Stalin and Beria stood at the origins of the creation of the Russian air defense. In the West and among Russian Westerners-liberals, they are usually called “bloody murderers and executioners,” but in fact it was these people who saved Russia in the second half of the 1940s - 1950s from destruction. The West was preparing to attack our Motherland again, bombing dozens of its industrial and cultural centers, and destroying Moscow. Subject Russia to atomic bombing, like Japan, but not with two charges, but with dozens of nuclear bombs.
Atomic bomb threat
The willpower and determination of our leaders, the genius of our designers and inventors, the might of our armed forces stopped the terrible enemy. In 1947, the Soviet Union began building a fleet of jet fighters. They performed well in the Korean War. They shot down the American "flying fortresses", frightened the enemy. However, this victory, like the capture of Berlin in 1945, remained in the past. The United States has created new strategic bombers, more powerful, faster, high-altitude. The fighters could no longer cover the entire country, there were only defense centers. Westerners groped for gaps in the Soviet lines, violated our airspace. Again, a mortal danger loomed over the USSR-Russia.
The Soviet Union, which barely made an industrial breakthrough - from plow to atomic bomb, won a terrible war and recovered from it, did not have the means for a symmetrical response. Moscow, unlike the wealthy United States, which plundered much of the world, did not have the funds for an equally magnificent strategic air fleet. What was needed was an effective and relatively cheap response to the US aircraft carriers, air force and nuclear arsenal.
The Kremlin has relied on ballistic missiles and air defense systems. Sergei Korolev and Mikhail Yangel created missiles that were to be targeted by the United States. Rockets were cheaper than air fortresses and more effective and irresistible. But it took time to build and deploy ICBMs. Vying with the rocket scientists, Vladimir Myasishchev worked. He created "Buran" - a supersonic high-altitude aircraft with triangular wings and a ramjet engine, which took off and accelerated with the help of two rocket boosters. "Buran" was supposed to break through to America on the border of the atmosphere and space. At the same time, it was invulnerable to anti-aircraft artillery and fighters. But this path was also long. The Tupolev Design Bureau developed the Tu-95 four-engine turboprop strategic bomber. He could bomb the USA. However, this business was also long-term.
How Moscow's "shield" was created
It was necessary to develop not only a "sword", but a "shield", to protect Russian cities from enemy nuclear air strikes. The Kremlin knew about the West's plans for nuclear bombing of Russian cities. It was necessary to speed up work on the creation of anti-aircraft missile weapons and air defense systems. In 1947, the Special Bureau No. 1 (SB-1) was created near the Sokol metro station. It was headed by Sergei Lavrentievich Beria (son of the famous associate of Stalin) and a specialist in radio electronics Pavel Nikolaevich Kuksenko. Beria himself supervised the project. During this period, he worked on almost all the leading breakthrough projects of the USSR, which turned Russia into the world's leading nuclear, rocket and space power.
SB-1 will become a kind of root base for the flourishing of the “tree” of our missile industry. It will grow "trunks and branches": sea and land-based cruise missiles, surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles, missile defense, radar and combat cybernetics. Stalin set before SB-1 the task of creating a completely new air defense system, which would be capable of not allowing a single aircraft to pass to the defended object even with a massive raid. A promising air defense system was to be built on the basis of a combination of radar and guided surface-to-air missiles. In terms of the scientific and technical part of the new defense industry, where rocket technology, and radar, and automation, and instrument making, and electronics, etc., were combined, the complexity and scale of this project was not inferior to the nuclear one.
The time was terrible, not inferior to the pre-war years of the Great Patriotic War. In 1949, the NATO bloc was founded. Westerners strenuously created shock groups in Western Europe. Turkey and Greece are being lured into the NATO camp. In 1951, the Americans tried to foment a civil war in Albania, which under Stalin was a staunch ally of Russia. Fighting groups of emigrant agents were trained in camps in Libya, Malta, Cyprus and Corfu, in West Germany. However, Soviet intelligence learned in time about the impending landing, and Moscow warned the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha. The provocateurs were defeated. The United States threw paratroopers-saboteurs into Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. The Americans in many ways became the heirs of the Hitlerite spy network, the anti-Soviet "fifth column". The West used agents who were trained by the Abwehr, the German special services. At the disposal of the United States and Britain were thousands of fascist and Nazi underdogs from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Croatian Ustash and Ukrainian Bandera. They had already forgotten about this, but the war continued after the victorious May 1945. Until 1952, we had to fight in the Baltics with the "forest brothers", who now focused on the United States and England. Almost until the mid-50s in the west of Ukraine they fought against well-organized, conspiratorial, armed and ferocious Bandera, who fought for the "Ukrainian chimera". By origin, language and blood, the Ukrainian Nazis were Russian, and by their behavior and ideology they gravitated towards the Western world.
The Bandera people were ruled by the Central Wire in Munich. To maintain discipline, there were special detachments of "esbekov" - special officers from the Bezpeki (security) Service. The punishments were the most fierce, the villages that supported the Soviet regime were completely massacred. There were records, shelters and secret headquarters in the cities throughout Western Ukraine. The social base of the Nazis were the pupils of the Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary societies, which flourished back in the 1930s under the Polish government. Many Banderites had vast combat experience - they fought before World War II, during the Great Patriotic War and after it. They were masters of conspiracy, underground activities and forest warfare. Previously, they relied on the Third Reich, now they were helped by the Americans. They were supported by both Hitler and the Americans - the Vatican. Bandera by faith were mostly Uniates - a mutation of the Orthodox who recognized the Pope as their head.
