The rocket, which laid the foundation for the domestic operational-tactical and underwater missile systems, was born as a result of a scientific and engineering experiment
An R-11M self-propelled missile launcher on its way to the November parade in Moscow. Photo from the site
Soviet missile systems, which in the West received the code name Scud, that is, "Shkval", became one of the symbols of military-technical cooperation between the USSR and the Arab countries of the Middle East - and the achievements of Soviet military missile engineering in general. Even today, half a century after the first such installations began to hit the shores of the Red Sea, their characteristic silhouette and combat capabilities serve as an excellent characteristic of the skill and capabilities of Soviet missile engineers and the creators of mobile operational-tactical missile systems. "Scuds" and their heirs, already created by the hands of not Soviet, but Chinese, Iranian and other engineers and workers, show off in parades and participate in local conflicts - of course, with conventional, fortunately, not "special" warheads.
Today, the name "Scud" is understood as a completely definite family of missile systems for operational-tactical purposes - 9K72 "Elbrus". It includes the R-17 rocket, which made this nickname famous. But in reality, for the first time this formidable name was not given to her, but to her predecessor - the operational-tactical missile R-11, which became the first such serial missile in the Soviet Union. Its first test flight took place on April 18, 1953, and although it was not very successful, it is from it that the history of the flights of this rocket begins. And it was she who was first assigned the Scud index, and all other complexes with this name became her heirs: the R-17 grew out of the last attempt to modernize the R-11 to the level of the R-11MU.
But not only "Scadam" paved the way for the famous "eleventh". The same missile opened the era of Soviet submarine missile carriers. Adapted for naval needs, it received the R-11FM index and became a weapon of the first Soviet missile-carrying submarines of the 611AV and 629 projects. But the original idea of developing the R-11 was not so much to create an operational-tactical missile, but to try to understand on a real missile is it possible to create a combat missile on long-term storage fuel components …
From "V-2" to R-5
The first Soviet missile systems based on the R-1 and R-2 missiles were actually experimental. They were developed taking as a basis - or, as many participants in those work claim, actually completely repeating - the German A4 rocket, aka "V-2". And this was a natural step: during the pre-war and wartime, German missile engineers seriously outstripped their colleagues in the USSR and the United States, and it would be foolish not to take advantage of the fruits of their work to create their own missiles. But before using, you need to understand exactly how they are arranged and why exactly so - and this is the easiest and best way to do it, at the first stage trying to reproduce the original using our own technologies, materials and technical capabilities.
One of the first serial R-11 missiles on a conveyor. Photo from the site
How intensively the work was going at the first stage of creating the domestic nuclear missile shield can be judged by the data that Academician Boris Chertok cites in his book "Rockets and People": 1948 year. And in the fall of this year, the first series of these missiles passed flight tests. In 1949-1950, flight tests of the second and third series took place, and in 1950 the first domestic missile system with the R-1 missile was put into service. The launch weight of the R-1 rocket was 13.4 tons, the flight range was 270 km, the equipment was an ordinary explosive with a mass of 785 kg. The R-1 rocket engine exactly copied the A-4 engine. The first domestic missile was required to hit a rectangle with an accuracy of 20 km in range and 8 km in the lateral direction.
A year after the adoption of the R-1 missile, flight tests of the R-2 missile complex ended and it was put into service with the following data: a launch weight of 20,000 kg, a maximum flight range of 600 km, and a mass of a warhead of 1008 kg. The R-2 rocket was equipped with radio correction to improve lateral accuracy. Therefore, despite the increase in range, the accuracy was no worse than that of the R-1. The thrust of the R-2 rocket engine was increased by forcing the R-1 engine. In addition to the range, a significant difference between the R-2 rocket and the R-1 was the implementation of the idea of separating the warhead, the introduction of the carrier tank into the hull structure and the transfer of the instrument compartment to the lower part of the hull.
In 1955, the tests ended and the R-5 missile system was adopted. The launch weight is 29 tons, the maximum flight range is 1200 km, the mass of the warhead is about 1000 kg, but there could be two or four more suspended warheads when launched at 600-820 km. The missile's accuracy has been improved through the use of a combined (autonomous and radio) control system.
A significant modernization of the R-5 missile system was the R-5M complex. The R-5M rocket was the first nuclear-powered missile in the world history of military technology. The R-5M rocket had a launch weight of 28.6 tons and a flight range of 1200 km. The accuracy is the same as that of the R-5.
