Continuing the theme of modern mortars, we continue to delve into the flower bed. Needless to say, our gunsmiths have subtle humor. All these "Carnations", "Acacia", "Peonies", "Hyacinths", "Lilies of the Valley", "Cornflowers", "Tulips" … To list everything that grows and grew in our "flower bed" is not so much difficult as requiring specific knowledge not only in the field of botany.
To be honest, the authors had the opinion that most of the designers at the institutes played in KVN. At least they have a good sense of humor. Tank T-72B2 - "Slingshot". In memory of a hooligan childhood? Like a hint of broken glass from the neighbors? Or the Metis anti-tank missile. With a sight "Mulatto". Perhaps an echo of the festival of youth and students in Moscow.
Today we decided to consider one "flower", which was grown by our Tula flower growers. And it has no analogues, except for those "seeds" that we sold. Today we will talk about "Vasilka". That same "Vasilke", from which, for example, our airbase in Syria was fired upon, according to the conclusions made by experts after analyzing the situation.
Even during the Great Patriotic War, it became clear that the troops needed an automatic mortar. Moreover, the mortar is of a medium caliber. Large caliber is used to destroy more or less fortified positions. But 82-mm can be used as a weapon of intimidation. Drive the enemy "to the bottom of the trenches" and storm positions.
In principle, ordinary 82-mm mortars also coped with this task. But to create the necessary density of fire, not even platoons were needed, but batteries. And this time. This is a search for a position. A mortar was needed to replace the battery during rapid fire. It was this task that was set to the Soviet designers.
By 1946, such a mortar had been developed. 82-mm casemate automatic mortar (KAM) with a loading mechanism that uses the energy of the recoil of the gun. After carrying out all the tests, in 1955 the KAM was put into service. Moreover, on the basis of KAM, a field version of the mortar - F-82 (project manager V. Filippov) was also created.
However, the mortar was not accepted for service. The reason is trivial. NS. Khrushchev and his craving for missile weapons. The USSR will no longer fight in the field, which means that artillery is not needed. Rockets will solve all the issues. All work on automatic mortars was stopped for a long 8 years …
In 1967, they returned to the idea of automatic mortars. The understanding came that a war with the use of huge armies on both sides in the modern world is unlikely, but the number of small, regional conflicts is only increasing every year.
Naturally, work on an automatic mortar was headed by V. K.
It is also natural that in the development of the new 2K21 "Vasilek" portable mortar complex, technical solutions were used that appeared during the development of the F-82. And not only the F-82, it is worth looking at another development of that time: the mountain cannon:
And compare with a mortar …
Further work on the mortar was headed by the chief designer of "Vasilka" V. G. Gradov. It was under his leadership that the 2K21 complex was put into service in 1970.
It was the transportable complex that was taken, and not specifically the mortar. The complex consisted of: 82-mm mortar 2B9 and car 2F54 (based on the car GAZ-66-05).
Now you need to return to the original task, which we talked about above.
Most readers know "Cornflower" in the modern version of 2B9M. But the first mortars were designed strictly in accordance with the requirements of the 1945-46 army. The maximum number of shots in the minimum time.
That is why Gradov decided to use the experience of designing heavy machine guns.
Rapid-fire mortar. Air cooling will not be enough. Therefore, a fairly efficient system with a water heat exchanger was used to cool the barrel. It was this system that provided a rate of fire of up to 300 rounds per minute!
In the future, when modernizing the mortar, they decided to abandon water cooling. The official version is frequent system breakdowns. The authors lean towards a more prosaic explanation. The same thing happened as happened with automatic small arms.
The high rate of fire was harmful, no matter how strange it sounded.
With a radius of continuous destruction by fragments of one mine of 6 meters (90% hit), extra mines only reduced the effectiveness of the weapon. They were simply not needed.
That is why the mortar barrel was thickened, supplemented with ribs to obtain a larger airflow area. Thus, the mortar was transferred to air cooling. At the same time, the rate of fire was mechanically reduced to 100-120 rounds per minute. Hence the appearance of the letter "M" in the marking "Cornflower".
So, about the mortar itself. The smoothbore gun has a cooled mortar barrel, a wheeled carriage with pneumatic tires and an automatic trigger. Shooting is carried out with standard 82-mm mines in cassettes of 4 pieces.
Guidance of the mortar is carried out manually using the handles of the lifting and turning mechanisms located on the left side of the mortar. The PAM-1 optical sight with the Luch-PM2M illumination device (for firing at night) is used.
Spring-type recoil device. Has three piston rods with springs. One of them is installed on top, the other two - below the bolt box. The shutter and the piston rods of the recoil device attached to it constitute the movable part of the mortar.
When switching to a combat position, the wheels of the mortar are hung out, and the mortar itself rests on the jack and the openers of the raised beds. A mortar on a jack can be in the raised or lowered position (the height of the line of fire is 670 and 970 mm, respectively). In the lowered position, shooting is possible at elevation angles of -1 … + 78 °, and for shooting at angles of more than 40 °, a hole is dug under the butt plate, in the raised position, the elevation angle is + 7 … + 85 °.
The transition time from traveling to combat position and from combat to traveling is up to 90 seconds. The calculation is 4 people: the commander of the system, the gunner, the loader and the carrier (he is also the driver of the 2F54 transport vehicle).
TTX mortar:
Weight, kg: 632 (for 2B9-622)
Crew, people: 4
Caliber, mm: 82
Mine, weight, kg: 3, 1
Initial speed of mines, m / s: 270
Firing range, m: 4270
Rate of fire, in / min: 100-120
As you can see, the mortar is really quite mobile. But there is no end to perfection. Officially "Vasilek" began to be supplied to CA in 1983. However, those who at one time visited "beyond the river" could see it already in 1982. And those who arrived later saw the "Afghan version" of "Vasilka". This is not an invention of the designers, but the initiative of soldiers and officers. I must say, a successful amateur performance.
The battalions had a mortar battery of 1-2 Vasilkov platoons. 3-6 pieces per battalion. And very soon the GAZ-66 commanders were replaced by the good old MT-LB. However, even in this case, the mortar required one and a half minutes to bring it into a combat position. And in battle, a commander cannot afford such a luxury. The battle in the mountains is fleeting.
Army ingenuity worked. As before, it worked with the ZSU-23-2. It was this installation that settled in the bodies of KamAZ trucks in Afghan columns. "Vasilek" climbed onto the stern of the MT-LB. So he rolled along the Afghan roads, firing from short stops. We can say that the belligerent army itself has designed a new type of mobile rapid-fire weapons.
How good this scheme is, can be told by younger fighters who participated in conflicts on the territory of the former USSR, in the Chechen war, in the civil war in Donbass.
But officially "Vasilek", more precisely, the mortar complex 2K21, is placed on a transport vehicle of the type 2F54 on the chassis of a two-axle off-road vehicle "Ural-43206".
And now about the bad news. At the beginning of the article, we wrote about the "seeds" that were sold in the 90s of the last century. So, they sprouted. And, probably, many have already guessed where. To the PRC! Sprouted in the form of their own W99 mortar.
Today, the number of Chinese clones of the Soviet "Vasilka" already exceeds the number of the original mortars. All mountain brigades of the PLA are equipped with automatic Ture-99 mortars. And the Afghan experience of placing mortars on tracked vehicles took root in Kazakhstan. Only instead of MT-LB they use BMP-1.
Copying means there is something for it. Of course, if a weapon lives for a long time, it says a lot. Many one-day models can be cited as an example, but what cannot be taken away is the fact that all Soviet mortars turned out to be more than long-playing.
