"The history of technology for a thinking person is not at all an account of the past, but a means to understand the future, to find the right paths in it, to avoid mistakes that have already been made."
Vadim Shavrov. 1941 year
The subjunctive mood, driven from scientific, publicistic works and public discussions, is actually simply necessary when one has to assess the scale of what has been accomplished by ascetics - collectors and collectors of traces of the past and present phenomena in any of the areas of knowledge, and only a particle of "would" (by the way, the root the verb of action - "to be"!) makes you wonder: what if it were not for the chronicler Nestor … and if it were not for the successors of his works Mikhail Lomonosov, Vasily Tatishchev, Nikolai Karamzin … and if not for the collector and preserver of the living Russian language of the 19th century Vladimir Dal ?!
And, finally, if not for Vadim Shavrov (1898-1976) - in aviation, the creator of the fundamental two-volume work "History of aircraft designs in the USSR until 1938" (materials on the history of aircraft construction).
There were no followers of his dream of creating an air fleet of flying amphibious boats, super-necessary for our country with its gigantic coastline and thousands of rivers, lakes, swamps - airfields created by nature for such universal vehicles that can fly, swim and roll on dry land, in the snow, on ice.
Of the six devices he created, only the Sh-2 amphibian, which served in the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East, was lucky to prove its usefulness for almost half a century. "Shavrushka" is preserved as a priceless exhibit at the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic. One of the streets of the Primorsky District of St. Petersburg, at the request of the polar explorers, bears the name of the aircraft designer and aviation historian V. B. Shavrov.
The third business of his life was collecting beetles from all over the world … And it played a fateful role in his life.
I was lucky to see Vadim Borisovich in 1975, on September 17, which was evidenced by the autograph on the donated first volume of "The History of Aircraft Designs …".
On the instructions of the "Modelist-Constructor" magazine, I had to write about the creation of the Sh-2 amphibian. In a large, spacious room in a communal apartment in the center of Moscow, even rows of folders with materials, photographs, and aircraft diagrams are lined up on shelves.
But by virtue of the surname, my attention was riveted by a great many different beetles in flat glass boxes hung on the walls. From tiny wheat-sized grains to giants from the palm of your hand, and in one box there is only a photograph of a huge exotic, unlike anyone else - a titanium woodcutter beetle, which the owner was looking forward to sending.
Admiring our "totem animals", especially the beautiful rainbows - water beetles, which, as Vadim Borisovich explained, fly, swim, and walk on dry land, explained to me without question the interest of the young aircraft designer Shavrov in building an amphibious aircraft. Then, when no one had ever heard such a word - bionics! However, she began the conversation according to a conceived plan - with Shavrov's works in the cinema.
"Nieuport" - airplane of the First World War
… A film about Alexander Mozhaisky was filmed. Film director Vsevolod Pudovkin needed the aircraft of the pioneer of Russian aircraft construction. The film "Two Comrades Served" was filmed. Director Yevgeny Karelov needed "Nieuport" and "Farman-30", which flew in the First World War and in the Civil War.
But … Mozhaisky's plane was sold in parts at auction immediately after the death of the designer in 1890. "Nieuporas" and "farmers" for the prescription of years have not survived either. The filmmakers were looking for people who could remember or see with their own eyes the first flying "whatnots", know their structure in detail, in order to recreate the lost machines using vague schemes and meager technical materials.
Mosfilm was lucky: an aircraft designer, an aircraft engineer and a historian were found in one person - this is Vadim Shavrov. Plus, and this is generally a great luck, sixty-year-old Shavrov volunteered to manage the flimsy "bookcase" with two film companions - Oleg Yankovsky and Rolan Bykov - on board, of course, having previously flown around it alone. Remember that pilot - in a helmet, important, with a magnificent mustache?
… Vadim Borisovich grew up in the family of an artillery officer in the early years of the twentieth century, when fairy tales about running boots and airplane carpets were coming true under the general delight, horse-drawn transport was replaced by steam locomotives, cars, and airplanes.
In 1914 he entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers. Once - this was already during the Civil War - students were sent with topographic parties to the Volga region and the North Caucasus to find railway routes - even under the program of the tsarist Ministry of Railways.
The party in which young Shavrov was located worked in the directions: Saratov - Chernyshevskaya, Abdulino - Kokchetav, Tsaritsyn - Vladimirovka. There were battles nearby. Topographers were taken prisoner as spies, either white or red.
