By the beginning of 1943, the Red Army did not wait for the required number of basic radio weapons systems: RAF and RSB. In 1942, only 451 were produced by the RAF stations (radio stations for automobile front-line), a year later they were assembled even less - 388, and only by 1944 the annual release amounted to 485 copies. And RSB (radio stations of a bomber aircraft) in various modifications in general were produced less and less every year - from 2,681 copies in 1942 to 2,332 in 1944. There was also a lack of full-fledged production facilities for the large-scale production of direct-printing equipment for the RAF of the "Carbide" type.
One of the latest modifications of the RAF radio station of the war period
The models of radio stations developed before the war for communication of the Headquarters with the fronts and armies, as well as the headquarters of the fronts and armies with corps and divisions, remained in service throughout the war. However, due to the impossibility of providing the signal troops with ZIS-5 vehicles, in which the RAF radio station was installed, it became necessary to refine it for placement in the GAZ-AAA. So there were options for these radio stations under the indexes RAF-KV-1 and RAF-KV-2. By May 1943, the RAF-KV-3 radio station was developed and put into mass production, in which the RSB station transmitter was used as the station master oscillator. It was, apart from the small-scale modification with "Carbide", the final version of the station of the war period.
RBS radio station
What about the portable radios? By the beginning of the war, the domestic industry produced two types of portable radio stations: RB (regimental network) and RBS (battalion network). Radio stations of the Republic of Bashkortostan were mainly produced by the plant number 203 in Moscow. The annual production of these radio stations was about 8000-9000 sets. RBS radio stations were produced by plant No. 512 (Moscow region) in the amount of 10,000-12,000 sets per year.
The approach of the enemy to Moscow forced these factories to be evacuated in October 1941, and the release of RB radio stations was resumed only at the end of the first quarter of 1942. At the same time, after the evacuation of plant No. 203, the release of RB radio stations was not resumed. The production of these stations was transferred to the plant No. 3 of the NKS, located earlier in the city of Aleksandrov (Moscow region) and then evacuated to Kazakhstan, which had just begun mastering the production of radio stations in Belarus before the war. With the total demand of the troops for radio stations of the Republic of Belarus, which in 1942 amounted to 48700 sets, the industry could supply only 4479 sets during this time, i.e. less than 10% of the need!
Insufficient production of radio stations of the regimental network of the RB type prompted the manufacture of other radio stations, close in their tactical and technical data to this technique. In Leningrad, the production of surrogate portable radio stations of the RL-6 and RL-7 type was mastered. At the plant No. 326 in Gorky, which previously produced radio measuring equipment, the production of portable radio stations 12RP was also established, and in 1943 the same radio stations began to be produced by the plant No. 729 in the city of Aleksandrov. Beginning in the second quarter of 1942, the plant No. 2 of the NKO, created in Moscow, began to produce the 13P radio station, also intended for communication at the regimental level. It is noteworthy that such radio stations were assembled mainly from parts of household broadcasters, which were confiscated from the population. Naturally, this technique was of inferior quality and was not reliable. But the fronts did not have much to choose from, so the 13P type stations found their application as a means of communication for the tactical control link.
Radio station RB
An obvious breakthrough was the organization in the second quarter of 1942 of the production of a new RBM radio station, which surpassed in its parameters the equipment of the RB type. The production of such equipment was started by plant No. 590 in Novosibirsk, which by the end of 1943 had mastered a new product - a divisional radio station RBM-5. For the needs of rifle and artillery regiments, at the beginning of 1943, a radio station A-7 (ultra-shortwave) was developed, the release of which was organized at the plant No. 2 of the NKO. A few months later, the Leningrad plant No. 616 and the Novosibirsk plant No. 564 began to release the novelty. The last modification of the era of the Great Patriotic War was the A-7B model, which was adopted in 1944. The communication range of such a device was increased relative to the prototype by 1.5 times.
If we turn to the history of the radio station of the battalion network (RBS), then, although the situation with its release was more successful, its characteristics did not meet the requirements imposed on it and therefore did not play a serious role in ensuring command and control of troops. A significant number of radio stations released during the war years (about 66%) were manufactured using surrogate materials. Therefore, the quality of products, especially those manufactured at the beginning of the war, was low, the percentage of rejects for certain types of radio stations reached: radio stations of the Republic of Belarus - up to 36%, and for radio stations 12РП (plant No. 326) - about 50%. Over time, these indicators have improved slightly.
