A young mining engineer at a meeting in the presence of Stalin, arguing the need to restructure the entire armor industry of the country, in a fervor went into a raised tone and repeatedly banged his fist on the table. How did his career develop after the epoch-making speech?
May 17, 1936 in Moscow at a meeting of the Council of Labor and Defense before the "leader of the people" reported to the directors of factories and military commanders. Judging by their words, things were going great: tank, ship and aircraft production was growing, new types of guns were successfully tested. No one was going to disappoint the General Secretary.
The last to speak was a 30-year-old scientist-metal scientist Andrei Zavyalov, who got to the meeting with the help of Andrei Zhdanov. He, in contrast to the authoritative speakers presented to the attention of the USSR leadership a completely different picture and reported on the need for complete reconstruction and modernization of the production of armor and armored vehicles. In particular, it was necessary to make a technological leap from the construction of tanks with anti-bullet armor to tanks with anti-shot armor. This meant the transformation of the entire production technology, the transition to medium and heavy vehicles instead of light ones, changes in the tactics of using armored forces and increasing their role in combat.
Zavyalov reminded the audience that Western European countries successfully improved anti-tank artillery, and in the mid-1930s, extremely effective anti-tank guns began to appear. Thus, the new, rather small German Pak-36 of the "Rheinmetall" company with a caliber of only 37 mm at a distance of 300 m penetrated the armor thickness of 26 mm, at a distance of 500 m - 22 mm, at a distance of 1 km - 14 mm. At the same time, the armor of almost all tanks available at that time did not exceed 15-20 mm (Soviet tanks T-26, BT-5, BT-7, German Panzer-1 and Panzer-2, Czechoslovak 35(t) and 38(t), French H-35, H-39).
The young specialist did not come empty-handed. As evidence, he demonstrated his own results of tank firing at the firing range, when combat vehicles were pierced like paper models by the very Pak-36. In the Wehrmacht, it was unofficially called the "beater" and "Christmas clapper" because of its miniaturization. However, if its shells hit Soviet vehicles, the crew would be inevitably killed.
Zavyalov criticized all our tanks, calling them "crawling coffins." This metaphor also applied to those that were reinforced by the armor he himself had developed under the brand name "IZ", which he had been working on for the last couple of years at the Izhora Plant. Thus, the engineer was ready to cross out personal research and prestige for the sake of the future of the industry and, most importantly, the well-being of the country in the context of the escalating international situation.
The metallurgist was listened to attentively. Then he answered clarifying questions for a long time, showing exceptional knowledge of the topic. The meeting stretched for 6 hours, during which Stalin had time to call Zavyalov "cheeky engineer" ...
Members of the Council of Labor and Defense looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders ... Who is this "upstart", who had the courage to declare Joseph Vissarionovich about the total failure of the tank industry? How did he get to the meeting?
Andrei Zavyalov was from a peasant family with many children (his parents raised 18 children). He was born in 1905 in a village in the Moscow region. Early orphaned, the young man at the age of 14 went to work as a loader on the railroad. In 1922 he entered the labor faculty of the Moscow Institute of Railway Engineers. There the young man's abilities were noticed and he was sent to study at the Leningrad Mining Institute, where he received a specialty of mining engineer-metallurgist.
It was in the first technical university of the country that the future creator of the Soviet armor anti-submunition steel began studying the properties of metals, high-strength alloys, as well as various composite materials. Zavyalov understood that the results of research work mean nothing if they are dusty on the shelves and in the archives of libraries, so in parallel with entering graduate school, he accepted an invitation to a position as a researcher at the All-Russian Research Institute of Metals in Leningrad.
At the beginning of 1930, a research "Armor Group" was formed there, the members of which were sent to specialized enterprises. This is how a young specialist first came to the famous Izhorskiy Zavod, where he had the opportunity to study in detail the schemes and modes of production for optimization purposes. Andrei Sergeyevich's recommended change in the technology of heating of armor parts for hardening allowed to reduce rejects and increase productivity. The success of the talented engineer was reported to Grigory Ordzhonikidze. In May 1932, an order of the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry was issued, according to which the 27-year-old Zavyalov was immediately appointed head of the Central Factory Laboratory at the Izhorskiy plant.
Although the enterprise was the leading manufacturer of armor for the Navy, ship protection was fundamentally different from tank protection. If the strength of battleships, battleships, cruisers and destroyers could be improved by increasing the thickness and weight of armor, in the case of land vehicles it was necessary to think specifically about their passability and maneuverability. Zavyalov faced the task of obtaining a reliable and lightweight material by applying new compositions of alloying elements and more advanced methods of their heat treatment.