The combat missiles R-1, R-2, R-5 and R-5M were single-stage, liquid, the propellants were liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol."
Oxygen rockets have become a real hobbyhorse of General Designer Sergei Korolev and his team from OKB-1. It was on the oxygen rocket on October 4, 1957 that the first artificial Earth satellite was launched into space, and on the oxygen rocket R-7 - the legendary "seven" - on April 12, 1961, the first cosmonaut of the Earth, Yuri Gagarin, was poisoned on a flight. But oxygen, alas, imposed significant restrictions on missile technology when it came to using it as a carrier of nuclear weapons.
And if you try nitric acid?
Even the best of Sergey Korolev's oxygenated ICBMs - the famous R-9 - was tied to a complex system of maintaining sufficient oxygen levels in the fuel system (for more details on this rocket, see the article "R-9: Hopelessly Late Perfection"). But the "nine" was created much later, and did not become a truly mass ICBM of the Soviet Missile Forces - and precisely because of the difficulties in ensuring long-term combat alert of the system flying on oxygen.
The layout of the R-11 rocket. Photo from the site
About what these difficulties are, the designers, and especially the military, who began to operate the first domestic missile systems in a trial mode, understood quite quickly. Liquid oxygen has an extremely low boiling point - minus 182 degrees Celsius, and therefore evaporates extremely actively, leaking from any leaky connection in the fuel system. The space newsreels clearly show how the rockets are "emitting steam" on the launch pad of Baikonur - this is precisely the result of the evaporation of oxygen used in such rockets as an oxidizer. And since there is constant evaporation, it means that constant refueling is necessary. But it is impossible to provide it in the same way as refueling a car with gasoline from a canister stored in advance - all because of the same evaporation losses. And in fact, the launch complexes of oxygen ballistic missiles are tied to oxygen production plants: this is the only way to ensure a constant replenishment of the stock of the oxidizing component of the rocket fuel.
Another significant problem of the first domestic combat oxygen missiles was the system of their launching process. The main component of rocket fuel was alcohol, which, when mixed with liquid oxygen, does not itself ignite. To start the rocket engine, it is necessary to introduce into the nozzle a special pyrotechnic incendiary device, which at first was a wooden structure with a magnesium tape, and later became a liquid, but even more complex structure. But in any case, it worked only after the valves for supplying fuel components were opened, and, accordingly, its losses were again noticeable.
Of course, over time, most likely, all these problems could be solved or, as happened with non-military missile launches, ignored. However, for the military, such design flaws were critical. This was especially true of missiles that were supposed to receive maximum mobility - operational-tactical, tactical and ballistic short and medium range. After all, their advantages should have been provided with the possibility of transferring to any region of the country, which made them unpredictable for the enemy and made it possible to deliver a surprise strike. And dragging behind each such missile battalion, figuratively speaking, its own oxygen plant - it was somehow too much …
The use of high-boiling propellants for ballistic missiles, such as special kerosene and an oxidizer based on nitric acid, held great promise. The study of the possibilities of creating such missiles was precisely the topic of a separate research work with the N-2 code, which has been carried out since 1950 by OKB-1 employees under the leadership of Sergei Korolev, who was part of the "rocket" NII-88 structure. The result of this research work was the conclusion that rockets using high-boiling propellants can only be of short and medium range, since it is in no way possible for them to create an engine with sufficient thrust, stably operating on such fuel. In addition, the researchers came to the conclusion that the fuel on high-boiling components does not have sufficient energy performance at all, and ICBMs need to be built only on liquid oxygen.
Time, as we now know, refuted these conclusions through the efforts of the designers headed by Mikhail Yangel (who, by the way, was the chief designer of the R-11 along with Sergei Korolev), who just managed to build his intercontinental missiles on high-boiling components. But then, in the early 1950s, the resume of the researchers from OKB-1 was taken for granted. Moreover, in support of their words, they managed to create an operational-tactical missile using high-boiling components - the very same R-11. So, from a purely research task, a very real rocket was born, from which the famous "Scuds" and liquid-propellant missiles of strategic submarine missile carriers trace their genealogy today.
