In the USSR, despite numerous design work in the pre-war and wartime, anti-aircraft guns with a caliber of more than 85 mm were not created. The increase in the speed and altitude of the bombers created in the west required urgent action in this direction.
As a temporary measure, it was decided to use several hundred captured German anti-aircraft guns of 105-128 mm caliber. At the same time, work was accelerated on the creation of 100-130-mm anti-aircraft guns.
In March 1948, a 100-mm anti-aircraft gun of the 1947 model (KS-19) was adopted. She provided the fight against air targets that had a speed of up to 1200 km / h and an altitude of up to 15 km. All elements of the complex in the combat position are interconnected by an electrical conductive connection. Guidance of the gun to the anticipatory point is carried out by the GSP-100 hydraulic power drive from PUAZO, but there is the possibility of manual guidance.
Anti-aircraft 100-mm gun KS-19
In the KS-19 cannon, the following are mechanized: installing the fuse, discharging the cartridge, closing the bolt, firing a shot, opening the bolt and extracting the sleeve. Rate of fire 14-16 rounds per minute.
In 1950, in order to improve the combat and operational properties, the gun and hydraulic power drive were modernized.
System GSP-100M, designed for automatic remote guidance in azimuth and elevation of eight or less KS-19M2 guns and automatic input of values for setting the fuse according to PUAZO data.
The GSP-100M system provides the possibility of manual guidance along all three channels using an indicator synchronous transmission and includes the GSP-100M gun sets (according to the number of guns), a central distribution box (TsRYa), a set of connecting cables and a battery giving device.
The power supply source for the GSP-100M is the standard power station SPO-30, which generates a three-phase current with a voltage of 23/133 V and a frequency of 50 Hz.
All guns, SPO-30 and PUAZO are located within a radius of no more than 75 m (100 m) from the CRYA.
The KS-19 - SON-4 gun aiming radar is a two-axle towed van, on the roof of which a rotating antenna is installed in the form of a round parabolic reflector with a diameter of 1.8 m with asymmetric rotation of the emitter.
It had three modes of operation:
- all-round visibility for detecting targets and observing the air situation using the all-round visibility indicator;
- manual control of the antenna for detecting targets in the sector before switching to automatic tracking and for rough determination of coordinates;
- automatic tracking of the target in angular coordinates to accurately determine the azimuth and angle together in automatic mode and slant range manually or semi-automatically.
The detection range of a bomber when flying at an altitude of 4000 m is not less than 60 km.
Coordinate determination accuracy: at a distance of 20 m, in azimuth and elevation: 0-0, 16 d.u.
From 1948 to 1955, 10151 KS-19 guns were manufactured, which, before the appearance of the air defense system, were the main means of combating high-altitude targets. But the massive adoption of anti-aircraft guided missiles did not immediately supplant the KS-19. In the USSR, anti-aircraft batteries armed with these weapons were available at least until the end of the 70s.
Abandoned COP-19 in Panjer province, Afghanistan, 2007
KS-19 were supplied to countries friendly to the USSR and participated in the Middle East and Vietnam conflicts. Some of the 85-100-mm guns being removed from service were transferred to avalanche services and were used as hailstones.
In 1954, mass production of the 130-mm KS-30 anti-aircraft gun began.
The gun had a reach of 20 km in height and 27 km in range. Rate of fire - 12 shots / min. The loading is separate-sleeve, the weight of the loaded sleeve (with charge) is 27, 9 kg, the weight of the projectile is 33, 4 kg. Weight in firing position - 23,500 kg. Mass in the stowed position - 29,000 kg. Calculation - 10 people.
130-mm anti-aircraft gun KS-30
To facilitate the work of the calculation on this anti-aircraft gun, a number of processes were mechanized: installing a fuse, bringing a tray with shot elements (a projectile and a loaded sleeve) to the loading line, sending shot elements, closing the shutter, firing a shot and opening the shutter with the extraction of the spent cartridge case. The gun is guided by hydraulic servo drives, synchronously controlled by PUAZO. In addition, semi-automatic guidance can be carried out on indicator devices by manual control of hydraulic drives.
