Until the end of his days, the designer of a liquid-jet (rocket) engine for the first fighter-interceptor Valentin Glushko could not forgive Leonid Dushkin for his crime. Nothing is written about this man in the "Red" Encyclopedia of Cosmonautics, edited by Academician Valentin Glushko. His name is not even in the articles on BI-1 and Gird-X. Moreover, the names of all other constructors have been listed. Why did Valentin Glushko try to delete one of the developers of the liquid-propellant engine from the lists?
Leningrad scientists should be considered the creators of liquid-propellant rocket engines: the first experimental rocket motor was built in Leningrad. In May 1929, on the basis of a gas-dynamic laboratory at the Scientific Research Institute of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, under the leadership of Valentin Glushko, an experimental design unit began to work for the development of missiles and liquid-propellant engines for them. In the 30s, a whole family of experimental rocket engines with a thrust of 60 to 300 kgf was created. The fuel used was nitrogen tetroxide and toluene or liquid oxygen and gasoline. The most powerful rocket engine ran on nitric acid and gasoline, developing thrust up to 250-300 kgf. It was in Leningrad that many problematic issues of creating new engines were resolved. In 1930, Valentin Glushko proposed and in 1931 introduced a profiled nozzle, a gimbal engine mount for rocket flight control (1931), and the design of a turbopump unit with centrifugal fuel pumps (1933). Also in 1933 he introduced chemical ignition and self-igniting fuel.
Bench firing tests of liquid-propellant rocket engines were carried out in Leningrad already in 1931-1932.
Meanwhile, in Moscow and other cities, groups for the study of rocket movement are being formed on a voluntary basis. They especially succeeded in Moscow, where the MosGIRD was opened, which conducted extensive lecture propaganda, and even courses were organized to study the theory of rocket propulsion. In 1932, on the basis of the MosGIRD, an experimental design organization was created, also called the GIRD: its work was controlled by the Central Council of Osoaviakhim (the predecessor of DOSAAF).
As Lev Kolodny describes, the corridor from the production workshops led to the rooms of the design teams. The brigade's basement walls were divided between six windows. The sun never looked through the windows, not only because they were on the north side. They were tightly curtained from the eyes of the curious. In the most remote and secluded place of the GIRD there were no windows at all. One could get here through a massive door with a viewing slot. In the compartment between the thick stone walls there was a test one, where a two-cylinder aircraft engine, an aerohydrodynamic tube, and a compressor were installed. Here it was decided whether or not to be new constructions.
This is where Leonid Dushkin got to. Born as the fourth child in the family of the petty bourgeois Stepan Vasilyevich and Elizaveta Stepanovna Dushkin in the railway village of Spirovo near Tver, he graduated from the physics and technology department of the Tver Pedagogical Institute, and then a one-year short-term postgraduate course at the Research Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics at Moscow State University, he was sent by the People's Commissariat to teach in a distant Siberian city Irkutsk. But the twenty-two-year-old did not want to go there.
He learned from his friends that in the basement of houses no. 19 or no. 10 on Sadovo-Spasskaya street one can find some kind of earnings on a voluntary basis. He began to earn money while still studying in Tver: his scholarship was only 16 rubles a month.
So from October 1932, he began to work at the GIRD as an inconspicuous assistant to Friedrich Zander on calculation and theoretical issues.
At that time, the main task over which both Leningrad and Moscow developers were fighting was to create a rocket motor. Moscow was in a hurry because in Leningrad Valentin Glushko had already launched his first liquid-propellant rocket engines. The first liquid-propellant rocket engine, created by Moscow specialists, was tested in 1933. Unlike Leningrad scientists, Moscow specialists decided to use liquid oxygen as an oxidizer, and gasoline and ethyl alcohol as fuel.
In 1933, it was decided to unite the Leningrad and Moscow scientists. The world's first State Jet Research Institute (RNII) was created, which included representatives of both Leningrad and Moscow schools for the creation of liquid-propellant rocket engines, each of which offered its own options for creating engines.
Scientific controversy escalated into violent controversy. RNII was divided into two irreconcilable camps. Valentin Glushko and Leonid Dushkin found themselves on both sides of the barricades.
In the new institute, Valentin Glushko still played one of the key roles, while Leonid Dushkin was still an imperceptible engineer of the second department, whose head, Andrei Kostikov, in about mid-March 1937, wrote a statement to the party committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which began as follows: “The disclosure of the counterrevolutionary Trotskyist sabotage and sabotage gang insistently requires us to take a deeper look at our work again … Specifically, I cannot point to people and cite facts that would give a sufficient amount of direct evidence, but in my opinion, we have a number of symptoms that inspire suspicion and obsessively instill the idea that not everything is going well with us."
The wines of Ivan Kleimenov, Georgy Langemak and Valentin Glushko, who followed the wrong path in the development of a liquid-propellant engine, were consistently set out on six typewritten sheets. Kostikov demanded a reduction in work on powder rockets and nitrogen-oxygen rocket engines and to strengthen work on the oxygen sector.