RBS radio station
By the end of 1941, all telephone, telegraph and cable factories were relocated to the east of the country, so the supply of telegraph and almost all telephone equipment to the troops for a certain period ceased. The resumption of production in new areas was very difficult. Some of the enterprises were unable to start producing products immediately after arriving at the site, while others, although they had established production, but the output was insufficient. It was especially bad with the supply for the army of field cables, telephones and switches, as well as Bodo's telegraphs. For example, at the beginning of 1942, the industry was able to provide only 15–20% of the needs of the troops for telephone sets, field switches of medium capacity at that time were not produced at all, the production of telegraphic retransmissions, ShK-20 stations, Bodo automatic devices was completely discontinued. lamellar switches, as well as spare parts for telegraphs.
One of the most problematic issues of supplying the belligerent Red Army was field telephones and cables to them. The first had to be taken out by plane from besieged Leningrad, where they were produced, and the cable production had to be organized in Moscow in absolutely artisanal conditions.
Radio station 13P, assembled from "civilian" components
In connection with all of the above, the political and military leadership of the USSR was forced to take a number of urgent measures, namely:
- by a special decree, the industry that produced communications equipment was equated with the factories of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry in terms of material, technical and work supplies. It was forbidden to mobilize engineers, workers and vehicles from enterprises that produced communications equipment. The People's Commissariat of Railways undertook to ensure the transportation of these products and materials on a par with the transportation of cargoes from the aviation and tank industries. The production of other products was prohibited at the factories of communications, and the supply of the factories with the necessary materials was improved;
- by the decision of the State Defense Committee (decree No. 1117 of 21 January 1942), the telephone and telegraph plant No. 1 of the NCO was established. The plant quickly set up production and already in 1942 produced 130 thousand telephones, 210 switchboards and 20 sets of Baudot devices, i.e. almost as much as all the factories of other people's commissariats put together then produced.
1942 was the most tense year, but at the same time it was a turning point in establishing production and supplying the front with the necessary amount of wire communication equipment. In 1943, it became possible to begin the modernization of the main samples of telephone and telegraph equipment, and in 1944 the serial production of a new basic model of the TAI-43 telephone set, developed by the NKO plant No. 1 and the Central Scientific and Testing Institute of Communications of the Red Army (TsNIIS KA) began. … Almost simultaneously with the development of TAI-43, telephone switches K-10, PK-10 and PK-30 were developed and put into production, and the supply of switches FIN-6, KOF, R-20, R-60 was discontinued. The main advantage and distinctive feature of the developed telegraph and telephone equipment was the ability to use it in the field with a relatively short time required for deployment.
As for the field cable, its production was never established throughout the war.
With the field cable, the situation was close to critical - its full-fledged production was never established until the end of the war. The amount of cable produced was well below pre-war levels. In connection with the evacuation of the cable industry, the production of such samples as PTG-19 and PTF-7X2, which were the most labor-intensive in production, was discontinued. These samples were replaced by cables of a simplified design (LPTK, OPTV, OPTVM, LTFK, PTF-3, PTG-6, PTG-7, ORTF), developed in the early years of the war. All of these cable samples had much lower electrical and mechanical characteristics than the pre-war ones, which did not meet the requirements for operation in combat conditions. Therefore, the entire cable developed during the war years, with the exception of the PTG-7, was discontinued at various times.
Along with the steady quantitative growth of products that meet the ever-growing needs of the front for communications, our industry, in the most difficult conditions of large-scale armed struggle, succeeded in:
- to carry out the unification of radio and wire communication facilities practically in all levels of the Red Army's command and control. By the end of the war, only radio stations of the last third generation of radio equipment with improved characteristics remained in the signal troops: PAT, RAF, RSB and RBM; many obsolete telegraph communication systems were removed from service and almost only two devices remained in order: Bodo (for communication between the General Staff and the Front-Army), ST-35 (for communication between the General Staff and Front-Army-Division); about a dozen samples of domestic and foreign samples of phonic and inductor telephones were removed from service and the transition to a single inductor - TAI-43 was carried out;
- to adapt the pre-war semi-stationary models to the field conditions of operation, and with the creation of mobile communication equipment, a new stage was laid in the development of the organizational and technical structure and tactics of the combat use of field communication centers.
An in-depth analysis of the production of military communications equipment showed that the mistakes made by the leadership of the USSR in planning production and mobilization during the war require serious reflection and consideration when solving modern tasks to further improve military communications and the command and control system of the Russian army.