130-mm anti-aircraft gun KS-30 in the stowed position, next to 85-mm anti-aircraft gun mod. 1939 g.
The production of the KS-30 was completed in 1957, a total of 738 guns were produced.
The KS-30 anti-aircraft guns were very bulky and limited in mobility.
They covered important administrative and economic centers. Often, the guns were placed in stationary concreted positions. Before the appearance of the S-25 "Berkut" air defense system, about a third of the total number of these guns was deployed around Moscow.
On the basis of the 130-mm KS-30 in 1955, the 152-mm anti-aircraft gun KM-52 was created, which became the most powerful domestic anti-aircraft artillery system.
152-mm anti-aircraft gun KM-52
To reduce recoil, the KM-52 was equipped with a muzzle brake, the efficiency of which was 35 percent. The shutter is of horizontal wedge design, the shutter is operated from the rolling energy. The anti-aircraft gun was equipped with a hydropneumatic recoil brake and a knurler. The wheel drive with a gun carriage is a modified version of the KS-30 anti-aircraft gun.
The mass of the gun is 33.5 tons. Reach in height - 30 km, in range - 33 km.
Calculation-12 people.
Single-sleeve loading. The power and supply of each of the elements of the shot was carried out independently by mechanisms located on both sides of the barrel - on the left for the shells and on the right for the casings. All drives of the feed and feed mechanisms were powered by electric motors. The store was a horizontally located conveyor with an endless chain. The projectile and the cartridge case were located in the stores perpendicular to the firing plane. After the automatic fuse installer was triggered, the feed tray of the projectile feed mechanism moved the next projectile to the chambering line, and the feed tray of the shell feed mechanism moved the next sleeve to the chambering line behind the projectile. The layout of the shot took place on the ramming line. The ramming of the collected shot was carried out by a hydropneumatic rammer, cocked when rolling. The shutter was closed automatically. Rate of fire 16-17 rounds per minute.
The gun passed the test successfully, but was not launched into a large series. In 1957, a batch of 16 KM-52 guns was manufactured. Of these, two batteries were formed, stationed in the Baku region.
During the Second World War, there was a "difficult" altitude for anti-aircraft guns from 1500 m to 3000. Here the aircraft turned out to be inaccessible for light anti-aircraft guns, and for the guns of heavy anti-aircraft artillery this height was too low. In order to solve the problem, it seemed natural to create anti-aircraft guns of some intermediate caliber.
The 57-mm S-60 anti-aircraft gun was developed at TsAKB under the leadership of V. G. Grabin. Serial production of the gun was started in 1950.
57-mm anti-aircraft gun S-60 in the Israeli museum at the Hatzerim airbase
The S-60 automatics worked at the expense of recoil energy with a short recoil of the barrel.
The cannon is fed by a store, there are 4 rounds in the store.
Rollback brake hydraulic, spindle type. The balancing mechanism is spring, swinging, pulling type.
On the machine platform there is a table for a magazine with chambers and three seats for calculation. When shooting with a sight, there are five crew members on the platform, and when PUAZO is working, there are two or three people.
The movement of the cart is inseparable. The suspension is torsion bar. Wheels from a ZIS-5 truck with spongy filling of tires.
The mass of the gun in the firing position is 4800 kg, the rate of fire is 70 rds / min. The initial velocity of the projectile is 1000 m / s. Projectile weight - 2, 8 kg. Reachability in range - 6000 m, in height - 4000 m. The maximum speed of an air target is 300 m / s. Calculation - 6-8 people.
The ESP-57 battery set of tracking drives was intended for azimuth and elevation guidance of a battery of 57-mm S-60 cannons, consisting of eight or less guns. When firing, PUAZO-6-60 and the SON-9 gun aiming radar were used, and later the RPK-1 Vaza radar instrument complex. All guns were located at a distance of no more than 50 m from the central control box.
