"Dyrenkov's tank" - photo.
It is known that sometimes punchy qualities and self-confidence, or even just arrogance, help where there should be completely different talents. But the consequences are usually always sad, if not tragic. Such examples are known in the history of armored vehicles. For example, Walter Christie had a very quarrelsome disposition (plus a lot of self-confidence!), Although, of course, he was a talented design engineer. Moreover, the mark left by him in the world of tank building is simply huge, but not in the United States. He really spoiled a lot of blood with the local military at one time.
S. K. was assertive in an amicable way. Drzewiecki is a Polish-Russian engineer, designer and inventor, author of a number of submarine torpedo designs, and examples of this can be continued. But … no less than other examples, alas, when people knocked over the thresholds of ministries and departments with deliberately failed projects that presented not even drawings, but diagrams, and demanded attention and money to make their fantasies come true. It happened that they succeeded and what was the result then? And what happened as a result of cooperation between Kurchevsky and Tukhachevsky is a story that has already become a textbook example of how not to worry about increasing the country's defense capability. But there were other examples and many …
For example, a student of the Leningrad Institute of Technology V. Lukin, who in 1928 offered the Red Army his tank "Shoduket" or "High-speed two-wheeled tanga" (namely "tanga", not a tank!). Compared to it, Lebedenko's Tsar-Tank would have looked just small, because the diameter of the wheels on it was supposed to be 12 m! He drew the car from the outside from several angles, but the diagram of the internal structure, as well as all the proper calculations for it, were missing. The latter, however, was not surprising, since, judging by his letter, at that time he was already expelled from the institute due to academic failure. True, he explained that the reason for such sad circumstances was that all his free time he was developing his "Shoduket", but he did not provide any detailed drawings or anything else. Well, and his project went to the abandoned archive of inventions in Samara, where it is now, together with other equally odious projects that are still waiting for their researchers!
There was a project to prepare in advance the armor plating for buses and trolleybuses, to store these plating in a warehouse, and with the outbreak of war and the invasion of the enemy to immediately book and use them! And if the enemy does not reach this city? Or will the armor rust?
"Shoduket"
And someone else offered "down armor" - they say, the bullet gets stuck in the feather bed, so you need to compress the down and paste over the plane with this armor! It will be light (this is the question of what is lighter than a kilogram of fluff or a kilogram of lead?), And the plane will fly! It is good that in this case the decision to point the inventor to the door is obvious.
You can't say anything good about Nambaldov's tankette either, although the designer provided for the possibility of anti-aircraft fire. He himself would be crammed into such a thing and allowed to ride (and at the same time shoot!) And he would immediately be cured of all his design ambitions.
Wedge heel Nambaldov "Lilliput".
But it also happened that the "would-be inventors" still managed to interest the military, who were not too versed in this, with their ideas, and then literally "go down the drain" and here (and abroad too!) A lot of money flew out, invaluable time was spent, human labor and materials. Something similar, for example, happened in the USSR with the "Dyrenkov tank", which for a long time was not even mentioned in any of the domestic reference books on armored vehicles. The project belonged to the self-taught inventor N. Dyrenkov, who had previously developed the D-8 and D-12 armored cars, as well as the D-2 artillery motorized armored car.
It should be noted that Nikolai Dyrenkov had only primary education, but he was a man, judging by the documents, assertive and punchy and knew how to convince others that he was right. In 1918, he even met with Lenin and reported to him about how he fought for the discipline of production in Rybinka, about which Lenin even wrote. Without a doubt, he had a talent for technique, and he was also a good organizer. However, it was not so difficult to create driving armored vehicles then. The main thing is to have a chassis. Then a mock armor made of plywood was installed on it. We watched what and how. Then a frame from a corner was put on the frame and all this was sewn up with armor on rivets. The army was supplying weapons, and the armored car was ready. Moreover, there was not even a tower on the D-8. The machine gun on it stood in the rear armor plate of the hull. It was the same with his motorized armored car. The Izhora plant has already made armored trains. Shoulder straps and towers were ready. That is, Dyrenkov acted as a designer, nothing more. I took the finished chassis, sheathed it with armor, put two towers on the existing shoulder straps and got a good result. It is clear that it was a good job for the late 1920s. Moreover, his "armored cars" fought even during the Great Patriotic War. That is, no one denies his feasible contribution here. Well, I would have dealt with them further, especially since the customer had comments on him and it was necessary to eliminate them, and the design itself had to be improved ad infinitum. But … if a person made an armored vehicle accepted by the BA army, and even a motorized armored car, then he could then be considered a serious designer and … could aim for more!
D-8.
Here he is in October 1929 and swung at a wheeled-tracked tank of his own design. A report on his project of a medium maneuverable tank was heard on November 18 of the same year at a meeting of the RVS commission. It was decided to recognize its construction as expedient, and to hand over the tank no later than April 1, 1930.
And in December 1929, at the Izhora plant in Leningrad, an experimental design and test bureau of the Mechanization and Motorization Directorate of the Red Army was organized specifically for this designer, which Dyrenkov headed. The design bureau took up the development of the tank, which received the designation D-4. Moreover, Dyrenkov simultaneously began work on other projects: he designed armored vehicles, worked on the armoring of tractors, projects for chemical combat vehicles, new motorized armored cars, welded and stamped hulls for tanks, invented new compositions of armor, tracked all-terrain vehicles and transmissions. That is, at the same time in the backlog he had about 50 different designs (moreover, a lot was made in metal), and all this within a year and a half! But natural ingenuity, of course, could not compensate for his lack of engineering education in any way - almost all of his projects in one way or another turned out to be a failure.
