Soviet divisional 76-mm guns, intended for solving a wide range of tasks, primarily fire support for infantry units, suppressing firing points, destroying light field shelters. However, in the course of the war, divisional artillery guns had to fire at enemy tanks, perhaps even more often than specialized anti-tank guns. In the initial period of the war, in the absence of armor-piercing shells, the tanks were fired with shrapnel, putting their fuses on strike. At the same time, armor penetration was 30-35 mm.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, our military leadership was carried away by the idea of creating a universal artillery system that would combine the functions of anti-aircraft and divisional weapons. One of the apologists of this trend in the field of artillery weapons was M. N. Tukhachevsky, who from 1931 served as the chief of armaments of the Red Army, and from 1934 - the post of deputy people's commissar of defense for armaments. Energetic, but not having the proper education in the design and technology of artillery systems (and, therefore, incompetent in this matter), he actively promoted his personal ideas in their practical implementation. All divisional artillery became a testing ground for the concept of universalism promoted by Tukhachevsky and a number of other high-ranking officials.
Such a weapon, designated F-22, was created by VG Grabin, then unknown to anyone. In April 1935, the first prototypes were assembled. The new guns had a muzzle brake and an elongated chamber for a new cartridge. For the F-22, new projectiles weighing 7, 1 kg were specially developed, with which it fired at an initial speed of 710 m / s. On May 11, 1936, the F-22 was put into service under the name "76-mm divisional gun, model 1936". For serial guns, the muzzle brake was excluded (according to the customer, he strongly unmasked the gun with the raised clouds of dust), and also a chamber under the 1900 model case was adopted. At that time, the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU) was not ready to switch to another cartridge case (or a different caliber) of divisional guns, since very large stocks of 76 mm rounds with a mod. 1900 g.
Due to the universalism requirements for the new tool, it turned out to be unsuccessful.
As an anti-aircraft gun, the F-22 was absolutely defective. She did not have a circular fire, which is unacceptable for an anti-aircraft gun, and a low muzzle velocity of about 700 m / s. In practice, this meant a small height reach and less firing accuracy. When firing at elevation angles greater than 60 °, the shutter automation refused to work with the corresponding consequences for the rate of fire.
As a divisional F-22 did not satisfy the military. The gun had very large dimensions (especially in length) and weight (a ton more than the ZIS-3). This greatly limited its mobility, in particular, the ability to move it by the forces of calculation. In terms of firing range and armor penetration, the F-22 did not have major advantages over the older divisional cannon Model 1902/30. guns could not be carried out only by the gunner. The gun had a lot of flaws, was difficult to manufacture and capricious in operation.
The development of the gun in production was difficult, both because of its much more complex design compared to previous guns of a similar class, and because the gun had a lot of defects and was constantly being improved. In 1936, 10 guns were delivered, in 1937 - 417, in 1938 - 1002, in 1939 - 1503. Production of the gun was discontinued in 1939.
In addition to being used as a divisional F-22, they were part of the anti-tank artillery brigades (24 guns), since 1942 - 16 guns (anti-tank brigades). During 1941 - 1942. these guns suffered heavy losses, but they were encountered in small numbers until the end of the war. In particular, 2 artillery regiments armed with these guns (40 pcs.) Participated in the Battle of Kursk. Basically, the gun was used as a divisional gun, less often as an anti-tank gun (naturally, having a higher muzzle velocity, the F-22 had greater armor penetration than the ZIS-3) and never as an anti-aircraft gun.
In 1937, the ideas of universalism, like many other ill-conceived experiments and campaigns, were done away with; their apologists lost their positions, and in some cases, their lives. The country's military leadership realized that the army before the impending world war did not have a satisfactory divisional gun, since the 76-mm divisional gun of the 1902/30 model was clearly outdated, and the new 76-mm divisional gun of the 1936 model (F-22) had a number of major shortcomings … The simplest solution in this situation was to create a new, modern weapon with gun ballistics mod. 1902/30, which made it possible to use huge stocks of ammunition for this gun.
V. G. Grabin urgently set about designing a new gun, which for some reason he assigned the F-22 USV index, bearing in mind that the new gun was only a major modernization of the F-22. In fact, constructively, it was a completely new tool.
From June 5 to July 3, 1939, the military tests of the gun took place, in the same year it was put into production. In 1939, 140 guns were produced, in 1940 - 1010. At the beginning of 1941, USV was discontinued. This decision was due to two reasons: firstly, the mobilization plan for divisional guns was fully implemented (the mobilization reserve for June 1, 1941 was 5730 guns, there were 8513 guns available), secondly, it was planned to switch to divisional guns of a larger caliber …
With the beginning of the war, according to the mobilization plan, the production of USV was again deployed at factories # 92 and Barricades. In 1941, 2616 guns were fired, in 1942 - 6046 of these guns. USV production was discontinued at the end of 1942 due to the adoption of a new divisional gun ZIS-3, which has a number of advantages over USV. It should be noted that the ousting of USV from production took place gradually, in particular, Plant No. 92 continued to produce USV in 1942 (706 guns were produced), although at the end of the summer of 1941 this plant was already producing ZIS-3.