The ESP-57 drives could carry out the following types of gun guidance:
-automatic remote aiming of battery guns according to PUAZO data (the main type of aiming);
-semi-automatic aiming of each gun according to the data of the automatic anti-aircraft sight;
- manual aiming of battery guns according to PUAZO data using zero indicators of accurate and rough readings (indicator type of aiming).
The S-60 was baptized by fire during the Korean War in 1950-1953. But the first pancake was lumpy - the massive failure of the guns immediately emerged. Some installation defects were noted: breakage of the extractor legs, clogging of the food store, failures of the balancing mechanism.
In the future, non-positioning of the shutter on the automatic sear, skewing or jamming of the cartridge in the magazine during feeding, the transition of the cartridge beyond the ramming line, the simultaneous supply of two cartridges from the magazine to the ramming line, jamming of the clip, extremely short or long rollbacks of the barrel, etc. were noted.
The design flaws of the S-60 were corrected, and the cannon successfully shot down American aircraft.
S-60 at the Vladivostok Fortress Museum
Later, the 57-mm S-60 anti-aircraft gun was exported to many countries of the world and was repeatedly used in military conflicts. Cannons of this type were widely used in the air defense system of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, showing high efficiency when firing at targets at medium altitudes, as well as by Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Iraq) in the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the Iran-Iraq war. Morally obsolete by the end of the 20th century, the S-60, in the case of massive use, is still capable of destroying modern fighter-bomber aircraft, as was demonstrated during the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi crews managed to shoot down several American and British aircraft.
According to the statement of the Serbian military, they shot down several Tomahawk missiles with these guns.
The S-60 anti-aircraft guns were also produced in China under the name Type 59.
Currently, in Russia, anti-aircraft guns of this type are mothballed at storage bases. The last military unit armed with the S-60 was the 990th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment of the 201st Motorized Rifle Division during the Afghan war.
In 1957, on the basis of the T-54 tank with the use of S-60 assault rifles, mass production of the ZSU-57-2 was started. Two cannons were installed in a large turret open from above, and the parts of the right machine gun were a mirror image of the parts of the left machine gun.
ZSU-57-2
Vertical and horizontal guidance of the S-68 cannon was carried out using an electrohydraulic drive. The guidance drive was powered by a DC electric motor and operated with universal hydraulic speed controllers.
The ammunition load of the ZSU consisted of 300 cannon shots, of which 248 shots were loaded into clips and placed in the turret (176 shots) and in the bow of the hull (72 shots). The rest of the shots in the clips were not loaded and fit into special compartments under the rotating floor. The clips were fed by the loader manually.
In the period from 1957 to 1960, about 800 ZSU-57-2 were produced.
ZSU-57-2 were sent to the armament of anti-aircraft artillery batteries of tank regiments of two-platoon composition, 2 units per platoon.
The combat effectiveness of the ZSU-57-2 depended on the qualifications of the crew, the training of the platoon commander, and was due to the absence of a radar in the guidance system. Effective lethal fire could only be fired from a halt; shooting "on the move" at air targets was not provided.
ZSU-57-2 were used in the Vietnam War, in the conflicts between Israel and Syria and Egypt in 1967 and 1973, as well as in the Iran-Iraq War.
Bosnian ZSU-57-2 with an artisanal armored jacket on top, which implies its use as an ACS
Very often during local conflicts, the ZSU-57-2 was used to provide fire support to ground units.
In 1960, the 23-mm ZU-23-2 installation was adopted to replace the 25-mm anti-aircraft guns with clip-on loading. It used the shells previously used in the Volkov-Yartsev (VYa) aviation cannon. An armor-piercing incendiary projectile weighing 200 grams, at a distance of 400 m along the normal penetrates 25-mm armor.