This statement did not go unnoticed by the NKVD. Events developed rapidly. Arrests, checks, denunciations, executions beheaded the institute.
Head of the second department Andrei Kostikov, who became Acting chief engineer, gathers the "public" to analyze the "sabotage activities of V. P. Glushko ", in order to then deliver the results of this analysis to the NKVD.
The archive of the RAS contains a unique document - the minutes of the meeting of the bureau of the engineering and technical staff, held on February 20, 1938. Leonid Dushkin stood out most in his statements against the background of others: “… Glushko did not speak at meetings in the press about the attitude towards the enemies of the people chief engineer - author) and Kleimenov … If Glushko does not admit his mistakes, does not rebuild, then we must raise the question of Glushko with all the Bolshevik frankness."
Also Leonid Dushkin said the phrase: "Glushko was under the great protection of the enemy of the people Langemak … The isolation from public life also makes us wary …"
The ITS Bureau stated:
1. V. P. Glushko, working at the Institute on r.d. on nitrogen fuel from 1931 to this time, along with the existing achievements of this problem, has not given a single design suitable for practical use.
2. During all his work at the Institute, V. P. Glushko was cut off from the social life of the Institute. In 1937-38, 7 months did not pay membership dues to the trade union, delayed the return of a loan of 1000 rubles. to the mutual aid fund, which testifies to V. P. Glushko to the trade union bodies.
3. Working for a long time in close connection with the now exposed enemy of the people LANGEMAK, as well as receiving support from the former. Director of Research Institute No. 3 - enemy of the people KLEIMENOV, V. P. Glushko, from the moment of the exposure and arrest of LANGEMAK and KLEIMENOV and up to this time, that is, more than 3 months, did not reveal his attitude towards LANHEMAK and KLEIMENOV in any way - neither orally at meetings, nor in print.
4. V. P. GLUSHKO, together with LANHEMAK, took part in the book: "ROCKETS, their design and application", which contains a lot of information that declassifies the work of Research Institute No. 3.
5. The attitude of V. P. GLUSHKO to his subordinates was unfaithful, not comradely, V. P. GLUSHKO created neither a school, nor a shift, nor even a group of permanent employees. There were unfounded speeches by V. P. GLUSHKO on tech. on the advice of the Institute against Ing. ANDRIANOVA.
6. There was no collective work on the problem of r.d. on nitrogen fuel, in fact, work on this problem was carried out GLUSHKO alone.
Opponents tried to destroy Valentin Glushko morally: he was forced to admit his mistakes. His works were also destroyed: Andrei Kostikov personally threw the book "Rockets, Their Design and Application" into the fire. The fire slowly consumed the pages. But the drawings were left intact! Apparently, they realized that without them things would not progress. And so it was.
The archives store one more document - the act, in the preparation of which Leonid Dushkin also participated. The act expresses an extremely negative attitude towards the work of Valentin Glushko, it is argued that his work was unsuccessful, unprofessional, while the persons who signed the act, including Leonid Dushkin, argued that he could not but understand the nature of his actions.
This was enough for the NKVD authorities in Moscow to arrest Valentin Glushko. On August 15, 1939, by protocol No. 26 of the Special Meeting under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Valentin Glushko was imprisoned in a labor camp for eight years for participating in a counterrevolutionary organization and sent to Ukhtizhemlag, but someone put the inscription “Ost. for slave. in the technical bureau 11. Simply - transferred to the sharashka, to the aircraft plant in Tushino: from the RNII they delivered his drawings and documents, gave several people to help.
But it was incredibly difficult to continue working on the liquid-propellant engine practically from scratch, and even in prison conditions. While Leonid Dushkin was left with a solid base, which he did not fail to use. However, according to Valentin Glushko, no success was achieved. As he later recalls, “since 1938, in connection with the repression at the RNII of the head of the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines using nitric acid oxidizers, Leonid Dushkin, who had previously actively shown a negative attitude towards the nitric acid direction, switched to the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines of this class and subsequently almost only dealt with them. … Dushkin began this stage of his activity by removing the RP-318 from the rocket glider and unnecessarily remaking the ORM-65 nitric acid engine that he inherited, which had undergone fine-tuning, official bench tests, assigned the engine its own code, and in 1940 flight tests were carried out with it. tests of this rocket glider. The fact that the replacement of the engine was not a necessity also follows from the fact that at the beginning of 1939 the ORM-65 successfully passed two flight tests on the 212 cruise missile. Moreover, the engine installed on the rocket glider instead of the ORM-65 was worse in terms of the main characteristic of the liquid-propellant engine is the specific thrust (194 instead of 210 seconds at a nominal thrust of 150 kg)."
However, experts believe that Leonid Dushkin has achieved certain success.