But, having found out that instead of weapons they have leveling pipes, the student Shavrov also has a folding net and a lot of boxes with beetles and labels and there is an order from the People's Commissariat of Railways of the RSFSR - to find the routes of railways, both of them were released. Moreover, it happened, having fed and given food with you:
"Seek, seek - it is necessary, no matter what power is in the country." Some of the topographers mowed typhus, someone could not stand the nervous shocks and left. However, the task was nevertheless completed. It was such a state attitude towards the cause of many people in the country that contributed to the creation of a new power.
In 1920, when the Civil War was fading and the interventionists were expelled from the outskirts of the country, the work of universities resumed, including the Institute of Railway Engineers.
Shavrov recalled how he was struck by the balance of power in the faculties: on the land - 1,500 people, on the water - 200, on the new, air, - 6. Shavrov - "beetles", or even jokingly - "flycatchers", as his friends called him, entered, of course, on the "unpopular" air and graduated in 1924 as an aviation engineer, receiving a diploma number 2.
For a year he worked as the head of the airport in the "Dobrolet" society on the first air lines of Central Asia. In the absence of states, he himself sold tickets and handed over the proceeds, or even loaded the luggage on the plane. And carried the airfield service. More precisely, he was cleaning the airfield. The airfield caused him a lot of trouble: in the summer it was covered with sand and tumbleweed balls, in the winter it was flooded with water, and air traffic was stopped.
Perhaps it was then that the imagination first drew an amphibious aircraft in front of Vadim Shavrov, for which there is no need to build expensive airfields and keep the staff of the airfield service, for which the airfield is all the earth: its sands and snows, seas and lakes. At the end of 1925, when he deliberately got into the design bureau of Dmitry Grigorovich (the author of the M-9 flying boat known from the battles in the Russian North with the British interventionists), who was designing seaplanes, his hand was already involuntarily drawing silhouettes of new machines on whatman paper - above the water surface.
Vadim Petrovich had to implement his plans … in his own spacious apartment in Leningrad. Here, together with the mechanic Nikolai Funtikov in April 1928, he began to build his amazing life-size Sh-1 aircraft - the first amphibian in the USSR. Curious Leningraders, having learned about the unprecedented "aircraft building at home", piled into the apartment, asked questions, and even then the amphibian received the unspoken name "Shavrushka".
Soon, having pulled her out through the window into the street, she was transported, accompanied by an escort of curious people, to the airfield, where she was tested in bad weather on the Gulf of Finland, piloted by the pilot Boris Glagolev and the brave inventor of the apparatus himself. And in September 1929, it flew under its own power from the Rowing port of St. Petersburg to the Central airfield on the Khodynskoye field in Moscow.
The main brainchild of Shavrov is the Sh-2 amphibian
After the end of the tests on water, in the air and on land, the "shavrushka" was transferred to the then famous OSOAVIAKHIM (Society for the Promotion of Defense, Aviation and Chemical Construction. Later - DOSAAF) for propaganda flights to remote towns and villages - with newspapers, posters, books, artists, lecturers.
To fly on it was appointed disgraced and exiled from the Air Force to OSOAVIAKHIM for "air hooliganism" Valery Chkalov. By his characteristic courage, right up to daring, on February 26, 1930, he decided to fly from Borovichi to Leningrad in very bad weather - snow, frost, blizzard. For orientation I walked along the Oktyabrskaya railway.
But, as Vadim Borisovich said, “snow and icing pressed the car to the ground, and it caught its wing on the semaphore … Chkalov and mechanic Ivanov survived, and it was decided not to restore the broken car, since the designer was already developing its improved version - Sh-2.
… The beetle rises due to the flapping of its wings, and after taking off, folds them up every five. For the first time in aviation, the “shavrushka” had a strut-braced upper wing, the consoles of which could fold back! And it is no coincidence that for the first time a liftable chassis appeared, and for the first time the coarse calico skin was covered with dope for water resistance. The author, creating an amphibious seaplane during the years of the assault on the Arctic Ocean by Soviet polar explorers, provided for the possibility of hanging the aircraft on a hook - for convenient launching from the ship.