A tracked installer places an R-11 rocket on the launch pad at the Kapustin Yar training ground. Photo from the site
From the very beginning, the R-11 occupied a special place among the Soviet missiles of the first, "sighting" period. And not only because it was a fundamentally different scheme: a fundamentally different fate was in store for him. Here is how Boris Chertok writes about it: “In 1953, NII-88 began the development of rockets using high-boiling components: nitric acid and kerosene. The chief designer of the engines of these missiles is Isaev. Two types of missiles with high-boiling components were adopted for service: R-11 and R-11M.
The R-11 had a range of 270 km with a launch weight of only 5.4 tons, the equipment was a conventional explosive with a mass of 535 kg. The R-11 entered service in 1955.
The R-11M was already the second nuclear-powered missile in our history (the first was the R-5. - Author's note). In modern terminology, this is a nuclear missile weapon for operational and tactical purposes. Unlike all previous ones, the R-11M rocket was placed on a mobile self-propelled unit on a tracked chassis. Due to a more advanced autonomous control system, the missile had an accuracy of hitting a square of 8 x 8 km. It was put into service in 1956.
The last combat missile of this historical period was the first missile for a submarine R-11FM, similar in its basic characteristics to the R-11, but with a significantly changed control system and adapted for launching from a submarine shaft.
So, from 1948 to 1956, seven missile systems were created and put into service, including for the first time two nuclear and one sea. Of these, one nuclear and one naval were created on the basis of the same missile - R-11.
The beginning of the history of the R-11
The beginning of research work on the N-2 theme, which ended with the creation of the R-11 rocket, was set by the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated December 4, 1950 No. 4811-2092 "On the plan of experimental work on ground-based rocket weapons for the IV quarter of 1950 and 1951. ". The task of the designers from the Royal OKB-1 was to create a single-stage rocket using high-boiling propellants with the ability to store in a filled state for up to one month. Such requirements, provided that they were accurately fulfilled by the designers, made it possible to obtain a missile at the exit, quite suitable for a mobile missile system, which would become a weighty argument in the flaring cold war.
The starting battery of R-11 missiles in position (diagram). Photo from the site
The first leading designer of the future R-11 was one of the most famous and unusual designers in the already rich design bureau of Sergey Korolev, Yevgeny Sinilshchikov. It was to him that the Soviet tankers, although this name was hardly known to them, and were grateful for the appearance of the legendary Tiridtsatchetverki new, more powerful 85-mm gun, which allowed them to fight the German Tigers practically on equal terms. A graduate of the Leningrad Voenmekh, creator of the first large-scale Soviet self-propelled gun mount - SU-122, the man who rearmed the T-34, Evgeny Sinilshchikov in 1945 ended up in Germany as part of a group of Soviet engineers who collected all the valuable German technical trophies. As a result, having become one of the participants in the first Soviet launch of the German V-2 on October 18, 1947, in 1950 he already became Sergey Korolev's deputy at OKB-1. And it is quite logical that the "non-core" rocket on high-boiling components was transferred to his jurisdiction: Sinilshchikov had an impressively broad engineering horizon to cope with this task.
The work was going fast enough. By November 30, 1951, that is, less than a year later, the draft design of the future R-11 was ready. It quite clearly traced - as in all OKB-1 missiles of that very early period - the influence of the "V-2", as well as the outwardly resembling its half-scaled copy of the anti-aircraft missile "Wasserfall". The developers remembered about this rocket, since it, like the future R-11, flew on high-boiling components, and for the same reason: anti-aircraft missiles required the ability to be in a fueled state for quite a long time. The essential difference was in what fuel components were used in these missiles. In Germany, the oxidizer was Zalbay, that is, smokeless nitric acid (a mixture of nitric acid, dinitrogen tetroxide and water), and the fuel was Visol, that is, isobutyl vinyl ether. In the domestic development, it was decided to use kerosene T-1 as the main fuel, and as an oxidizing agent - nitric acid AK-20I, which was a mixture of one part of nitrogen tetroxide and four parts of nitric acid. TG-02 "Tonka-250" was used as a starting fuel, that is, a mixture in equal proportions of xylidine and triethylamine.