On June 1, 1941, there were 1170 such guns in the Red Army. The gun was used as a divisional and anti-tank gun. In 1941-1942. these guns suffered significant losses, the remaining ones continued to be used until the end of the war.
Compared to the F-22, the new USV gun was certainly more balanced.
However, for a divisional gun, the USV was too large, especially in height. Its mass was also large enough, which negatively affected the mobility of the gun. The placement of the sight and guidance mechanisms on opposite sides of the barrel made it difficult to use the weapon as an anti-tank one. The disadvantages of the gun led to its replacement with a more successful and technologically advanced ZIS-3 cannon.
Structurally, the ZIS-3 was the superposition of the swinging part of the previous model of the F-22USV divisional gun on the light carriage of the 57-mm ZIS-2 anti-tank gun. The significant recoil force was compensated for by a muzzle brake, which was absent in the F-22USV. Also on the ZIS-3, an important drawback of the F-22USV was eliminated - the placement of the aiming handles on opposite sides of the gun barrel. This allowed the crew numbers of four people (commander, gunner, loader, carrier) to perform only their functions.
The design of the new weapon was carried out in close cooperation with technologists, the design itself was immediately created for mass production. Operations were simplified and reduced (in particular, high-quality casting of large parts was actively introduced), technological equipment and requirements for the machine park were thought out, requirements for materials were reduced, their savings were introduced, unification and in-line production of units were envisaged. All this made it possible to obtain a weapon that was almost three times cheaper than the F-22USV, while no less effective.
The development of the gun was started by V. G. Grabin in May 1941, without an official assignment from the GAU in May 1941. This is due to the rejection of divisional artillery by the head of this department, Marshal G. I. Kulik. He believed that divisional artillery was incapable of fighting heavy German tanks (which Germany did not have in 1941).
After the German attack on the USSR, it turned out that German tanks were successfully hit by guns of 45-76, 2 mm caliber, and already at the beginning of the war, due to heavy losses, a shortage of these types of guns began to be felt, and the production of divisional guns was restored. The Volga plant, where the Grabin design bureau was located, and the Barrikady plant in Stalingrad received the assignments for the production of guns of caliber 76, 2-mm.
A number of ZIS-3s were manufactured back in 1941 - these were experimental guns and materiel for two artillery battalions aimed at military trials. In the battles of 1941, the ZIS-3 showed its advantage over the heavy and inconvenient for the gunner F-22USV.
Mass production of the ZIS-3 was started in 1941, at that time the gun was not officially adopted for service and was produced "illegally". Grabin, in agreement with the director of the Privolzhsky plant, Yelyan, made a bold decision to launch the ZiS-3 into production under his own responsibility. The work was organized in such a way that the parts of the F-22-USV and ZiS-3 were manufactured in parallel. The only clearly "wrong" part - the ZiS-3 muzzle brake - was manufactured in an experimental workshop. But the representatives of the military acceptance refused to accept the "illegal" guns without the permission of the GAU, whose head was then already N. D. Yakovlev. A request was sent to GAU, which remained unanswered for a long time, new ZiS-3 guns were accumulated in the shops, and in the end, the head of military acceptance at the plant, I. F. Teleshov gave the order to receive them.
As a result, this allowed V. G. Grabin to present the ZIS-3 personally to I. V. Stalin and obtain official permission to manufacture the gun, which by that time was already being produced by the plant and was actively used in the army. At the beginning of February 1942, official tests were carried out, which were rather a formality and lasted only five days. According to their results, the ZIS-3 was put into service on February 12, 1942 with the official name “76-mm divisional gun mod. 1942 g."
The troops received three types of 76-mm guns mod. 1942, which differed in elevation angles, riveted or welded frames and a bolt.
Due to its high manufacturability, the ZiS-3 became the first artillery gun in the world to be put into line production and assembly line assembly.
It is also the most massive cannon of the Great Patriotic War - in total, 103,000 units were produced from 1941 to 1945 (about 13,300 more barrels were mounted on the SU-76 ACS).
Since 1944, due to the slowdown in the production of 45-mm guns and the lack of 57-mm ZIS-2 guns, this gun, despite the insufficient armor penetration for that time, became the main anti-tank gun of the Red Army. The guns directed into the anti-tank artillery were equipped with PP1-2 or OP2-1 direct-fire sights.