I worked especially hard to improve the reliability on the water. In the event of an accident and breakdown, the lower wings with floats, consisting of 12 separate waterproof compartments, kept her firmly on the water even in a storm. From April 1, 1932, Sh-2 began to be mass-produced - in hundreds.
Something fundamentally important and durable was laid by the designer into this low-speed - 145 km / h - seaplane. So what is it? Completeness and design perfection? Harmony of form and content? Need for people? Of course, first of all, the need, if you remember the length of the coastline and the many rivers and lakes of our Fatherland.
Floating Italian "Savoy", English "Avro" and "Sopvichi", German "Junkers" and "Dornier" left the water airfields of the world, but their peers - reliable "Shavrushki" Ш-2, continued to fly. They scouted fish shoals, guarded the forests from fires, drove geological prospectors and oil workers, brought patients from remote corners. They were taken with them by ships on dangerous voyages to the Arctic - "Chelyuskin", "Litke", "Krasin". They were piloted by famous pilots - Mikhail Babushkin, Pyotr Koshelev.
Siberian pilots say that this seaplane could be found on the Ob and Yenisei back in the 1970s. So, almost 45 years in the ranks? Slightly longer than the Po-2, the official long-liver of Soviet aviation. An unprecedented case in the aircraft industry, where structures often become obsolete even during the testing period, or even before they had time to leave the drawings.
Although there are many aircraft designers, even the most brilliant and breakthrough aircraft. But to take on the truly titanic work of a collector bit by bit of the entire history of aircraft construction - only a few ascetics can take on this, it is up to unique people like Shavrov - painstaking and patient workaholics, obsessed with the lofty idea of preserving the memory of the people of his great past.
… From the very first steps, the newly converted aviation historian was faced with the need to solve problems with many unknowns. Then suddenly a name forgotten by history, but worthy of memory, will emerge, and there are no materials about it in the archives.
It is known that there was an original project for such and such, but no drawings or documentation have survived. And the researcher interviewed witnesses and participants in the events, if any, meticulously restored and brought together documents and drawings damaged by time, if they were not there, or became an aircraft designer in order to build a model of the unpreserved aircraft himself, or even the entire aircraft in full size.
After the restoration of Alexander Mozhaisky's plane to its full size, which was facilitated by the preserved privilege (patent) of 1881, it became clear that two steam engines with a boiler, if they helped to tear it off the ground for a moment, then did not keep it in the air. And powerful gasoline engines simply did not exist yet!
Although the world championship of the naval officer Mozhaisky is already, as Shavrov summed up, that back in the 1880s he found, by some insight, all the necessary structural parts of the future apparatus heavier than air: the hull, wing, empennage, chassis, control and power plant. And after the first flying "whatnot" at the beginning of the twentieth century, aircraft designers returned to the design of Mozhaisky! But you realize with bitterness that the seven appeals of the inventor to the minister and the tsar himself were followed by refusals. I built it with my own money, I went to poverty.
… Imagine just how long-suffering the discovery by Shavrov in the ancient archives of Mikhail Lomonosov's note about the successfully flying model he built in 1756 - to raise a thermometer measuring heat in the upper atmosphere! With her, such a crumb, Vadim Shavrov begins the history of the Russian aircraft industry in the first volume.
In a century and a half, flight history will “fly” to Igor Sikorsky's four-engine giants “Russian Knight” and “Ilya Muromets”, to the first Soviet fighters of Nikolai Polikarpov I-153 (“seagull”) and I-16 (“donkey”), on which they studied to fight the recent peaceful workers and peasants against the German fascists in Spain, against the Japanese militarists in China and Mongolia.
And they were able to use them, technically obsolete by 1941, to shoot down fascist vultures already in their native skies before the arrival of new aircraft from Siberian factories included in the formidable list of "Weapons of Victory" of the second volume of "History of Structures …": Yak-3, Yak- 7, Yak-9, La-5, bombers Su-2, Pe-2, attack aircraft-"flying tank" Il-2 … And then - the first post-war jet, military and civilian.
The first volume ends with a description of DB-3 - long-range bombers, which responded to the treacherous bombing of sleeping Soviet cities on June 22, 1941, just a few days later with the bombing of the Romanian oil center Ploiesti, as well as Konigsberg and the lair of the Nazis - Berlin.
