As you know, the requirements for military and strategic products are more severe than for "civilian" equipment. Since their actual service life often exceeds thirty years - not only in Russia, but also in the armies of most countries.
If we are talking about tank engines, they, naturally, should be reliable, undemanding to the quality of fuel, convenient for maintenance and some types of repairs in extreme conditions, with a resource sufficient by military standards. And at the same time regularly give out basic characteristics. The approach to the design of such engines is special. And the result is usually decent. But what happened to the V-2 diesel is a phenomenal case.
Painful birth
His life began at the Kharkov steam locomotive plant named after V. I. Comintern, whose design department in 1931 received a state order for a high-speed diesel engine for tanks. And it was immediately renamed to the diesel department. The assignment stipulated a power of 300 hp. at 1600 rpm, while the operating crankshaft speed did not exceed 250 rpm for typical diesel engines of that time.
Since the plant had not done anything like this before, they began development from afar, with a discussion of the scheme - in-line, V-shaped or star-shaped. We settled on a V12 configuration with water cooling, starting from an electric starter and Bosch fuel equipment - with a further transition to a completely domestic one, which also had to be created from scratch.
First, they built a single-cylinder engine, then a two-cylinder section - and it took a long time to debug it, having achieved 70 hp. at 1700 rpm and a specific gravity of 2 kg / h.p. The record low specific gravity was also specified in the assignment. In 1933, a workable, but unfinished V12 passed bench tests, where it constantly broke down, smoked terribly and vibrated strongly.
Test tank BT-5, equipped with such an engine, could not reach the landfill for a long time. Either the crankcase cracked, then the crankshaft bearings collapsed, then something else, and to solve many problems it was necessary to create new technologies and new materials - first of all, grades of steel and aluminum alloys. And buy new equipment abroad
Nevertheless, in 1935, tanks with such diesel engines were presented to the government commission, additional workshops for the production of engines were erected at the KhPZ - the "diesel department" was transformed into a pilot plant. In the process of fine-tuning the engine, its secondary purpose was taken into account - the possibility of using it on airplanes. Already in 1936, the R-5 aircraft with the BD-2A diesel engine (the second high-speed aviation diesel engine) took off, but this engine was never in demand in aviation - in particular, due to the appearance of more suitable units created by specialized institutes in these same years.
In the main, tank direction, the matter advanced slowly and heavily. Diesel still ate too much oil and fuel. Some parts broke down regularly, and too smoky exhaust unmasked the car, which the customers did not particularly like. The development team was reinforced with military engineers.
In 1937, the engine was named B-2, under which it entered world history. And the team was reinforced once again with the leading engineers of the Central Institute of Aviation Motors. Some of the technical problems were entrusted to the Ukrainian Institute of Aircraft Engine Building (later it was attached to the plant), which came to the conclusion that it was necessary to improve the accuracy of manufacturing and processing of parts. Its own 12-plunger fuel pump also required tweaking.
On state tests in 1938, all three V-2 engines of the second generation failed. The first had a jammed piston, the second had cracked cylinders, and the third had a crankcase. As a result of the tests, almost all technological operations were changed, the fuel and oil pumps were changed. This was followed by new tests and new changes. All this went in parallel with the identification of "enemies of the people" and the transformation of the department into a huge State Plant No. 75 producing 10,000 motors a year, for which the machines were imported and installed in hundreds.
In 1939, the engines finally passed government tests, receiving a "good" rating and approval for mass production. Which was also debugged painfully and for a long time, which was, however, interrupted by the hasty evacuation of the plant to Chelyabinsk - the war began. True, even before that, the V-2 diesel engine passed the baptism of fire in real military operations, being installed on heavy KV tanks.
What happened?
The result was a motor, about which they would later write that from the point of view of design it was much ahead of its time. And for a number of characteristics, it surpassed analogs of real and potential opponents for another thirty years. Although it was far from perfect and had many areas for modernization and improvement. Some experts of military equipment believe that the fundamentally new Soviet military diesel engines, created in 1960-1970, were inferior to diesels of the B-2 family and were adopted only for the reason that it became indecent not to replace the “outdated” with something modern.
The cylinder block and crankcase are made of an aluminum-silicon alloy, the pistons are made of duralumin. Four valves per cylinder, overhead camshafts, direct fuel injection. Duplicated starting system - electric starter or compressed air from cylinders. Almost all of the datasheet is a list of advanced and innovative solutions of the time.
