In the Soviet Union, in the 1930s, they began to create the TM-1-180 platforms with a 180-mm B-1-P gun, they used guns from the MO-1-180 coastal naval artillery mount with minor changes. The shield was reduced by the armor foliage, the frontal part became 38 mm, on the sides and on top 20 mm. The reduced caliber and the installation of eight support legs, helped to achieve a railway artillery installation of all-round visibility and shelling, the gun rotated on a central support pin. The small rifling of the 1.35 mm barrel was a feature of the first platforms, later they used the deep rifling "3.6 mm", artillery shells were not interchangeable.
The production of the TM-1-180 railway platforms themselves was carried out by the Nikolaev plant No. 198, and the B-1-P guns themselves were produced by the Barrikady plant. The release of the platform began in 1934, the ammunition of the installations included high-explosive, semi-armor-piercing and armor-piercing shells, a grenade with a remote fuse "VM-16", with the same weight of 97.5 kilograms.
The main purpose of artillery batteries on railway platforms is to fight and destroy enemy surface ships. At the beginning of World War II, the Gulf of Finland was completely covered by fire from railway batteries, three 356-mm batteries, three 305-mm batteries and eight 180-mm batteries. They supplemented the stationary naval artillery batteries of 152 mm and 305 mm caliber. But since the Wehrmacht troops did not plan to capture the bay with the help of surface ships, the railway batteries were idle.
In the first days of the war, the artillery railway batteries No. 17 and No. 9 had a hard time; Finnish troops blocked them on the Hanko Peninsula. The batteries were used to fire at fortified Finnish positions and shell the Finnish Tammisaari. At the end of 41, when Soviet troops left the peninsula, the batteries were destroyed, the 305-mm barrels were blown up, the supporting legs were broken and drowned along with the platforms.
But the Finns, nevertheless, restored the batteries, the platforms were pulled out of the water, the support legs were restored, the trunks were delivered from the battleship "Alexander III" through occupied Europe. The 305-mm railway battery was put into operation, but they did not have time to put the 180-mm into operation, and after the armistice with Finland in 1944, the USSR received all the batteries back. In 1945, they entered the Soviet Armed Forces as batteries of the railway brigade.
On May 5, 1936, the history of the creation of the latest artillery installations of very large caliber is connected, the Council of People's Commissars approved a decree on the creation of railway artillery of large and especially large caliber.
In 1938, a technical assignment was issued for the production of TP-1 railway platforms with a 356 mm gun and TG-1 with a 500 mm caliber gun. According to the TP-1 project, it was created with the aim of countering linear surface ships and enemy monitors and for the use of batteries in ground operations from concrete complexes of the TM-1-14 project. "TG-1" was intended to be used only in ground operations.
Several dozen factories from all over the Soviet Union took part in the work on the creation of these colossal combat railway batteries. The barrels on the TP-1 and TG-1 were installed lined, the piston gates opened upward with two strokes, the platforms were identical to the TM-1-14. The speed of movement on railway tracks was up to 50 km / h, there was the possibility of restructuring traffic on a Western-style railway.
For the TG-1 with a 500-mm gun, two shells were provided, an armor-piercing reinforced power (concrete-piercing) weighing 2 tons and having 200 kg of explosive mixture and a high-explosive one, weighing one and a half tons and having an explosive mixture of about 300 kg.
An armor-piercing projectile of enhanced power (concrete-piercing) pierced concrete walls up to 4.5 meters thick.
For the TP-1 with a 356-mm gun, long-range, high-explosive, armor-piercing and combined projectiles were provided. High-explosive and armor-piercing were of the same weight - 750 kg and differed in the amount of explosive mixture. Long-range ammunition differed from armor-piercing only in reduced weight - 495 kg, and, accordingly, in range, 60 km versus 49 km.
In the 40s, a combined ammunition was considered a sub-caliber ammunition, weighing 235 kg (the weight of the projectile itself was 127 kg), with a range of 120 km.
The Soviet Union planned to build a total of 28 guns on the railway platform of these projects by the end of 1942, but due to the constant workload of factories with the creation of surface ships, only one TP-1 and one TG-1 were built. And after the outbreak of the war, work on the projects was interrupted.
In the postwar years, the Soviet Union began designing new artillery systems on railway platforms of various calibers.
Back in 1943, TsKB-19 designed an artillery system with a caliber of 406 mm. Project "TM-1-16" with the swinging unit B-37. In 51, already "TsKB-34", using these developments, developed the "CM-36" project. For the first time, the project used a double rollback system, a specialized B-30 fire control system and a Redan-3 radar station. The radar began to be developed back in '48, and a new indicator was used in it for accurate coordinates for bursts from shell hits. But at the end of 54, the project was stopped.
The termination of the development of artillery systems on railway platforms was of a political nature. General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N. S. Khrushchev brought work on the creation of large artillery to nothing.
But heavy artillery was in service with the fleet for a long time. At the beginning of 84, there were 13 installations in the Soviet Navy. Eight TM-1-180 were in the Black Sea Fleet, the naval base in Leningrad included three TM-1-180 and two TM-3-12.