It is noteworthy that in the same volume, Shavrov literally revived many of the original ideas and solutions of the authors of the devices that did not take off or did not go into series, but who knows - they were in demand, perhaps over time. This is the electric plane of the inventor of electric light Alexander Lodygin - with screws in front and on top. These are the planes of Stepan Grizodubov, the father of the famous pilot, who built his first plane only from the film of the flight of the Wright brothers.
This is one of the aircraft of Alexander Porokhovshchikov, the ancestor of the famous film actor, with a caterpillar chassis (for landing even in swamps).
Shavrov describes all the projects and devices of his like-minded people - the creators of seaplanes and amphibians: Igor Chetverikov, Georgy Beriev, Robert Bartini … When reading, you discover that it was he, Shavrov, who was invited by famous designers to modify their planes into a float version: Nikolai Polikarpov - for R- 5 and MR-5, Alexander Yakovlev - for AIR-2 and AIR-6.
However, after the triumph of Sh-2, Shavrov himself faced inexplicable failures in the implementation of new ideas … Even with the projects badly needed by the country, which were initially accepted by the leadership with a bang.
We have to regret that in the conversation of that distant 1975 it did not even occur to me to ask why this happened. He himself talks about this in a two-volume book, but diplomatically, in a streamlined manner, speaking about himself in the third person. Although the reasons for the failure can be read between the lines.
Well, his Sh-3, for example, - the USSR's first all-metal three-seater passenger monocoque limousine - was built by order of an interesting organization - the USR (Department of Special Work) of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Engineering, which used prison labor. At the head of the USR was the famous author of dynamo-rocket cannons (future "Katyushas") Leonid Kurchevsky, who, through denunciations in the mid-1930s, came under suspicion of state security agencies. In February 1936, the enterprise was liquidated, and the head was arrested.
… And in 1937, Vadim Borisovich's brother, Kirill Borisovich, was arrested, an ethnographer engaged in the education and elimination of illiteracy of the northern peoples, editor-in-chief of the Leningrad branch of children's literature. From the materials posted on the Internet, we learn that a large group of ethnographers have slandered such and such a name … It can be assumed that both of these arrests in those years could affect the fate of Vadim Borisovich. Whether he was arrested himself is unknown. And what is known? Let's see the chapters in both volumes of Shavrov's Airplanes.
Failures, it turns out, began back in 1933-1934, when the cartographic department ordered Shavrov to make an airplane for aerial photography, which is extremely necessary for an extensive program of drawing up detailed maps of the USSR (remember, an aircraft designer who had experience of working as a topographer-cartographer back in Grazhdanskaya). And today, an aeronautical engineer and cartographer will note important specific features in that Sh-5 project: the presence of a wide viewing angle (144 degrees) for a camera lens, as well as certain viewing angles for a pilot and a photographer.
Therefore, the chassis was low so that the wheels did not fall into the field of view of the vehicles.
Back in 1930, it turns out, a whole research institute for aerial photography was even created! Under the leadership of Academician Alexander Fersman. The project of Shavrov's photoplane was included in the plan of the P. E. Richard. The experimental design plant soon began building a car … However, according to the requirements of various departments, an amphibious photo plane, designed for a pilot and a photographer, by 1934 was supplemented with 12 passenger seats and eight stretchers - just in case. In the end, interest in him, devoid of the original design and appearance, was lost …
Sadly, but the aircraft with the specific purpose of aerial photography in the USSR was never again created. This made it difficult to draw up accurate and detailed maps of the country, which, of course, affected, as veteran pilots recall and military historians confirm, the lack of accurate maps in the military units of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. But the invaders had more accurate maps. My father, the squadron commander of the 105th Guards Aviation Regiment of the Civil Air Fleet, which flew to our encircled units and to the partisans, told how they were rescued by high-quality German maps obtained by the partisans. And it was they who had to shoot the German fortified areas before our offensives on the Po-2, which was not suitable for filming, and therefore on the front-line newsreels, filmed from a bird's eye view, we invariably see wing boxes in the frame.
The mystery with the fate of Sh-5 remains unsolved. Although in the tragic year 1937 (hereinafter I quote from the text of the second volume) “… the command of the Far Eastern Military District (V. K. Blyukher, F. A. Inganius and plant director K. D.. Kuznetsov).