It took a year and a half to go from the preliminary design to the approval of the tactical and technical assignment by the customer - the military. On February 13, 1953, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution, according to which the development of the R-11 rocket began and at the same time preparation for its serial production at plant No. 66 in Zlatoust, where the "Special Design Bureau for Long-Range Missiles", SKB- 385. And by the beginning of April, the first prototypes of missiles were ready, which were to participate in test launches at the Kapustin Yar test site, where at that time all the missiles and missile systems of the Soviet Union were tested. The R-11 entered experimental launches under the guidance of a new lead designer. Just a couple of weeks before that, one of the closest students of Sergei Korolev, Viktor Makeev, the future Doctor of Technical Sciences and Academician, a man whose name is inextricably linked to the entire history of the strategic submarine missile carriers of the Soviet fleet, became one of the closest students of Sergei Korolev. And she contacted at this very moment …
How to teach a rocket to fly in two years
The first experimental launch of the R-11 rocket at the state missile range Kapustin Yar took place on April 18, 1953 - and was unsuccessful. More precisely, an emergency: due to a manufacturing defect in the on-board control system, the rocket did not fly far from the launch pad, pretty much frightening everyone who watched the launch. Among them was Boris Chertok, who describes his feelings from this start as follows:
“In April 1953, in the Trans-Volga steppe, blooming and fragrant with spring aromas, at the Kapustin Yar test site, flight tests of the first stage of the R-11 began. Nedelin flew to the first tests of a new tactical missile on high-boiling components (Mitrofan Nedelin, at that time Marshal of Artillery, Commander of Artillery of the Soviet Army. - Ed.) And with him a retinue of high military ranks.
The launches were made from the launch pad, which was installed directly on the ground. A kilometer from the start in the direction opposite to the flight, two vans with the receiving equipment of the Don telemetry system were installed next to the FIAN house. This observation post was loudly called IP-1 - the first measuring point. All the cars, on which the guests and technical management arrived for the launch, gathered to him. Just in case, the head of the landfill, Voznyuk, ordered the opening of several slots-shelters in front of the point.
Combat training of the calculation of the self-propelled launcher of the serial rocket R-11M. Photo from the site
My responsibilities at the R-11 launches no longer included communication from the bunker and collecting readiness reports using field telephones. After the end of the pre-launch tests, I happily settled down on the IP in anticipation of the upcoming spectacle. It never occurred to anyone that the rocket could fly not only along the track forward in the direction of the target, but also in the opposite direction. Therefore, the cracks were empty, everyone preferred to enjoy a sunny day on the surface of the still unburned steppe.
At exactly the right time, the rocket took off, splashing out a reddish cloud, and, leaning on a bright fiery torch, rushed vertically upward. But after about four seconds she changed her mind, made a maneuver like an aircraft "barrel" and switched to a dive flight, it seemed as if at our fearless company. Standing in full growth, Nedelin shouted loudly: "Get down!" Everyone fell around him. I considered it humiliating for myself to lie down in front of such a small rocket (there are only 5 tons in it), and jumped behind the house. I took cover in time: there was an explosion. Clods of earth pounded on the house and cars. Here I really got scared: what about those who lie without any shelter, besides, now everyone can be covered with a red cloud of nitrogen. But there were no casualties. They got up from the ground, crawled out from under the cars, brushed themselves off and looked with surprise at the poisonous cloud blown away by the wind towards the start. The rocket did not reach the people of only 30 meters. The analysis of telemetry records did not make it possible to unambiguously determine the cause of the accident, and it was explained by the failure of the stabilization machine.
The first stage of the experimental launches of the R-11 was short-lived: from April to June 1953. During this time, they managed to launch 10 missiles, and only two launches - the first and the penultimate one - were unsuccessful, and both for technical reasons. In addition, in the course of an experimental series of launches, it turned out, as Academician Chertok writes, that the thrust of the engine designed by Alexei Isaev (engine designer who designed many engines for sea ballistic missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, ship brake engines for space rockets, etc.), turned out to be insufficient - the engines had to be modified. It was they who, at the first stage, did not allow the "eleventh" to reach the required range, sometimes reducing it by thirty to forty kilometers.
The second stage of testing began in April 1954 and took less than a month: until May 13, they managed to complete 10 launches, of which only one was emergency, and also due to the fault of the rocket designers: the stabilization machine failed. In this form, the rocket could already be displayed for sighting and test tests, the first of which went from December 31, 1954 to January 21, 1955, and the second began a week later and lasted until February 22. And again, the rocket confirmed its high reliability: out of 15 launches under this program, only one turned out to be emergency. So it is not surprising that on July 13, 1955, the R-11 rocket as part of a mobile missile system was adopted by the Soviet Army.