It turned out to be ultralight, with an outstanding specific gravity, economical and powerful, and the power was easily varied by local changes in the operating speed of the crankshaft and the compression ratio. Even before the start of the war, there were three versions in constant production - 375-, 500- and 600-horsepower, for vehicles of different weight categories. By attaching a pressurization system to the V-2 from the AM-38 aircraft engine, we received 850 hp. and immediately tested it on an experienced KV-3 heavy tank.
As they say, any more or less suitable mixture of hydrocarbons, starting from household kerosene, could be poured into the tank of a car with an engine of the B-2 family. This was a strong argument in a difficult protracted war - dilapidated communications and the difficult provision of everything necessary.
At the same time, the motor never became reliable, despite the demands of the People's Commissar of the Tank Industry V. A. Malysheva. It often broke down - both at the front and during various tests during the war years, although from the beginning of 1941 the engines of the "fourth series" were already being produced. Both design errors and violations of manufacturing technology were made - in many respects forced, since there was not enough necessary materials, they did not have time to renew worn-out tooling, and the production was debugged in a wild haste. It was noted, in particular, that dirt "from the street" gets into the combustion chambers through various filters and the warranty period of 150 hours in most cases is not maintained. Whereas the required diesel resource for the T-34 tank was 350 hours.
Therefore, modernization and "tightening the nuts" went on continuously. And if in 1943 the usual service life of the engine was 300-400 km, then by the end of the war it exceeded 1200 km. And the total number of breakdowns was reduced from 26 to 9 per 1000 km.
Plant No. 75 could not cope with the needs of the front, and built factories No. 76 in Sverdlovsk and No. 77 in Barnaul, which produced the same B-2 and its various versions. The overwhelming majority of tanks and part of self-propelled guns that participated in the Great Patriotic War were equipped with the products of these three factories. The Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant produced diesel engines in versions for the T-34 medium tank, KV series heavy tanks, T-50 and BT-7M light tanks, and the Voroshilovets artillery tractor. On the basis of the V-2, the V-12 was developed, which was later used in the IS-4 tanks (managed to fight for about a month) and the T-10.
Life in peacetime
The full potential of the B-2 design could not be revealed either before or during the war - there was no time to engage in unlocking the potential. But a set of various small imperfections turned out to be an excellent basis for development, and the concept itself was optimal. After the war, the family was gradually replenished with tank engines V-45, V-46, V-54, V-55, V-58, V-59, V-84, V-85, V-88, V-90, V-92, B-93 and so on. Moreover, the development has not yet been completed, and individual motors of the family are still mass-produced.
Tank T-72 - the main battle tank of the USSR, produced in a circulation of about 30 thousand copies, received a 780-horsepower V-46 engine. The modern Russian main battle tank, the T-90, was originally equipped with a 1000-horsepower B-92 supercharged engine. Many theses of the descriptions of B-2 and B-92 completely coincide: four-stroke, V-shaped, 12-cylinder, multi-fuel, liquid-cooled, direct fuel injection, aluminum alloys in the cylinder block, crankcase, pistons.
For infantry fighting vehicles and other less heavy equipment, an in-line half-motor from the B-2 was created, and the first developments of such a scheme were carried out and tested in 1939. Also among the direct descendants of the V-2 is a new generation of X-shaped tank diesel engines produced by ChTZ (used on BMD-3, BTR-90), where halves in another dimension are used - V6.
He was also useful in the civil service. In the association "Barnaultransmash" (former plant No. 77) from V-2 they created an in-line D6, and later a full-size D12. They were installed on many river boats and tugs, on motor ships of the Moskva and Moskvich series.
The TGK2 shunting diesel locomotive, produced with a total circulation of ten thousand copies, received the 1D6 modification, and the 1D12 was installed on MAZ mining dump trucks. Heavy tractors, locomotives, tractors, various special vehicles - wherever a powerful reliable diesel was required, you will find the closest relatives of the great V-2 engine.
And "144th Armored Repair Plant", which took place as part of the 3rd Ukrainian Front from Stalingrad to Vienna, to this day offers services for the repair and restoration of diesel engines of the B-2 type. Although it has long since become a joint stock company and settled in Sverdlovsk-19. And frankly, it is hard to believe that high overall power, reliability and reliability in operation, good maintainability, convenience and ease of maintenance of modern motors of this family are just an advertising cheerleader. Most likely, the way it really is. For which, thanks to everyone who created and improved this long-lived motor.