There is a myth that guerrillas cannot be defeated. This is misinformation. Under Stalin, the Banderaites in western Ukraine and the "forest brothers" in the Baltics were victorious. There are two main methods. First, undermining the social base. The Soviet government actually made the life of the overwhelming majority of the people better. The cities grew. Industrialization took place. Schools, institutes, academies, hospitals, health resorts, art houses, music and art schools, etc. were built. The country was literally changing before our eyes. And people saw it. Secondly, the Nazi underdogs, who did not want to live in the Soviet country, wanted to prosper due to the destruction of the general system, society, were mercilessly destroyed. Pro-Western Uniatism, which was the ideological basis of "this part of the" fifth column ", was banned. The Uniate clergy was almost completely destroyed. The remnants of the crushed evil spirits will remember the lesson for a long time, go into a deep underground, "repaint". New Bandera will be able to come out into the world only when they begin to destroy Soviet civilization, under Gorbachev.
System "Berkut"
Thus, the time was formidable. Close the airspace of the Stalinist empire from the enemy. Missiles against air defense missiles were classified even from the Ministry of Defense. The Third Main Directorate (TSU) was created under the Soviet government. TSU has created its own military acceptance system and a training ground in Kapustin Yar and even its own troops. Air defense system "Berkut" (future S-25) was supposed to stop a massive invasion of enemy aircraft (hundreds of aircraft); have a circular defense, repelling attacks from any direction; have a great depth to exclude the possibility of a breakthrough; to fight in adverse weather conditions and at any time of the day.
In 1950, on the basis of SB-1, they began to form a closed KB-1, which became the head developer of the system. Deputy Minister of Armament K. M. Gerasimov was appointed head of KB-1 (since April 1951 A. S. Elyan is an outstanding organizer of artillery production in the Great Patriotic War, a participant in the Russian nuclear project), chief designers are S. Beria and P. Kuksenko, Deputy Chief Designer - A. Raspletin. The future "father" of the Russian anti-missile defense G. Kisunko also worked in KB-1.
The system was supposed to consist of two rings of radar detection - near and far. On the basis of "A-100", ten-centimeter range radar engineer L. Leonov. And two more rings - B-200 near and far radars for the guidance of anti-aircraft missiles. Together with the B-200 stations, launchers of anti-aircraft missiles (guided missiles) B-300 developed by the famous aircraft designer S. Lavochkin were installed (more precisely, their developer was Lavochkin's deputy P. Grushin).
B-200 stations were designed as permanent fixed objects with equipment placed in protected casemates, camouflaged with earth and grass. The concrete bunkers had to withstand a direct hit from a thousand-kilogram high-explosive bomb. 56 facilities were built with radar and anti-aircraft missile systems, which were located on two rings connected by ring concrete roads around Moscow. The inner ring was 40-50 km from Moscow, and the outer ring was 85-90 km. In Kratov, near Moscow, a radar range was created, where enemy aircraft learned to detect on our Tu-4 (a copy of the American B-29) and Il-28.
The main opponents of the Soviet air defense system were US strategic bombers, the main carriers of nuclear weapons. It was they who were supposed to break through to Moscow and drop nuclear charges on it. Then atomic bombs were dropped from a great height, and the charges were lowered by parachute. So that the bombers had time to leave, and the explosion took place at a strictly defined altitude. Therefore, Soviet specialists had to learn how to hit not only the "super fortresses", but also the bombs dropped by parachutes. The system was supposed to hit 20 targets at once at altitudes from 3 to 25 km.
In the fall of 1952, the B-200 was launched at the Kapustin Yar training ground for a conditional target. In the spring of 1953, a Tu-4 target aircraft on autopilot and a simulated bomb were first shot down by a guided missile. Now the country has received weapons to defend Moscow. Serial samples of missiles were tested in 1954: 20 targets were intercepted simultaneously. At the beginning of 1953, the construction of the S-25 air defense system began in the Moscow and neighboring regions and was completed before 1958. The Berkut system, the case of Stalin and Beria, became the basis for the country's future air defense systems - the S-75, S-125, S-200, S-300, S-400 air defense systems, which still protect Russia from the air threat from West and East.
It is worth noting that after the departure of Stalin and the murder of Beria, during Khrushchev's "perestroika", the "Berkut" system was almost destroyed. A time of trouble has come in the development of anti-aircraft missile systems. Talented specialists P. Kuksenko and S. Beria were removed from work. The project manager was the talented designer Raspletin. The Berkut system was renamed C-25. They were looking for Beria's henchmen in KB-1. Intrigues began. After all, Beria was declared an enemy spy, which means that the air defense system is sabotage in order to squander people's means and undermine the country's defense capability. The Central Committee of the Communist Party received a denunciation that the S-25 is a dead end. Checks began, empty nagging, exposure of "Stalinism". They say that the system is too complicated, it is better to create not a stationary, but a mobile air defense system. This led to the inhibition of the creation of an air defense system around Moscow. The construction of a similar C-50 rail-based system around Leningrad was frozen.
Thus, through the efforts of Stalin and Beria, a number of talented administrators and designers in the Soviet Union, they created an air defense system. It was a project on a scale and complexity comparable to a nuclear one. Soon, the S-75 systems will reliably cover the country from a possible NATO air attack. Anti-aircraft missile "shield and sword" of the USSR saved humanity from atomic war.
Anti-aircraft missile of the stationary anti-aircraft missile system S-25 of the air defense of Moscow in the museum of the Kapustin Yar training ground, Znamensk. Photo source:
