And the name of the rocket was R-36. Well, or to be precise - "product 8K67". True, the Americans for some reason preferred to call it SS-9 and even invented its proper name - Scarp, which means "Steep Slope".
This rocket was a very important step for the USSR in gaining its civilizational freedom. The thing is that in the global confrontation with the United States (and after all, they wanted to crush, they wanted to, even the plans were all published - where, when and how much they wanted to bomb), the USSR had a very unpleasant Achilles heel.
The USA could attack the USSR from a dozen directions and from bases very close to the territory of the USSR, while the USSR had practically nothing except Cuba next to the USA.
The importance of such a situation is clearly demonstrated by the Cuban missile crisis itself, to which the P-36 just barely had time - after all, as soon as the United States suspected that the USSR had nuclear ballistic missiles in Cuba - and that's it: the Air Force, the Navy and the US Marine Corps were raised by alarm in order to blockade such a blatant violation by the USSR of the existing geopolitical "non-equilibrium balance".
This is how it looked then, back in 1962:
Only 32 R-12 missiles ("product 8K63", according to the American classification - SS-4 Sandal) were installed in Cuba. Here it is, in the picture, on the far right.
These were one of the first serial Soviet rockets using high-boiling propellants. Previously, the R-12 / 8K63 was accepted into service with high-boiling components only the R-11 / 8K11 rocket, which is shown in this photo here:
R-11 (8K11) in some ways turned out to be a unique missile. I just need to tell you its American name: SS-1 Scud.
Yes, the same "Scud" (in Russian "Shkval"), with which Iraq fired at Israel and which North Korea used as the basis for all its missiles with terrible unpronounceable names.
Yes, this modest 8K11 is very unlike its distant North Korean descendant, which is even capable of putting something very small into near-earth orbit - but the essence of the situation is this: on the basis of the SS-1 Scud A, the SS-1c Scud B was developed, which still had index 8K14, called P-17 and was part of the 9K72 "Elbrus" complex, was exported under the name R-300, and in a simple way, behind the eyes, was called "Kerosinka".
The 8K11 rocket had a lot of new things in comparison with the previous developments, which all design bureaus in the USSR, to one degree or another, did on the basis of the German captured V-2 rocket.
I must say that the development of the first "Scud" also did not do without a German grandfather, but this grandfather, in contrast to the "V-2", was much less famous. But it is his ideas that will later lead us to the great-granddaughter of 8K11 - our already mentioned R-36.
German grandfather 8K11 was called Wasserfall. In Russian it will be "Waterfall", but my grandfather, as I said, was a German and the world's first guided anti-aircraft missile. Here it is:
The Germans began to make the "waterfall" back in 1941, and by 1943 it had already passed all the necessary tests.
Since these anti-aircraft missiles must be kept in a fueled state for a long time, and liquid oxygen is unsuitable for this, the Wasserfall rocket engine ran on a fuel mixture, the components of which were called "salbay" and "visole". Salbai was a common nitrogen cyst, while Visol was a special hydrocarbon fuel with a vinyl base.
The rocket, if desired, through the efforts of pedantic German technocrats and bureaucrats, could have been calmly deployed by the spring of 1944, but history was free to take a completely different path.
Albert Speer, Minister of Industry of the Third Reich, later writes in his memoirs:
“V-2 … Ridiculous idea … I not only agreed with this decision of Hitler, but also supported him, making one of my most serious mistakes. It would be much more productive to focus our efforts on the production of defensive surface-to-air missiles. Such a rocket was developed back in 1942 under the codename Wasserfall (Waterfall).
Since we subsequently fired nine hundred large offensive missiles every month, we could very well produce several thousand of these smaller and less expensive missiles every month. I still think that with the help of these missiles in combination with jet fighters, since the spring of 1944, we would have successfully defended our industry from enemy bombing, but Hitler, obsessed with a thirst for revenge, decided to use new missiles to bombard England."
And this is exactly what happened - the idea of the "revolutionaries" Wernher von Braun and Hitler to bombard England with missiles ended up in a massive mess and loss of funds, and the idea of a technocrat and bureaucrat Speer remained only his idea, but did not help Germany to postpone defeat in the war.
Compared to liquid oxygen, which was used on the V-2, the high-boiling components were much more convenient: firstly, they were liquid at room temperature (which made it possible to store them for a very long time in an "ampouled" rocket), and secondly - they spontaneously ignite when mixed.
To launch the rocket, it was enough to detonate two squibs, breaking the membranes of the "ampoules" with fuel and oxidizer, and compressed nitrogen began to displace the oxidizer and fuel into the combustion chamber, where the main action began.
Now, on modern rockets, with their hellish reserves of oxidizer and fuel, of course, no one rely solely on compressed nitrogen in the matter of displacing components to the coveted combustion chamber. Usually, for these purposes, a special unit is used on the engine itself - a turbo pump, which is powered by the same fuel and fuel to ensure its operation.
Because of this, the harness of a modern rocket engine looks something like this:
Modern engine builders revolve around the turbo pump operation scheme.
There are only two main rocket engine schemes: open and closed. When the cycle is open, the turbo pump throws the exhaust gas outside the combustion chamber, and when the cycle is closed, this partially burnt gas (otherwise the turbo pump will simply burn out from the high temperature) saturated with fuel, the so-called "sweet" gas goes further into the main combustion chamber.
It would seem - a small loss: throw a little fuel "overboard" on the turbo pump. However, since every kilogram of weight often counts in a rocket, it is this thin trickle of fuel and oxidizer lost through the turbo pump that creates the impressive advantage of a closed circuit engine.
To the credit of the USSR, it must be said that he learned very well how to make closed-cycle engines. But in the United States, they did not go into mass production - according to a closed scheme, the Americans made only the main engine of the Space Shuttle (SSME), which runs on liquid oxygen and hydrogen:
As a result, today the United States, trying to somehow revive the production of hydrogen engines of the second and third stages of the famous Saturn-5 rocket and while finally writing off the hydrogen SSME, is buying Russian closed-cycle kerosene engines - RD-180 and NK-33.
We will really need the engines later, in the continuation of the story about missiles (and about the Maidan), but for now let's return to the missiles. And to the Cuban missile crisis.
In the "unequal equality" of the Cuban missile crisis, we have two very different SS-6 Sapwood and SS-4 Sandal missiles on the part of the USSR. In Russian, these missiles are called R-7 / 8K71 and R-12 / 8K63.
The first of them, I think, has already been recognized by almost everyone: this is the famous Korolev's "Seven", which carried into orbit both the first artificial satellite of the Earth and the first man in space.
The rocket was a wonderful "horse" for space research, but a completely useless fighter: liquid oxygen as an oxidizer forced to build a huge launch site for the rocket and constantly recharge the rocket with additional quantities of oxidizer.
Therefore, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the USSR had 4 (in words: four) launch sites for launching the R-7 - at the cosmodromes (read: rocket launch sites) at Baikonur and Plesetsk.
And the Plesetsk cosmodrome, as you know, was only in peacetime for "launching satellites into polar orbits." Its main task has always been to launch the king's "sevens" across the crown of the Earth, along the meridian across the North Pole - and directly to the cities of the American foe.
The main striking force of the USSR in the Cuban missile crisis was the R-12. Here it is, the world's first high-boiling medium-range ballistic missile:
I must say that few missiles were made as quickly and at such a shock pace as the R-12. The rocket was produced at once at four enterprises of the USSR Ministry of General Machine Building. So in Soviet times, if someone did not know, the bureaucrats named the technocrats who produced everything nuclear and a little space.
The R-12, developed under the leadership of Mikhail Yangel, was designed at the Yuzhnoye design bureau in Dnepropetrovsk, then OKB-586.
Well, the rocket was produced by plant number 586 (today "Yuzhny machine-building plant", Dnepropetrovsk), plant number 172 ("Motovilikhinskie plants", Perm), plant number 166 ("Flight", Omsk) and plant number 47 ("Strela", Orenburg). In total, more than 2,300 R-12 missiles were produced. For nine years, from 1958 to 1967.
There are 250-255 working days per year. During the year, the USSR made 255 R-12 missiles. A rocket a day. And let no one leave offended and without a gift.
And whoever tries to say here: “Well, the people had nothing to eat, and the damned communists did all the rockets,” I will answer. Work on the project of using the R-12 as a space launch vehicle for launching small earth satellites began in 1957 even before it entered flight tests. By the fall of 1961, these works entered the stage of full-scale tests. As a result, two-stage light space carriers of the "Kosmos" series were created with indexes 63С1 and 11К63, in which the R-12 was the first stage.
So the USSR used all the R-12 missiles in one way or another. Putting a lot of different and useful things into orbit.
At the same time, despite the impressive range (2,800 kilometers) and mobile basing (the carts were not made for the parade on Red Square: these are the standard carriages of these missiles), the R-12 could still be used exclusively against the European allies of the United States.
Against America itself, until 1962, the USSR could deploy only four R-7 missiles.
New York, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia. You can - Boston. But then - without Philadelphia.
You don't have to think about Los Angeles or Dallas.
Do not get it …
Therefore, in the wake of the success with the R-12, the OKB-586 is faced with the following task: to create an intercontinental ballistic missile using high-boiling components. At the same time, you can assess how smoothly and quickly the bureaucratic machine of the technocrats of the USSR worked.
R-12 was adopted by the State Commission on March 4, 1959.
The task for the development of ICBM R-16 (8K64) was issued by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Government on May 13, 1959. The developer is the same design bureau Yuzhnoye.
And then a catastrophe occurs. Terrible, monstrous. October 24, 1960 will become a truly "black day" for Soviet missilemen.
15 minutes before the launch, the second stage engines of the R-16 rocket being tested at the cosmodrome (rocket base?) Are suddenly turned on.
A year and a half has passed since the decree, a lot of things in the rocket are still unfinished and damp. The rocket fuel is unique, but it will ignite simply from contact with an oxidizer.
In seconds, the starting complex turns into a pitch fiery hell.
