On February 26, 1712, by the decree of Peter I, the beginning of the Tula Arms Factory was laid
In the history of Russia and the Russian army, Tula and its defense plants have always played and will continue to play a colossal role. It is not for nothing that this city is called either the arms capital of Russia, or the main forge of Russian weapons. Even today there are factories in the Urals and Udmurtia that are larger and more important for the country's defense, the Tula gunsmiths will forever remain, perhaps, the most famous and most legendary. And most importantly - the first. After all, the decree of Peter I on the organization in Tula of state production of weapons for the new Russian army was promulgated on February 15 (26), 1712.
For more than three centuries of its history, the Tula Arms Plant, which once bore the name "Imperial Tula Arms Plant of the Main Artillery Directorate" (received it by decree of Emperor Alexander II of September 13, 1875), and after - "Tula Emperor Peter the Great Arms Plant" (since February 28, 1912 to commemorate the 200th anniversary), has experienced many significant events. Some of them, the brightest, and the most famous models of Tula weapons, are worth remembering on the plant's birthday.
What Peter I commanded
The decree of Peter I, which laid the foundations for the state production of weapons in Tula, was called “Named, announced from the Senate. - On the appointment of Prince Volkonsky by the head of the Tula factories, and on the management of these factories in terms of the artificial and economic ones”(the punctuation of the original is preserved). It said: “The great sovereign pointed out: according to his own great sovereign's decree, at the Tula arms factories, craftsmen to make guns, a year: dragoon and soldier's 15,000 fuses with knives, from Siberian iron; and for that the gun to those craftsmen should be given a ruble of 24 altyns, 2 money for a fusée with a knife. And to be that arms business in the jurisdiction of the lord Prince Volkonskago. And for the best way in that weaponry business, having found a convenient place with that weapons settlement, build factories where the fusa's gun could be drilled and taken away, and broadswords and knives could be sharpened with water. And if for that arms business and for all factories there should be some kind of skill for foreigners or Russian people: and for him, Prince Volkonsky, such people should be sought and used for that arms business, and all-round in that suburb of that skill of artisans should be multiplied, in order that henceforth such guns will definitely be made with a lot of extra. And the rifle, both dragoon and soldier, also pistols, when ordered, to be made with the same caliber."
Thus, Peter's decree not only stipulated the creation of the first state arms factory in Russia, not only determined the volume of state orders for modern weapons for the new Russian army, but also - and also for the first time in Russia! - set the task of producing weapons of a single caliber. In this sense, the Russian tsar almost overtook Europe, where not all countries at that time came to the idea of weapons of a single caliber.
How the Maxim machine gun was unified in Tula
The contract for the production of Maxim machine guns at the Tula Arms Plant was signed in March 1904, and in May its serial production began. The weapon, which was supposed to be as mobile as possible, at that time was installed on a heavy towed carriage with large wheels and a seat for a machine gunner. In this form, the Tula machine guns of Maxim got into the Russian-Japanese war, during which it became clear that they should be much lighter and more compact. As a result, in 1909, the Main Artillery Directorate held a competition for the modernization of the machine gun, which won the version of the Tula gunsmiths. They replaced some of the heavy bronze parts with lighter steel ones, and most importantly, they designed a new, compact and lightweight machine and a new armor shield. But most importantly, the Tula masters were able to develop and implement such a system of precise processing and preparation of machine gun parts, in which they became completely interchangeable. A similar result of unification of the details of the Maxim machine gun at that time was not achieved by any weapons factory in the world.
The three-line was born here
The famous Mosin three-line rifle is one of those weapon models that have earned fame not only for their creator, but also for the plant that established their production, not to mention the country they represent. Its designer - captain (at that time) Sergei Mosin - got to work at the Tula Arms Plant in 1875, right after he graduated from the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy with a gold medal. Eight years later, having gained experience, Mosin began to develop the first magazine rifles. And in 1891, his three-line rifle - that is, 7.62 mm - as a result of tough rivalry with the Belgian Leon Nagant's rifle, won the competition for a new standard rifle for the Russian army. It was put into service under the name "Model 1891 Three-Line Rifle".
In 1900, at the World Exhibition in Paris, just such a rifle, and not specially made, but taken from a regular batch, received the Grand Prix. The three-line, modernized in 1930, remained in service in its homeland until the mid-1970s. For almost a century of service, it has earned the fame of one of the longest-lived, reliable and simplest weapon systems in the world in terms of design and maintenance.
Mosin rifle. Photo: tehnika-molodezhi.com
Defend - so your own!
On October 29, 1941, the advanced units of the Wehrmacht approached the outskirts of Tula - this is how the unprecedented forty-three-day defense of this city began, which became one of the most heroic pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. By this time, a significant part of the Tula Arms Plant had already been evacuated: the transfer of people and equipment to the east had begun half a month before that (and already in November, the plant, which settled in a new place in the city of Mednogorsk, Orenburg Region, produced its first products). Only a little more weapons capacity remained in the city than was required to maintain the already fired weapons in working order. But the Tula militias, who made up a significant part of the defense forces, did not have enough standard weapons. And then the Tula Arms Plant launched the production of a submachine gun, created by one of the local gunsmiths - Sergei Korovin, the author of the famous "general" small-caliber pistol TK ("Tula Korovin"). It was an amazing machine: very light, it consisted almost entirely of stamped parts, which greatly accelerated and simplified the process of its production. The militia quickly appreciated such a feature as a low rate of fire. The PPK thirty-shot magazine fired twice as slowly as the PPSh - its 76 rounds, and therefore fired much more closely.
Forge of legends
The Tula Arms Plant became famous not only for the Mosin rifle, the Maxim machine gun and the Korovin submachine gun. Among other famous weapons that were created here and played a special role in the Great Patriotic War was, for example, the Tokarev self-loading rifle of the 1938/40 model. It was created by the arms designer Fyodor Tokarev, who also developed another Tula legend - TT, that is, "Tula Tokarev", the main pistol of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. SVT became one of the most famous self-loading rifles of the Second World War, yielding the palm in the number of copies produced only to the American M1 "Garand", but retained the leadership in the "fastest-firing" category.
In Tula, the ShKAS was also developed and produced - an aviation rapid-fire machine gun of the Shpitalny-Komaritsky caliber 7, 62 mm. It was the first example of such a weapon in the USSR - and the main weapon of all Soviet fighters during the Great Patriotic War. The Tula gunsmiths also created and assembled another sample of aviation weapons - the ShVAK 20-mm air cannon. This abbreviation stands for "Shpitalny-Vladimirov large-caliber aircraft": originally it was a 12-mm machine gun, but when it became clear that the caliber could be increased without affecting the operation of the system, it was converted into a cannon.