Shells for 76 mm divisional guns:
1. Shot UBR-354A with a projectile BR-350A (Blunt-headed with a ballistic tip, tracer).
2. UBR-354B round with a BR-350B projectile (Blunt-headed with a ballistic tip, with localizers, tracer).
3. Shot UBR-354P with a projectile BR-350P (subcaliber armor-piercing projectile, tracer, "reel" type).
4. Shot UOF-354M with a projectile OF-350 (Steel high-explosive fragmentation projectile).
5. Shot USH-354T with a projectile Sh-354T (Shrapnel with a tube T-6).
With a good effectiveness of the action of a high-explosive fragmentation projectile on manpower, it gave about 870 lethal fragments at a break with the installation of a fuse for a fragmentation effect, with an effective radius of destruction of manpower of about 15 meters.
The penetration of an armor-piercing projectile, which penetrated 75-mm armor at a distance of 300 meters along the normal, was not enough to fight against German medium tanks Pz. IV.
As of 1943, the armor of the PzKpfW VI Tiger heavy tank was invulnerable to the ZIS-3 in the frontal projection and weakly vulnerable at distances closer than 300 m in the side projection. The new German tank PzKpfW V "Panther", as well as the upgraded PzKpfW IV Ausf H and PzKpfW III Ausf M or N, were also weakly vulnerable in the frontal projection for the ZIS-3; however, all these vehicles were confidently hit from the ZIS-3 to the side.
The introduction of a sub-caliber projectile since 1943 improved the anti-tank capabilities of the ZIS-3, allowing it to confidently hit vertical 80-mm armor at distances closer than 500 m, but the 100-mm vertical armor remained unbearable for it.
The relative weakness of the anti-tank capabilities of the ZIS-3 was recognized by the Soviet military leadership, however, until the end of the war, it was not possible to replace the ZIS-3 in the anti-tank subunits - for example, the 57-mm anti-tank guns ZIS-2 in 1943-1944 were produced in the amount of 4375 units, and ZIS-3 for the same period - in the amount of 30,052 units, of which about half were sent to anti-tank fighter units. The powerful 100-mm BS-3 field guns hit the troops only at the end of 1944 and in small numbers.
The insufficient armor penetration of the guns was partially compensated by the tactics of use, focused on the defeat of the vulnerable spots of armored vehicles. In addition, against most samples of German armored vehicles, the armor penetration of the ZIS-3 remained adequate until the end of the war. This was partially facilitated by a decrease in the quality of the armor steel of German tanks in the second half of the war. Due to the lack of alloying additions, the armor turned out to be fragile and, when hit by a projectile, even when not pierced, gave dangerous chips from the inside.
In the spring of 1943 V. G. Grabin, in his memo to Stalin, proposed, along with the resumption of production of the 57-mm ZIS-2, to start designing a 100-mm cannon with a unitary shot, which was used in naval guns.
When creating this gun, the designers of the design bureau under the leadership of V. G. Grabin made extensive use of their experience in creating field and anti-tank guns, and also introduced a number of new technical solutions.
To ensure high power, reduce weight, compactness and high rate of fire, a wedge-type semi-automatic breechblock and a two-chamber muzzle brake with an efficiency of 60% were used for the first time on a gun of this caliber.
The problem of the wheel was originally solved; for lighter guns, wheels from GAZ-AA or ZIS-5 were usually used. But they were not suitable for the new weapon. The wheels from the five-ton YaAZ turned out to be too heavy and large. Then a pair of wheels was taken from GAZ-AA, which made it possible to fit into the given weight and dimensions. The cannons equipped with these wheels could be transported by mechanical traction at sufficiently high speeds.
A year later, in the spring of 1944, BS-3 was put into mass production. Until the end of the Great Patriotic War, the industry supplied the Red Army with about 400 cannons. The 100 mm BS-3 proved to be a very effective anti-tank weapon.
The heavy 100 mm BS-3 field gun entered service in May 1944. For excellent armor penetration, ensuring the defeat of any enemy tank, front-line soldiers named it "St. John's Wort".
Due to the presence of a wedge breechblock with a vertically moving wedge with semi-automatic, the arrangement of vertical and horizontal guidance mechanisms on one side of the gun, as well as the use of unitary shots, the rate of fire of the gun is 8-10 rounds per minute. The cannon was fired with unitary cartridges with armor-piercing tracer shells and high-explosive fragmentation grenades. An armor-piercing tracer projectile with an initial speed of 895 m / s at a distance of 500 m at a meeting angle of 90 ° pierced armor with a thickness of 160 mm. The direct shot range was 1080 m.
However, the role of this weapon in the fight against enemy tanks is greatly exaggerated. By the time of its appearance, the Germans practically did not use tanks on a massive scale.