The fire immediately burned to death 74 people, among them - the commander of the Strategic Missile Forces Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, a large group of leading experts of OKB-586. Subsequently, 4 more people died in hospitals due to burns and poisoning. Launch pad number 41 was completely destroyed.
Miraculously, Mikhail Yangel survived - before the explosion of the R-16, he walked away from the launch pad to the designated place for a smoke break. The head of the landfill, Colonel Konstantin Gerchik, scrambled out with difficulty, having received severe poisoning and burns, especially of the hands, was forced to wear gloves even in summer, in the terrible heat, reaching a temperature of 50 degrees in the shade in July in Baikonur.
At the Tyura-Tam test site (as Baikonur was then called), they immediately reacted to this terrible disaster by introducing almost draconian safety measures when testing rocket and space technology. These measures later saved many lives, although the disasters continued to collect tribute over and over again in human lives.
But then people clearly knew why they needed this counter-revolution. Because by the 1962 crisis, 32 R-16 (8K64) missiles were already aimed at the United States. According to the American classification - SS-7 Saddler ("Riding Horse").
It was these missiles that were able to finally solve the long-standing problem: "how to get an American" and at least slightly improved the "unequal equality" of the 1962 model, which a year ago would have had to be supported only with the help of the R-7 and R-12, which were a lot worse than their American competitors.
With a range of 13,000 kilometers, the R-16 missile already confidently covered almost the entire territory of the United States, and having squeezed out the calculations of the R-12 missiles from Cuba, America, in general, did not solve any of the security problems.
It was a trivial exchange of Soviet missiles in Cuba for similar US missile positions in Turkey.
There are few photos of this breakthrough rocket left on the Web. Still, whatever one may say, it was the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile on high-boiling components. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States either had kerosene-oxygen missiles (like the King's Seven) and the first solid-propellant ICBM, the Minuteman-1.
This is what the mobile launch site of this rocket looked like:
And here is how she looked in real life:
The next step in the development of high-boiling missile technology was the creation of "long-term storage missiles." The thing is that high-boiling components are a very aggressive environment, due to which neither R-12 nor R-16 could be kept in a filled state for more than one month. Because of this, it took tens of minutes or even hours to bring the missiles into a state of full readiness for launch, depending on the initial conditions.
Therefore, OKB-586 at the end of the 50s proposed to modernize both of its missiles, designating them respectively: R-22 and R-26. The first figure symbolized the second step in the development of OKB-586 strategic missiles, the second indicated continuity with the previous missile of a similar firing range. The main new quality they had was the ampulized design of fuel tanks and the ability to be in a refueled state for up to one year. The task, which was set for the German great-grandfather, Wasserfall, was solved for his much more powerful descendants.
Here is an ampulized, modernized R-26 (8K66) at the parade on Red Square:
However, OKB-586 did not stop there. And he created something that the Americans did not have in principle: Global rocket.
The very one, P-36, with which we began our conversation.
This rocket received a special name - R-36orb (from the word "orbital") or 8K69 and could launch a small thermonuclear warhead into low-earth orbit.
As you remember, the first Soviet missiles could not boast of absolutely nothing unique at the beginning of their journey. They started from vulnerable positions, they had to be filled with capricious fuel for a long time and tediously, there were too few of them.
Yes, and they flew to the United States at the limit of their range: 13,000 kilometers, in the absence of Cuba, as a springboard, was just enough to reach the major cities of the continental United States.
Therefore, we had to fly along the shortest trajectory. Through the same North Pole. From Plesetsk, which is as far north as possible. Which is only good for launching satellites (rockets?) Into polar orbits.
Because of this, the US early warning system was built to detect Soviet missile launches from the north, east and west.
And then the damned Russians make a rocket (the same 8K69, R-36orb), which calmly launches towards India, flies over Antarctica, rises into the Northern Hemisphere along South America and hits the unprotected southern underbelly of the United States.
At the same time, the missile received several advantages at once: unlimited flight range, allowing it to hit targets unattainable for ballistic intercontinental missiles, the possibility of hitting the same target from opposite directions, which forces the enemy to create an anti-missile defense around, and not only from the threatened side. At the same time, of course, the cost of such a defense increases significantly.
In addition, in this case, it was possible to significantly reduce the flight time of the orbital warhead compared to the flight time of the ICBM warhead when launching the orbital missile in the shortest direction.
Well, the choice of the appropriate orbit implied the impossibility of predicting the area of the fall of the warhead while in the orbital segment of the flight. Maybe Boston. Maybe Philadelphia. Or maybe San Francisco.
Such an unusual rocket was created in OKB-586.
At the same time, which is characteristic, the rocket did not formally violate the ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space, prescribed in the Outer Space Treaty. Since she herself was not located in space, but only stood on alert on the ground. And space? Well, yes, he is here, next to us.
You never know what a rocket can do. Doesn't do it yet!
I must say that the Americans were worried about this missile, and even very much.
Therefore, the Americans made a special amendment to the text of the SALT-2 Treaty, which obliged the USSR to remove these missiles from combat duty in 1983.