But Shavrov himself at that time worked, as he adds, at this plant, remote from Moscow and Leningrad, which produced long-range bombers DB-3. Recall that it was on the DB-3 of a special modification that records of long-distance non-stop flights were set by the crews of Mikhail Gromov, Valentina Grizodubova and all the way to America - Valery Chkalov. Shavrov, in order to save public funds and time, proposed building a long-range sea reconnaissance aircraft, using 60% of the structural parts of the time-tested DB-3. With general approval, the work began to boil …
However, it was suddenly discontinued at the end of 1937. Shavrov does not explain the reasons in the text. Although we know: Vasily Blucher and many of his entourage were arrested and repressed. And during the Great Patriotic War, when sea convoys with military equipment, weapons, food from England under Lend-Lease went to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk (for which the USSR paid in gold and the blood of its soldiers!), Our planes, meeting and guarding them, often perished from fire. …
We would be on floats, could float. Would there have been MDR-7 … A confluence of circumstances, bungling or malicious intent prevented Shavrov from introducing into the Red Army Air Force a long-range reconnaissance agent on reliable floats that is so necessary in our northern (and eastern and southern) seas? Once again you realize that we too primitively understand the period of repressions of the 1930s, and this is an iceberg …
The same question - why? - also arises after the message about the fate of another Shavrov's flying boat, Sh-7, which has not gone into series. It seems that the arrest of his brother and the leadership of the Far Eastern District only hurt Vadim Borisovich with a ricochet: in the second volume he reports on the latest technology amphibious vehicle that he was designing and building for the Northern Sea Route and Aeroflot in 1938-1940. With special equipment for night vision (!), Which was sorely lacking for pilots who flew only at night behind enemy lines - for reconnaissance, to surrounded units, to partisans.
With a transceiver radio, which was not available in the first two years of the war, even on fighters, and the pilots were giving each other signs with their hands or swinging their wings. And in case of war in Sh-7, a TT-1 rifle mount was provided for a ShKAS machine gun with 300 rounds - for rear protection. No matter how many misfortunes and deaths happened, there was such equipment in aviation during the war … But Sh-7 also did not go into series. Shavrov explains: they say, "the war prevented." However, the prototype passed all tests successfully a year before the Nazi invasion - in the summer of 1940! And he, the only and extraordinary, flew on the Volga as a transport - from Astrakhan to Saratov and Stalingrad, which was burning in the fall of 1942 (in winter - on skis).
Vadim Borisovich Shavrov with his daughter Zhenya. May 1933. Leningrad
During the war years, the aircraft designer himself works in the department of new technology at TsAGI - the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute near Moscow. Although he no longer offers any new technology, as if he was hit on the hands. Writes scientific papers, develops GOSTs and normals. From besieged Leningrad rarely, but letters from his wife Natalia Leopoldovna and daughter Evgenia reach. They, fortunately, survived. The daughter, like her mother, graduated from the Faculty of Geography of Leningrad State University. Her letters and diary about the terrible days of the blockade can be read on the Internet today.
And again I am infinitely sorry that then, in 1975, I, out of frivolity, did not ask Vadim Borisovich and his wife, who treated me to tea, about their long family life, about the war, about the blockade. I remember her conversation on the phone with some friend and said very loudly, clearly to the ears of the imperturbable 77-year-old Vadim Borisovich, with whom they seemed to be at odds, the words:
"I realized that I need Vadim, and Vadim needs me!"
Yes, it is not easy to be the wife of such an immensely busy and passionate about large-scale affairs …
It is known that after the death of her husband a huge collection of rainbow beetles and most of the barbel beetles were donated by the spouse to the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The collection of lamellar beetles was transferred to the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University. But the manuscript about beetles with a short "biography" of the genus, species, habitats, food, habits, their "portraits" by the author's hand remained unpublished. And then he wanted to contribute to the treasury of Russian science - entomology. The two-volume "History of Aircraft Designs in the USSR" was reprinted only in 1988.
Shavrov-6
I remember the reasoning of Vadim Borisovich that experience teaches: "The history of technology for a thinking person is not at all an account of the past, but a means to understand the future, to find the right paths in it, to avoid mistakes that have already been made once."
His books are a complete and brilliant chronicle of the contribution of Russians to the conquest of the fifth ocean by mankind, which is forever with us. Although many pages of the history of aviation could have been irretrievably lost if Shavrov had not taken up his work almost 65 years ago.
