The head of the communications department of the USSR Armed Forces, Major General Nikolai Ivanovich Gapich, seven months before the start of the war, prepared a report "On the state of the communications service of the Red Army", which lay on the table of the People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko. It, in particular, said:
“Despite the annual growth in the number of communications equipment supplied to the troops, the percentage of provision of communications equipment not only does not increase, but, on the contrary, decreases due to the fact that the growth in production is not proportional to the increase in the size of the army. The large shortage of communications equipment for the deployment of new military units does not allow the creation of the necessary mobilization reserves for the first period of the war. There are no carryover reserves either in the center or in the districts. All property received from industry, immediately, "from the wheels" is sent to the troops. If the supply of communications by the industry remains at the same level and there will be no loss in communications property, then it will take more than 5 years for a number of nomenclatures to meet the full needs of NPOs without creating mobilization reserves.”
It should be noted separately that Nikolai Ivanovich was removed from the post of head of the Red Army Communications Department on June 22, 1941, and on August 6, he was arrested. Miraculously not shot, sentenced to 10 years and rehabilitated in 1953.
Head of the Communications Department of the Red Army, Major General Nikolai Ivanovich Gapich
It was the rapid growth rates of the USSR army (from the autumn of 1939 to June 1941, it increased 2, 8 times) that caused an acute shortage of communications in combat units. In addition, the People's Commissariat of the Electrical Industry (NKEP) was not part of the defense commissariats, which means it was not included in the list of those supplied in the first place. Plants that supply the army with communications equipment were built back in tsarist times - among them such as Erickson, Siemens-Galke and Geisler. The work on their modernization was of a purely cosmetic nature and did not at all correspond to the needs of the huge Red Army.
Leningrad plant "Krasnaya Zarya" (former Tsarist "Erickson")
The most important suppliers of army communications in the pre-war period were a group of factories from Leningrad: No. 208 (radio stations of the PAT); Krasnaya Zarya (telephones and long-distance communication devices); Telegraph Plant No. 209 (Bodo and ST-35 devices); No. 211 (radio tubes) and the Sevkabel plant (field telephone and telegraph cable). There was also a production "cluster" in Moscow: plant No. 203 (portable station RB and tank 71TK), Lyubertsy No. 512 (battalion RBS), and also worked for the needs of the army. In Gorky, at the oldest plant in the country, plant No. 197, they manufactured radio stations 5AK and 11AK, automobile and stationary RAF and RSB, as well as tank radio communication stations. Kharkov plant No. 193 was engaged in radio receivers and various radio reconnaissance equipment. Morse and ST-35 telegraphs were assembled at the Kaluga Electromechanical Plant No. 1, and anode batteries and accumulators were made in Saratov, Irkutsk and Cheremkhov. In fact, in the decade preceding the war, only four enterprises were commissioned in the USSR, partially or fully engaged in the production of radio equipment for the army. These were the Electrosignal plant in Voronezh, engaged in the production of broadcast radio receivers, small radio plants No. 2 (Moscow) and No. 3 (Aleksandrov), as well as an electromechanical plant in the Losinoostrovsky district of Moscow.
