Research carried out by specialists of the Scientific Research Engineering Institute of the Ground Forces (NII SV) headed by Yuri Glazunov during 1948 on the topic "Mechanized Bridge Park" allowed the development of a very unusual and promising design.
By combining displacement elements, load-bearing structures and roadway elements in one automatically folding pontoon block, the problem of accelerated assembly of ferries and floating bridges was solved. Their design provided the creation of a roadway that surpassed all existing analogues in width. At the same time, the personnel of the calculations and the number of transport vehicles were sharply reduced.
And although the introduction of the new layout of the pontoon fleets was extremely difficult, the design created by the NII SV (currently NIITs SIV FGKU "3 TsNII" of the Ministry of Defense of Russia) and plant No. the PMP bridge park made it possible to surpass the best foreign analogues of that time in terms of efficiency, such as the M4T6 pontoon park (USA), the 16/30/50 pontoon park (Germany), the Holplatten pontoon park 50/80 (Germany) and others. The PMP was adopted by the USSR Armed Forces in 1960.
The creator of the PMP park Yuri Glazunov (center).
Simultaneously with the creation of a new ferry facility, the problem of rational universalization of several classes of pontoon parks was solved. The PMP combines the previously existing light, heavy and special pontoon parks. Although the PMP was more complex and more expensive than each individual of the listed parks, comparing the costs of its implementation and maintenance with similar costs for the above classes of parks unequivocally spoke in favor of the PMP.
For the first time, the potential of the PMP was demonstrated at a demonstration exercise that took place in 1960 south of Kiev in the presence of members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee headed by Nikita Khrushchev and representatives of the high command of the Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact countries. Khrushchev was asked to look at the crossing of the tank unit across the Dnieper, he grimaced, suggesting that it would take a long time to set the crossing. But when the steel tape of the pontoon bridge was rapidly stretched across the river and tanks rumbled across the bridge, he was delighted. An order was immediately given to reward the creators of the bridge, headed by the author-initiator Yuri Glazunov.
The patent for the fundamental solution of the PMP was issued in the USA, where it is produced under the name Ribbon bridge.
Serial production of the park was launched at the plant No. 342 in the city of Navashino, as well as at the Sretinsky, Uglichsky, Krasnoyarsk machine-building plants. According to available data, more than 220 sets of PMP were manufactured in the USSR alone - not counting its modifications PMP-M, PPS-84, PP-91 and PP-2005 (the PMP kit includes 32 river and 4 coastal links with cars, two linings with cars).
In addition to the engineering troops of the Soviet Army, the PMP was supplied to 20 countries: the GDR, Albania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (under the military index KRM-71), Mongolia, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Finland, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Angola, Kampuchea, as well as the United Arab Emirates.
The know-how of the PMP consists in combining displacement elements, load-bearing structures and roadway elements in one pontoon block.
After dropping into the water, the pontoon block unfolds automatically.
From the memoirs of Yuri Glazunov, it is known that after the arrival of the PMP in the GDR, where its use was carried out in the immediate vicinity of the US occupation wax located in the FRG, American experts immediately assessed its capabilities. They made a film about the equipment of the ferry from the material part of the park.
PMP was actively used during the Arab-Israeli wars. In his article “Across the Elbe and the Weser,” the German military engineer Peter Ude writes: “According to many testimonies, the PMP was effectively used by the Egyptian troops during the crossing of the Suez Canal during the 1973 war. although all this took place under intense air attacks, the modular design of the PMP allowed Egyptian engineers to quickly replace damaged pontoons and even, if necessary, float entire bridges along the canal to the area designated for the crossing."
It is known that thanks to the use of precisely the tactical capabilities of the PMP, the Egyptian troops managed to cross the channel unusually quickly and achieve initial success in the operation. However, in the course of this war, the kits of the PMP went to Israel as war trophies.
Due to official misunderstandings and excessive secrecy of the development, an international patent for the PMP was not issued. Yuri Glazunov said that when he applied for an international patent for a technical solution of the PMP to the chief of the engineering troops of the USSR Armed Forces, General Viktor Kharchenko, a refusal was received, motivated by the fact that military equipment did not need a patent. As a result, the United States issued a patent for the fundamental decision of the PMP. There, they not only set up production of an analogue of the PMP - Ribbon bridge (RB) and its modification Improved Ribbon Bridge (IRB), but supplied these parks to a number of countries (including the Netherlands and the Republic of Korea), and Germany, along with the park, sold a license for it. production.
And this is how the German FSB bridge is laid out.
As the saying goes, find 10 differences from the PMP bridge.
In the 1990s. Colonel-General Vladimir Kuznetsov, chief of the engineering troops, was present at one of the exercises of the NATO countries. During the laying of the bridge from the American Ribbon Bridge kit, the commander-in-chief of NATO forces in Europe boasted to Kuznetsov "his" pontoon park. However, he noticed that the park was Soviet and its author, Yuri Nikolaevich Glazunov, was his subordinate. The American general doubted what he had heard and said that he would make inquiries. The next day, he apologized, admitting that the American specialists, to put it mildly, borrowed their park from the Russians.
But there were also other "experts" who declared that the PMP park was not at all of Soviet origin. In 1993, Colonel Ernst-Georg Krom, commander of the 80th Bundeswehr Sapper Brigade, told Krasnaya Zvezda correspondent Vadim Markushin that “during the war, the Russians took possession of the German drawings of just such a self-folding bridge. Later they introduced them into their engineering troops, and supplied them to their friends-partners, including the Arabs. During the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, one of the bridges was taken as a trophy and eventually ended up in the hands of the Americans. Those slightly improved it and put it into mass production. Then they offered these bridges to the German allies. Not free, of course. So now the Bundeswehr pontoons are using imported products, which, on the other hand, seem to be their own, domestic."
On my own behalf, I note that the author of this legend, Colonel Krom, probably forgot that it was the Russians who managed to create the best tanks of the Second World War, and also surpassed the German industry in terms of the production of military equipment and ultimately defeated the German military machine. However, back to the PMP park and its modifications.
Since 1977an analogue of the PMP is produced by the German company EWK for the Bundeswehr, where it received the designation Faltschwimmbrucke (FSB). For the armies of other countries, the export version of the park is intended - FSB-E. On the basis of the FSB, a more advanced park was developed and tested, which received the designation FSB 2000. An exact copy of the Soviet PMP (with the exception of the means of motorization and the base chassis) is also made in Germany. Copies of the PMP are in service with the armies of Belgium, Portugal, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Sweden, Nigeria, Singapore, Holland, Egypt.
As of 2013, in addition to Germany, close analogs (often just copies) of PMPs are produced in the USA, Czech Republic, China (Type 79 and Type 79A), Singapore, Japan (Type 92) and are actively exported. In general, the PMP, its copies and modifications (excluding the CIS countries) are produced and are in service in 38 countries of the world. According to the available information, the geography of their production and sale is constantly expanding.
A different picture is observed in the Russian Federation. Of the four manufacturers of parks of the PMP type, to date, only one remains in Russia - OJSC “Okskaya Sudoverf”. Orders for modern analogues of PMP - pontoon parks PP-91 and PP-2005 from the Russian Ministry of Defense are not received. Taking into account the latest trends, it cannot be ruled out that in the near future we will buy the world's best pontoon park PMP, created by a Russian engineering genius, abroad. Domestic experts associate the only hope for the salvation of PMP production in Russia with the change of leadership in the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
