As in July, the report forwarded a draft State Defense Committee decree, this time for the “manufacture of 203 mm auxiliary-powered howitzers on the IS tank chassis.” This time the artillerymen’s appetite was more modest:
1. The People’s Commissariat of Arms (Comrade Ustinov and Comrade Kotin) and the People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry (Comrade Malyshev) shall by October 15, 1944, prepare engineering drawings for a 203 mm auxiliary-powered howitzer based on the IS tank in accordance with the GAU’s operational requirement.
2. The People’s Commissariat of Arms (Comrade Ustinov and Comrade Grabin) shall send the number of designers required to coordinate all issues concerning mounting of the howitzer and developing engineering drawings to Factory No. 100 of the People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry, where all of the work will be completed.
The GAU (Comrade Yakovlev) shall, upon completion of the engineering drawings, send a representative to Factory No. 100 to approve the drawings on site.
3. The People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry (Comrade Mlyshev, Comrade Zaltsman, and Comrade Kotin) shall, upon securing IS tanks, manufacture a batch of 20 203-mm systems on IS tank chassis by the following deadlines:
During October: 5
During November: 15.{15}
This second attempt at crossing the river turned out to be no more successful than the previous one. It should be noted that TsAKB was extremely cool to the idea of developing a system like the S-51 on an IS chassis. TsAKB’s deputy chief designer, K. K. Renne, wrote a letter to Khokhlov and Satel expressing the opinion that it would be inadvisable to take on another development project before the decrees are issued. In other words, TsAKB was holding firm to the idea of an SP gun using the KV-1S chassis. The People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry and the Main Armor Directorate were also cool to the SP gun concept, but for a different reason.
It would be inadvisable to mount the B-4 203 mm howitzer on the KV-1S tank chassis for the following reasons:
1. The system would weigh about 50 tonnes, 7 tonnes more than the KV-1S, which would cause the vehicle assemblies to operate unreliably.
2. It would not make sense to manufacture an open artillery vehicle based on a tank with strong armor protection.
3. The KV-1S tanks have been dropped from production, and they would be difficult to repair due to the lack of spare parts.
The GAU’s Artillery Committee has developed an operational requirement for designing a 203 mm howitzer vehicle based on the IS tank.
In its letter No. 556976s of July 30, 1944, GABTU’s Self-Propelled Artillery Office wrote the GAU’s Artillery Committee concerning the inadvisability of using the IS tank with strong armor for an open 203 mm howitzer system.
The GABTU’s Self-Propelled Artillery Office has recommended designing a special chassis using assemblies from a heavy tank and a tractor.{16}
The situation finally reached an impasse in November. On the one hand, the TsAKB had not warmed to the idea of reworking the S-51 project. On the other, both the People’s Commissariat of the Tank Industry and the Self-Propelled Artillery Office of the Red Army’s Main Armor Directorate were firmly opposed to both SP gun versions. In commenting on the draft State Defense Committee decree, Malyshev suggested designing a new SP gun. Under wartime conditions that essentially killed the project.
The story had come to an appropriate end. The controversy meant that the S-51 and S-59 went no further than the prototype stage, and the SP howitzer that the artillerymen needed so badly was never fielded. As they did in the winter of 1939–1940, the artillerymen “took down” enemy fortifications with heavy guns and mortars that were exposed to direct fire.
Sources
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF)
Russian State Archive of Sociopolitical History (RGASPI)
Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE)
Factory No. 9 archives
The military journal of V. A. Malyshev
N. F. Shashmurin, 50 Years of Conflict: Development of the Domestic Tank Industry [50 let protivoborstva. K voprosu o razvitii otechestvennogo tankostroyeniya], 1987.
N. S. Popov, V. I. Petrov, Without Secrets: The 60-Year History of the Kirov Factory’s Design Bureau in St. Petersburg [Bez tayn i sekretov. Ocherk 60-letney istorii tankogo konstruktorskogo byuro na Kirovskom zavode v Sankt-Peterburge]. St. Petersburg: 1997, ISBN 5-86761-014-4.
History of a Mechanical Engineering Design Bureau [Istoriya KBM]. KBM: 1967.
Illustrations from the personal archive of Igor Zheltov (IZh)
Illustrations from the archive of the publishing house Strategiya KM (ASKM)
Illustrations from the personal archive of Vyacheslav Len (V. Len)
Illustrations from the personal archive of Sergei Ageyev (SA)
Photographs from the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents (RGAKFD)
Photographs from the author’s personal archives (YuP)
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Copyright
The SU-152 and Related Vehicles
Copyright © 2013, Yuri Igorevich Pasholok. English translation © 2017, Wargaming World, Ltd.
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