Experts compared two engines - ORM-65 by Valentin Glushko and RDA-1-150 by Leonid Dushkin - and came to the conclusion that “Glushko used acid for regenerative cooling, and then only for the nozzle part of the compressor station. The CS from the head to the nozzle was without external cooling. Dushkin used both components for external cooling. The nozzle with the critical part was cooled with fuel (there are the highest heat fluxes), and the cooling capacity of kerosene is better than that of acid. The combustion chamber from the nozzle head to the nozzle was cooled with an oxidizer. This scheme has become classical and is partially used to our time. For Glushko, external cooling was only an oxidizing agent. Dushkin applied a staged launch, when a small amount of fuel is ignited first, and then the main consumption of components enters the resulting torch."
For the sake of fairness, we note that this scheme has become a classic, it was used on most liquid-propellant rocket engines, including the engines of Valentin Glushko, created by him in OKB-456.
In the process of creating engines, Leonid Dushkin was faced with much larger failures than were imputed to Valentin Glushko. The engine designed by Dushkin had the designation "D-1-A-1100" ("the first nitric acid engine with a nominal thrust of 1100 kg"), was developed specifically for the BI-1 aircraft. According to the Russian State Archives of Scientific and Technical Documentation, the components were supplied using compressed air stored on board in cylinders under a pressure of 150 atm., Therefore, very heavy. The projected duration of the BI-1 flight at a speed of 800 km / h is 2 minutes, at a speed of 550-360 km / h for about 4-5 minutes. The weight of the aircraft is about 1.5 tons, the flight altitude is up to 3.5 km, and it is equipped with cannon armament. For this type of aircraft, it was required to create a powerful reusable engine with an adjustable thrust of 400-1400 kg. 1
In his diary, Leonid Dushkin writes that step by step, overcoming difficulties, the team of developers of the new machine went forward to the goal. “In February 1943, we had already entered the course of work, which had to be left in Moscow, the main design work on the aircraft and the engine was completed”.
After completion in April 1942 of bench testing and pilot training in engine control, the first aircraft, named BI-1, was delivered for flight tests at a military airfield in Koltsovo near Sverdlovsk, which was conducted by combat pilot Captain Grigory Bakhchivandzhi.
The personality of the Air Force captain does not give Leonid Dushkin peace, in his diary entries he talks about every word of the pilot. “Finally, the work on the aircraft was successfully completed and the commission gave permission for the first flight. On May 15, 1942, the situation at the airfield was unusual. The runway was cleared of parking for other aircraft. Their flights were suspended. Many representatives of civilian and military organizations attended. The weather was cloudy. We had to wait a long time for the appearance of a clear sky over the airport, which was necessary for visual observation of the flight of the BI aircraft. There were no other means to control the flight: no radio, no telemetry. Test pilot G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi was in good spirits. He advised only on cloudy skies and a long wait for the command to take off the plane. Finally, by 18 o'clock, the sky cleared of clouds. The plane was allowed to take off. The plane was towed to the launch site of the plane."
Dushkin even describes in detail such a detail as dressing up the pilot: “I came to the Bakhchivandzhi airfield in a new coat and new chrome boots. And before the team took off, I got on the plane in an old jacket and old boots. When asked why he changed his clothes, Bakhchivandzhi replied that a new coat and boots could be useful to his wife, and worn-out clothes would not prevent him from completing the task.
During the seventh flight on the Bi-2 on March 27, 1943, a catastrophe occurred. At an altitude of 3.5 km, an automatic engine shutdown occurred, the plane entered a sharp dive and crashed. Test pilot Grigory Bakhchivandzhi was killed.
In his diary, Leonid Dushkin writes about the disaster very modestly - "it was not possible to establish the cause." It was only after the construction of a new wind tunnel at TsAGI that it was found that on airplanes with a straight wing at transonic speeds, a huge diving moment arises, which is almost impossible to cope with.
The state commission removed Dushkin from work on the engine. The NKVD authorities did not make any claims against him. The team of Alexey Isaev worked on the further development of the engine, which achieved the best results. If we compare the specific impulses of Isaev and Dushkin's engines for BI-1, then Isaev has a thrust of 1200 kg, a flow rate of 5.7, an impulse of 210 sec. Dushkin's thrust is 1500 kg, the consumption is 7.7, the impulse is 194 sec.
Subsequently, Leonid Dushkin created several engine modifications. He carefully studied and kept until his death published and unpublished books, reviews, reports by Sergei Korolev, Valentin Glushko, Friedrich Zander, Dmitry Zilmanovich. During the "thaw" Leonid Dushkin gave several interviews, where he spoke about the situation at the first reactive institute. He openly hates his opponents: "The vicious actions of the RNII leadership and the erroneous forecasts of V. P. Glushko cost our country dearly."
Valentin Glushko did not come to open statements: in his memoirs he cited irrefutable evidence based on archival documents revealing the true role of Leonid Dushkin and his associates. Reading the case materials, one involuntarily recalls Mozart and Salieri. But the hatred of these two people, according to legend, took the life of one person, while in the 30s of the XX century, the NKVD in the case of "sabotage engineers" shot more than 30 people who tried to defend their point of view in the process of creating new engines.
