone who gets acquainted with this project or simply considers photographs of equipment designed and assembled in metal.
MAZ-7904 and its capabilities
The experimental car was completely ready and built in 1983, as it turned out later, the car was made in one single copy. In June, the car, which received the factory index MAZ-7904, left the factory workshops for the first time. The own weight of the giant built in Minsk was 140 tons, the total carrying capacity was estimated at 220 tons. The gross vehicle weight with cargo exceeded 360 tons, which is about 60 African elephants, which are the largest land mammals on our planet. When viewed from the side, the new car resembled heavy chassis already produced in Minsk for various Soviet missile systems, but the full mass of the novelty forced us to immediately throw such comparisons out of my head.
The dimensions of the new chassis were matched to the gross weight. The total length of the six-axle vehicle exceeded 32 meters, width - 6, 8 meters, height at the level of the cabs - 3, 45 meters. The ground clearance was also impressive at 480 mm. On the front overhang of the MAZ-7904 frame, the designers carried two fiberglass cabins designed for two people. Such cabins have become a kind of classic of the Minsk enterprise for many years. The new chassis received three two-axle bogies, which were the basis for 12 wheels, the diameter of which was almost three meters. Tires for these wheels were specially purchased in Japan from Bridgestone; they were imported to the USSR under the guise of wheels needed to equip new mining dump trucks. At that time, Soviet enterprises could not ensure the production of tires that could withstand comparable loads, each wheel had up to 30 tons of the weight of the complex.
To set such a colossus in motion, non-standard solutions and non-standard equipment were required. The ship's diesel engine produced by PO Zvezda became the heart of the car. Most likely, it was one of the varieties of the marine V-shaped 12-cylinder diesel engine CHN18 / 20. The engine installed on the MAZ-7904 developed a maximum power of about 1500 hp. Additionally, another diesel engine was installed on the car - the Yaroslavl V-shaped 8-cylinder YaMZ-223F turbocharged, which produced a maximum power of 330 hp. The second diesel engine was used to drive various auxiliary equipment of the car, which included a brake compressor or a hydraulic steering pump.
The main engine of the MAZ-7904 car was installed between two double cabins. The power plant drove two four-speed hydromechanical transmissions, which transmitted torque to three front and three rear axles of an unusual car. According to the project, four wheels of the front and rear bogies were controlled, and the approximate turning radius of the machine was 50 meters. The steering mechanism of the car received a hydraulic booster. Each of the 12 wheels was mounted on hydropneumatic suspension.
Tests and fate of MAZ-7904
The first factory tests of the new development of Minsk designers began in the second half of 1983. Since the project was created within the framework of complete secrecy, the test complex near Minsk was organized at night, the car left the plant at night and returned back before dawn. The test schedule was agreed with the military, who provided information about when there are no foreign spy satellites over the territory of Belarus. Thus, the factory tests of the new MAZ-7904 high-capacity vehicle were carried out in rather specific conditions.
After the completion of the cycle of factory tests, it was decided to send the car to Baikonur in order to carry out tests already in the Kazakh steppes, to which the name of the project "Celina" had such a disposition. For transportation across the country, the car was disassembled and loaded onto a special trailer; MAZ-7904 arrived in Kazakhstan in January 1984. At the cosmodrome, the new car had to be reassembled. It is believed that, according to one of the cover legends, the new Minsk car was planned to be used to transport large blocks of the Energia rocket system to the MIK - Assembly and Test Building, or to transport spent blocks of the first stage in a reusable rocket system, such a rocket project did exist. Perhaps the car, like many other multi-axle wheeled tractors, was really planned to be used not only in the military, but also in the civilian sphere.
The second phase of testing a special wheeled tractor began in the Kazakh steppes as early as February 1984; in total, the vehicle covered about four thousand kilometers. The vehicle was now tested with a maximum load simulator on board. Such tests quickly enough helped to identify the inherent drawbacks of the machine, the main of which was the high pressure on the ground - up to 60 tons per axle. For this reason, the new tractor showed low off-road or paved mobility. The tests also demonstrated poor controllability of the MAZ-7904 tractor and a low travel speed.
The tests carried out in Kazakhstan affected the fate of the project in the worst way. It was decided to curtail the project. The special wheeled tractor was pushed aside by the following projects of the Minsk Automobile Plant. Having abandoned the Celina project, the military turned to the Celina-2 project, which required a new transport. As part of the work on this topic, two more unique multi-axle monsters were assembled in Minsk - the MAZ-7906 car with 16 wheels and 8 axles and the MAZ-7907 with 24 wheels and 12 axles, but this is a completely different story. And the life of the MAZ-7904 tractor ends with a sad ending. Since 1991, a unique car has been stored in one of the hangars at the Baikonur cosmodrome, where, judging by the documents posted in the public domain, it was disposed of in 2010.