According to the project, completed by the beginning of February 1930, the "Dyrenkov tank" was a 12-ton combat vehicle, with 15-20-mm armor, two 45-mm Sokolov system guns and four more DT machine guns. All this was housed in two towers (270 degrees of firing angle of each tower) and in the bow of the hull. But the "highlight" of the D-4 tank (he received such a designation in the documents) was to be its chassis, which used a wheeled caterpillar drive.
Outside, it was covered by armored screens, between which and the body of the car itself were two massive steel riveted boxes, on which the road wheels and springs were attached. The drive wheel was at the back, the guide wheel was at the front. Between them were three twin large diameter road wheels, and there were no carrier wheels. The wheel drive consisted of four automobile wheels on the axles of the driving and guide rollers located on the outside of the screens. The front pair was steerable. The tank was switched from caterpillar to wheeled (and vice versa) with the help of two jacks powered by a tank engine, which either raised (or lowered) the box with road wheels located between the bulwark and the hull. This is how the tank got on the wheels (or on the tracks). However, the designer thought this was not enough, and he suggested mounting a couple of railway rollers under the bottom. Thanks to this, the D-4 could ride on rails like armored tires, and also force water obstacles with the help of underwater equipment! Agree that even now the project of such a machine would require a long and hard work of a large team of experienced engineers. But then a lot was decided by a "cavalry attack!" - "and everything is available, eh - ma, now for our mind!"
The engines for the tank were imported: two "Hercules" motors of 105 hp each, working on one common gearbox. Controlling the tank was facilitated by the presence of hydraulic boosters, and the installation of a reverse stroke allowed the D-4 to move back and forth at the same speed. The driver received a stroboscope, an ultra-modern device for that time, for observation.
However, the complexity of the work, and most importantly, that Dyrenkov was never able to make all the necessary calculations himself and did many things … "by eye, on a whim", led to the fact that the production of the D-4 was delayed. He did not accept help from anyone and was also constantly distracted by the development of new inventions, took on a new one, not having time to finish the old one. It happened that the same drawings had to be redone several times, and in the same way, after this, it was necessary to redo the details of this ill-fated tank. Dyrenkov himself blamed the plant and the engineers for everything, that is, he was engaged in the usual business for such people: "he fell from a sore head to a healthy one."
The D-4 was finally assembled in Moscow, where its design bureau was transferred at the beginning of 1931. Already in March, D-4 drove through the factory yard for the first time, and it immediately became clear that it did not work out. Yes, the mechanism that made it possible to switch from tracks to wheels worked, but it turned out to be so cumbersome, so complex and unreliable that there was no question of serial production of a tank with such a chassis. The mass of the tank also turned out to be higher than the calculated one (about 15 tons), which is why the D-4 could hardly move on wheels even on the concrete floor in the factory floor, and what would have happened to it on the road? But he did not ride better on tracks either because of the poorly designed transmission, which, in addition, constantly broke down. And the speed of 35 km / h on the tracks, declared by Dyrenkov, was also not achieved!
"Dyrenkov's tank" on tracks and on wheels.
At the same time, seeing that the miracle machine did not come out, the inventor immediately began to work on a new tank - the D-5, and proposed to put a new tower with a 76-mm cannon on the BT-2 tank. But then it became clear to everyone who, in the person of Dyrenkov, had to deal with, that about a million rubles of the people's money had been completely wasted, so in the end he was “shown the door”. However, it was enough just to look at this tank carefully to understand that it would not ride on wheels, they were so disproportionately small in relation to the tank itself, which, by the way, the designer himself did not see from the very beginning!
However, even here he did not calm down, but turned for help to M. Tukhachevsky and … he gave the go-ahead for the construction of the next D-5 tank! By November 1932, its full-size model was built, drawings and a number of parts and mechanisms were prepared. But then the patience of the military came to an end, and on December 1, 1932, the Dyrenkov Design Bureau was closed, and all work on the D-5 was stopped. It is clear that N. Dyrenkov did not want "anything bad". However, in those years, fate did not forgive such blunders. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that on October 13, 1937, he was arrested on charges of participating in a sabotage and terrorist organization, and on December 9, 1937, that is, right on the day of the trial, he was shot at the Kommunarka training ground in the Moscow region, where he was buried.
Then, of course, he was posthumously rehabilitated, but only Dyrenkov himself was hardly pleased. But it was only a lack of education that let him down: in 1908 he graduated from the parish primary school, in 1910 - the first class of the Karjakinsky school, and in 1910-1914 - a vocational school at the mechanical-technical school of M. E. Komarov and … that's all! By the way, according to a similar principle, although technically and at a more advanced level in the USSR in the 60s of the last century, a wheeled-tracked infantry fighting vehicle "Object 911" was made. Calculations showed that due to the high speed of movement on wheels on paved roads, with the help of such machines in certain sectors of the front, it would be possible to create superiority in forces sufficient to successfully break through the enemy's defenses. But … because of the additional costs for the production of the vehicle and the difficulties with a double propeller, this vehicle was also not accepted for service, as was the "unfinished" D-4 tank.
Tank BT-2 with Dyrenkov's turret.
However, Dyrenkov had every chance to go down in the history of domestic military equipment exclusively from the positive side, since he designed and built railway armored tires and was very successful in this, since they were adopted and subsequently fought. That is, he would have stopped at this. Get a good engineering education … But, as they say, I got involved in what I did not understand very well and the sad results were not long in coming! The seething energy and an attempt to embrace the immensity played a very cruel joke with this, in his own way, undoubtedly talented person, and eventually became the cause of a tragic death. Apparently, he had enough technical knowledge for armored tires, but no longer for tanks. It was not without reason that it was said very correctly that every person strives in his development to reach the threshold of his incompetence. Here Dyrenkov achieved it!
Rice. A. Shepsa