ZU-23-2 in the Artillery Museum, St. Petersburg
The ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun consists of the following main parts: two 23-mm 2A14 assault rifles, their machine, a platform with a move, lifting, rotating and balancing mechanisms and an automatic anti-aircraft sight ZAP-23.
The feeding of the machines is tape. Metal strips, each of them is equipped with 50 rounds and packed in a quickly replaceable cartridge box.
The device of the machines is practically the same, only the details of the feed mechanism differ. The right machine has the right power supply, the left one has the left power supply. Both machines are fixed in one cradle, which, in turn, is located on the upper carriage of the carriage. On the base of the upper carriage of the carriage there are two seats, as well as the handle of the swing mechanism. In the vertical and horizontal planes, the guns are aimed manually. The rotary handle (with brake) of the lifting mechanism is located on the right side of the gunner's seat.
The ZU-23-2 uses very successful and compact manual vertical and horizontal guidance drives with a spring-type balancing mechanism. The brilliantly engineered units allow barrels to be flipped to the opposite side in just 3 seconds. The ZU-23-2 is equipped with an automatic anti-aircraft sight ZAP-23, as well as an optical sight T-3 (with 3.5x magnification and a field of view of 4.5 °), designed for firing at ground targets.
The unit has two triggers: foot (with a pedal opposite the gunner's seat) and manual (with a lever on the right side of the gunner’s seat). Fire from machine guns is conducted simultaneously from both barrels. On the left side of the trigger pedal is the brake pedal of the rotating unit of the installation.
Rate of fire - 2000 rounds per minute. Installation weight - 950 kg. Firing range: 1.5 km in height, 2.5 km in range.
A two-wheeled chassis with springs is mounted on track rollers. In the combat position, the wheels rise and deviate to the side, and the gun is installed on the ground on three base plates. A trained calculation is able to transfer the charger from the traveling position to the combat position in just 15-20 s, and back in 35-40 s. If necessary, the ZU-23-2 can fire from the wheels and even on the move - right when transporting the charger behind the car, which is extremely important for a fleeting combat collision.
The installation has excellent portability. The ZU-23-2 can be towed behind any army vehicle, since its mass in the stowed position together with covers and loaded ammunition boxes is less than 1 ton. The maximum speed is allowed up to 70 km / h, and off-road - up to 20 km / h.
There is no standard anti-aircraft fire control device (PUAZO) that produces data for firing at air targets (lead, azimuth, etc.). This limits the ability to conduct anti-aircraft fire, but makes the weapon as cheap and affordable as possible for soldiers with a low level of training.
The effectiveness of firing at air targets has been increased in the ZU-23M1 - ZU-23 modification with the Strelets set, which provides the use of two domestic Igla-type MANPADS.
The ZU-23-2 installation received rich combat experience, it was used in many conflicts, both for air and ground targets.
During the Afghan war, the ZU-23-2 was widely used by Soviet troops as a means of fire cover when escorting convoys, in the version of installation on trucks: GAZ-66, ZIL-131, Ural-4320 or KamAZ. The mobility of an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a truck, coupled with the ability to fire at high elevation angles, has proven to be an effective means of repelling attacks on convoys in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan.
In addition to trucks, the 23-mm unit was installed on a variety of chassis, both tracked and wheeled.
This practice was developed during the "Counter-Terrorist Operation", ZU-23-2 were actively used to engage ground targets. The ability to conduct intense fire was very useful in the conduct of hostilities in the city.
The airborne troops use the ZU-23-2 in the version of the "Grinding" artillery system based on the tracked BTR-D.
The production of this anti-aircraft gun was carried out by the USSR, and then by a number of countries, including Egypt, China, Czech Republic / Slovakia, Bulgaria and Finland. The production of 23 mm ZU-23 ammunition at various times was carried out by Egypt, Iran, Israel, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and South Africa.
In our country, the development of anti-aircraft artillery followed the path of creating self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery systems with radar detection and guidance systems ("Shilka") and anti-aircraft gun-missile systems ("Tunguska" and "Pantsir").