Under his direct supervision, Zavyalov developed and introduced into production high hardness IZ grade anti-bullet armor steel (which was later used to produce a batch of hulls and turrets of the then new T-26 tank), IZ-2 grade steel, which made it possible to produce heavy tanks without external blemishes (cracks), as well as ship armor for the Kirov and Maxim Gorky cruisers. In addition, Zavyalov was the first in the world to introduce welding of tank hull and turret armor. It would seem, get bonuses and smile from the board of honor. But the metallurgist was a different kind of man, and the horizon of his scientific interests was much wider than the creation of a single type of high-strength alloy.
After he conducted fire tests of the German cannon of the T-26 tank and received disappointing results, Zavyalov sounded the alarm. With the justification of the urgent need for modernization and reconstruction of metallurgical production, he went to the director of Izhora plants, comrade Belov. The management did not appreciate such zeal and responsibility, because they put at risk all the reports on labor victories. Zavyalov and his laboratory deputy were scandalously dismissed, and the factory radio also accused them of discrediting the tank industry of the USSR and called them "enemies of the people".
Zavyalov sent his suggestions to Andrei Zhdanov, Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Moreover, Leningradskaya Pravda stood up for the dismissed engineers, writing a detailed article about the situation, "Self-Criticism in a Yizhorian Way." Information about the vulnerability of military equipment raised questions in the Kremlin. Andrei Sergeevich was summoned to a meeting of the Labor and Defense Council, which ended with a full recognition of the expediency of his initiatives.
The results were not long in coming: the Spetsstal Production Association established the Main Directorate for Armor Production, which was given the Izhora and Mariupol Metallurgical Plants. Their central laboratories were transformed into Central Armor Laboratories. The director and chief engineer of the Izhora plant were removed from their posts. Andrey Sergeevich became chief metallurgical engineer and deputy technical director of the plant, as well as head of the Central Armor Laboratory.
In 1939, on its basis was formed "Central Research Institute of Metallurgy and Armor" - the future Central Research Institute of Structural Materials "Prometey" (since 2016 is part of the SIC "Kurchatov Institute"). Zavyalov was its permanent director for 19 years, managing a wide range of research to create methods and technologies to produce high-quality and high-performance armor steel and armor for warships, tanks, aircraft, and border fortifications.
During these years, the scientist led the development and production of high hardness armor of 8C grade subjected to hardening and low tempering in thicknesses of up to 45 mm for the T-34 tank, medium hardness armor of 49C and 42C grades subjected to hardening and high tempering in thicknesses of up to 90 mm for the KV heavy tank, monolithic cast tank turrets for the T-34, and 100-500 mm thick ship armor for vertical and horizontal armor of line ships.
Zavyalov worked in close cooperation with the tank design bureau headed by engineer Mikhail Koshkin. As a result, in early 1939 the famous T-34 and somewhat later the KV-1 appeared.
The aviation department of the Central Research Institute was the first in the world to design cemented aircraft armor to protect pilots of attack and fighter aviation. For example, it was widely used in the form of armor spines of Soviet fighters, attack aircraft and bombers.
Another innovative technology was the production of one-piece tank turrets, which replaced riveted and welded turrets with cast ones. According to historians, this played an exceptional role in the development of tank construction and the organization of mass production of KV and T-34 tanks during the Great Patriotic War.
An equally significant initiative of the scientist was the creation of mobile front-line brigades of engineers who were to study the issues of defeatability of vehicles in active tank units. Throughout the war, the Institute's staff and Zavyalov himself constantly traveled to the battlefields, where they analyzed the results of shell hits, assessed the statistics of damage and identified the most vulnerable elements of the design for its operational improvement. This data formed the basis for recommendations on tank combat tactics.
In 1942 Andrei Sergeevich became a doctor of technical sciences, professor and a Stalin Prize winner (for the development of technology for the production of cast tank turrets). After the war he was engaged in cruisers with all-welded hulls and in 1951 he received another Stalin Prize for radical improvement of shipbuilding methods. Later the metallurgist devoted himself to pedagogical activity.
In 1985, the 80-year-old scientist tragically died after being hit by a streetcar. Andrei Zavyalov made a huge contribution to the victory in the Great Patriotic War with his work on the T-34, IS, KV tanks, IL-2 aircraft, armored destroyers and battleships. In the memory of his contemporaries, he remained a man who was not afraid to take on the highest responsibility and proved his case to Stalin himself.
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