The BS-3 was released during the war in small quantities and could not play a large role. For comparison, the tank destroyer SU-100 with a gun of the same caliber D-10 was released in wartime in an amount of about 2,000.
The creator of this weapon V. G. Grabin never considered BS-3 an anti-tank system, which is reflected in the name.
BS-3 had a number of disadvantages that made it difficult to use it as an anti-tank. When firing, the gun jumped a lot, which made the gunner's work unsafe and knocked down the sighting installations, which, in turn, led to a decrease in the practical rate of aimed shooting - a very important quality for a field anti-tank gun.
The presence of a powerful muzzle brake with a low height of the line of fire and flat trajectories characteristic of firing at armored targets led to the formation of a significant smoke and dust cloud that unmasked the position and blinded the crew.
The mobility of the gun with a mass of more than 3500 kg left much to be desired, transportation by the crew on the battlefield was almost impossible.
If the towing of 45-mm, 57-mm and 76-mm guns was carried out by horse teams, GAZ-64, GAZ-67, GAZ-AA, GAZ-AAA, ZIS-5 vehicles or semi-trucks Dodge supplied from the middle of the war under Lend-Lease WC-51 ("Dodge 3/4").
Then, for towing the BS-3, tracked tractors were required, in extreme cases the Studebaker US6 all-wheel drive trucks.
At the final stage of the war, 98 BS-3s were attached as a means of strengthening five tank armies. The gun was in service with the light artillery brigades of the 3-regimental composition (forty-eight 76-mm and twenty 100-mm guns).
In the artillery of the RGK, as of January 1, 1945, there were 87 BS-3 cannons. At the beginning of 1945, in the 9th Guards Army, as part of three rifle corps, one cannon artillery regiment, 20 BS-3 each, was formed.
Basically, due to the long firing range - 20650 m and a fairly effective high-explosive fragmentation grenade weighing 15.6 kg, the gun was used as a hull gun to counter enemy artillery and suppress long-range targets.
Anti-aircraft artillery played a significant role in the fight against tanks, especially in the initial period of the war.
Already at the end of June 1941, it was decided to form separate anti-tank artillery regiments of the RGK. These regiments were armed with twenty 85-mm anti-aircraft guns. In July - August 1941, 35 such regiments were formed. In August - October, a second wave of formation of anti-tank regiments of the RGK followed. These regiments were armed with eight 37 mm and eight 85 mm anti-aircraft guns. 37-mm anti-aircraft machine gun mod. 1939, even before the war, it was created as an anti-tank anti-aircraft and had a spent armor-piercing projectile. An important advantage of anti-aircraft guns was also the carriage, which provided circular rotation of the gun. To protect the crew, anti-aircraft guns re-qualified as anti-tank guns were equipped with an anti-splinter shield.
At the end of 1941, 37-mm machine guns were withdrawn from anti-tank artillery. 85mm anti-aircraft guns were used for this purpose for at least two more years. In the Battle of Kursk, 15 anti-tank artillery battalions took part in twelve 85-mm guns. This measure, of course, was forced, since anti-aircraft guns were much more expensive, less mobility, and they were harder to camouflage.
Captured German guns were actively used in the anti-tank artillery. The 75-mm Rak-40, which had high armor penetration rates and a low silhouette, were especially appreciated. During the offensive operations of 1943-1944, our troops captured a large number of these guns and ammunition for them.
Several anti-tank divisions were formed, equipped with captured guns. The divisions were, both with captured guns, and a mixed composition. Some of the captured anti-tank guns were used by the troops supernaturally, which was not reflected in the reporting documents.
Characteristics of anti-tank guns
The saturation of the troops with anti-tank artillery occurred by mid-1943. Prior to this, the lack of anti-tank guns was partially offset by the massive production of anti-tank rifles (PTR).
The quantitative saturation of troops with guns was not always enough to ensure
anti-tank defense.
So the use of the divisional ZIS-3 was largely a forced measure. Even the 76-mm APCR projectile did not provide reliable penetration of the armor of heavy tanks. The cumulative 76-mm projectile was used only in short-barreled regimental
guns, due to the imperfection of the fuse and the possibility of a rupture in the barrel of a divisional gun.
Due to the position of the GAU, before the war, the possibility of creating an effective 76-mm gun was lost. What the Germans later did by capturing and modernizing hundreds of captured Soviet F-22s and USVs.
For some unknown reason, the 85 mm anti-tank gun was not created. Such a weapon was designed by F. F. Petrov and adopted under the designation D-44 after the war.
It was the anti-tank artillery that destroyed 2/3 of the German tanks, despite the shortcomings and omissions, the Soviet soldiers of the anti-tank artillery, showing stamina and mass heroism, often sacrificing themselves, managed to smash the Panzerwaffe's steel fist.