In fairness, it should be noted that Major General Gapich in his report not only states the deplorable state of the radio industry, but also proposes a number of urgent measures:
To speed up the construction and start-up of factories: telephone equipment in the city of Molotov - Ural; tank radio stations in Ryazan (Resolution of the KO3 at the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated 7. V.39, No. 104 with a readiness period of 1 quarter. 1941); special radio installations of the air defense of Ryazan (Resolution of the KO under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of 2. IV.1939, No. 79); standard radio components in Ryazan (Resolution of the KO under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 104 dated May 7, 39, with a readiness date of 1.1.1941);
- to oblige: NKEP in 1941 to produce telephone equipment at the Krasnodar plant "ZIP" (plant of measuring instruments); NK Chermet of the USSR to increase in 1941 at least twice the production of tin-plated steel wire for the production of field cables and to master the production of thin steel wire with a diameter of 0.15-0.2 mm; NKEP of the USSR to organize a workshop for manual dynamo drives at plant No. 266 in order to increase the production of these machines in 1941 to 10,000 - 15,000 units;
- to permit immediately the use for the production of field telephone equipment the plant in Tartu (Estonia), which until now produced telephone equipment for the Baltic armies; and the VEF plant (Riga), which possesses highly valuable equipment and qualified personnel;
- for the needs of operational communications, oblige the NKEP of the USSR to master and supply for NCOs as an experimental batch in 1941, 500 km of a 4-core pupinized cable with devices for unwinding and winding a cable according to a sample purchased in Germany and used in the German army;
- transfer the following enterprises to the NKEP of the USSR for the production of field radio stations: Minsk Radio Plant NKMP4 BSSR, plant "XX years of October" NKMP RSFSR; Odessa Radio Plant of the NKMP of the Ukrainian SSR; Krasnogvardeisky gramophone factory - VSPK; buildings of the Rosinstrument plant (Pavlovsky Posad) of the NKMP of the RSFSR with the equipment of their NKEP by the 2nd quarter of 1941; the building of the former Vilensky radio plant in Vilnius, using it for the production of radio equipment from the 3rd quarter of 1941;
- to release the factories of the NKEP of the USSR "Electrosignal" in Voronezh and No. 3 in Aleksandrov from the production of a part of consumer goods, loading the factories with a military order.
Gorky plant number 197 named after IN AND. Lenin
Naturally, it was not possible to fully implement the entire proposed program a few months before the war, but the real disaster happened with the outbreak of the war. In the very first months, a considerable part of the fleet of military communications equipment was irretrievably lost, and the mobilization readiness of enterprises, as they were then called, "low-current industry" was insufficient. The unfortunate geostrategic position of the radio industry before the war had an extremely negative impact - the bulk of the factories had to be evacuated in a hurry. In the first period of hostilities, the Gorky Plant No. 197 was the only one in the country that continued to produce front-line and army radio stations, but its capacity, naturally, was not enough. The plant could produce only 2-3 copies of the RAF per month, 26 - RSB-1, 8 - 11AK-7 and 41 - 5AK. The production of telegraph devices such as Bodo and ST-35 had to be temporarily stopped altogether. What kind of satisfaction of the needs of the front could we talk about here?
RAF at the beginning of the war was produced only at the Gorky plant number 197
How did the military communications industry cope with its tasks during the war?
The movement of the Leningrad group of factories began in July – August, the Moscow group - in October – November 1941. Of the 19 enterprises, 14 (75%) were evacuated. At the same time, the factories were evacuated that ensured the production of the main part of radio equipment and components for them (radio stations PAT, RB, RSB, radio tubes and power supplies).
RAT is one of the most "scarce" radio stations of the Great Patriotic War
The problem with the PAT radio stations was especially acute. In 1941 and 1942, the front headquarters had only one radio station, which did not guarantee the maintenance of uninterrupted radio communication with the Headquarters. The role of these radio stations in ensuring communications between the Stavka and the fronts and armies increased with the beginning of equipping troops with special "high-speed" equipment (that is, the Almaz-type radio direct-printing equipment).
The evacuation of most of the factories was not planned in advance and therefore was carried out in a disorganized manner. In the new points of deployment, the evacuated factories had neither adapted production areas, nor the minimum required amount of electricity.
Many factories were located in several rooms in different parts of the city (in Petropavlovsk - at 43, in the town of Kasli - at 19, etc.). This, of course, affected the pace of restoration of production in new places and, consequently, on meeting the needs of the army in radio equipment. The government was forced to consider several times the question of the timing of the launch of the evacuated radio factories. However, despite the measures taken, none of the timeframes set by the government for the restoration and start-up of radio factories at new locations could be met.
The country's radio industry was able to be “revived” only by the beginning of 1943, and after that (with the support of a Moscow group of factories), there was already a tendency towards a steady increase in the supply of radio communications equipment to the troops.
The end follows …
