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- Pravo i delo: patents told about the contribution of Soviet inventors to the Victory
Pravo i delo: patents told about the contribution of Soviet inventors to the Victory
Russian historians have studied the archives of patents and copyright certificates for discoveries, inventions and rationales during the Great Patriotic War. This work served as the basis for a review of the achievements that ensured the superiority of our country and helped to defeat the invaders. Among the noted inventions are the famous Katyusha, the ZiS—3 cannon, the Il-2 aircraft, and heavy-duty steel for tanks. According to experts, patents are a valuable source of information, but they do not reflect the contribution of all the specialists who participated in the development.
How expertise and invention were organized
The publication of the book "The Contribution of scientists and Inventors to the victory over Fascism" was prepared for the Victory anniversary by the staff of the Federal Institute of Industrial Property subordinate to Rospatent. Based on this work, Andrey Kolesnikov, a researcher at FIPS, prepared an overview of the achievements that ensured the technological superiority of our country and helped to defeat the invaders.
According to official statistics, during the entire period of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, 24,200 applications were filed in our country and 7,000 copyright certificates and patents were issued.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 Finished products of the Chelyabinsk Defense Plant. Chelyabinsk, 1942.
At the same time, official statistics do not reflect the full potential of scientific creativity, since not all inventions were registered during these years, and many of them were classified. Nevertheless, even according to far from complete data, about 7 thousand rationalization proposals were implemented on the fronts in 1942, 22 thousand in 1943, and 47 thousand in 1944.
In the harsh conditions of wartime, the movement of inventors and innovators unfolded both at the front and in the rear. The aspirations of scientists, engineering and technical thought, and working savvy were aimed at ensuring technical superiority over the enemy in the shortest possible time.
The first months of the war were especially difficult, when new approaches were needed to solve scientific, technical and production problems. One of the important incentives for scientific creativity at this time was the Stalin Prizes. They were awarded for outstanding inventions and fundamental improvements in production methods. In 1942 alone, 183 people were awarded such an award. A total of 950 specialists won the Stalin Prize during the war.
Under the cannon roar
About 40% of all artillery systems that were in service with the Red Army and used in combat operations were designed and mastered by industry during the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, the period of introduction of new types of artillery weapons was reduced to one to two months instead of one to two years earlier.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 The Battle of Kursk. Soviet 76-mm ZiS-3 divisional cannon with a crew from the 5th Guards Tank Army in position near Kursk.
The most widespread weapon was the ZIS-3 — 76- a millimeter divisional cannon developed under the leadership of Vasily Grabin. She appeared at the front in the second half of 1942. The lightweight and maneuverable ZiS-3 has found application in the fight against both manpower and enemy equipment. In total, more than 100,000 of these guns were produced — more than all the others combined during the war.
In the late 1930s, the Jet Research Institute developed a "mechanized installation for firing rocket projectiles of various calibers" - the prototype of the famous Katyusha. In 1939-1941, its authors, with the participation of other RNII employees, created the BM-13 rocket launcher based on the ZiS-6 truck.
Vladimir Barmin, Vasily Aborenkov, Andrey Kostikov, Ivan Gvai, Alexey Pavlenko, Alexander Popov, Yuri Pobedonostsev and others worked on the projects. The BM-13, or Katyusha, was put into service on June 21, 1941. Designers Leonid Schwartz, Alexander Ponomarenko, Fedor Poida, and Vasily Luzhin made a significant contribution to the development and improvement of Katyusha rockets.
The power of combat vehicles
Everyone has heard about the T-34 tank, but during the war years, many other machines were created that caused damage to the enemy.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Liberation of the city of Yukhnov from the Nazi occupiers during the Rzhev-Vyazma offensive operation. A column of Soviet T-60 tanks enters the liberated Yukhnov.
Thus, heavy losses at the front in the first months of the war forced the designers to accelerate work on new tanks. In 1941-1943, Nikolai Astrov, who had previously led the creation of the T-38 and T-40 small floating tanks and the T-20 Komsomolets tracked semi-armored artillery tractor, became deputy chief designer of the Gorky Automobile Plant for special production.
He led the production of light tanks T-30, T-60 (1941), T-70, T-80, SU-76 M self-propelled gun and a number of other prototypes of tanks and self-propelled guns. In total, he created 26 types of combat vehicles. Their production took place in a short time, in a little over a year the factories managed to assemble almost 6 thousand cars that fought near Moscow and defended Leningrad.
Almost immediately after the launch of the T-60, Nikolai Astrov began designing a more powerful and protected version of the T-70 light tank, which fought until the end of the war. In 1941-1943, 8,231 copies of this machine armed with a 45-millimeter cannon were produced.
The armor is strong
In the conditions of evacuation, only the creative feat of inventors and innovators, engineers and home front workers made it possible to give the front maximum tanks superior to the enemy's equipment in the shortest possible time. A significant role here was played by the invention of academician E.O. Paton, who proposed a new method of welding armor under a layer of flux. This made it possible to significantly speed up the manufacture of heavy equipment hulls.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 Production of T-34 and IS-2 tanks in the workshop of the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant before being sent to the front. The plant received the unofficial name "Tankograd".
The active development of metallurgy also contributed to the strengthening of tank construction. In particular, under the leadership of Joseph Kvater, Uralmashzavod has mastered the manufacture of corrosion-resistant non-magnetic banding rings for large turbo generators. The winner of the Stalin Prize for the development of technology for the production of cast tank turrets, he also participated in the creation of a new brand of heat-resistant steel and technology for the manufacture of rotors and turbine discs of large steam turbines, which allowed the production of such units with a capacity of 200 MW or more.
Tanks were protected not only by armor, but also by other inventions. For example, the anti—mine trawl is a development by Pavel Mugalev. Since August 1942, this device has been used on the fronts and saved thousands of tankers' lives during the battles of Stalingrad, the breakthrough of the Blue Line, the Battle of the Dnieper and other battles. For creating a minesweeper for tanks, the designer was awarded the Stalin Prize of the third degree.
Reach height
Despite the enormous losses of aircraft in the first three months of the war, by autumn the situation on the aviation front began to level out. By this time, aviation and aircraft engine plants from the European part of the USSR had been relocated to the Urals, Western Siberia, Kuibyshev, Kazan, and Tashkent. Almost immediately, they started producing new aircraft. A total of 125,655 aircraft were produced during the war, of which more than 108,000 were combat aircraft.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 Assembly of the Pe-2 front-line bomber at plant No. 22 in Kazan.
It is worth noting that the coup in the air war was provided by the MiG-1 and MiG-3 fighter planes developed by designers Artem Mikoyan, Mikhail Gurevich and Vladimir Volodin. The high flight speed and powerful weapons made it possible for Soviet pilots to use MiG-3 aircraft not only in aerial combat, but also to attack a ground enemy. A total of 3,172 of these machines were produced.
Also, during the war, a dive bomber was required, which, when struck by vertical flight, would practically "fall" along with the bombs, and after dropping the bombs would come out of the peak, overcoming significant overloads. Such an aircraft was developed at the experimental design bureau, which was headed by Vladimir Petlyakov. This is the Pe-2, which was not inferior to fighters in terms of maximum speed and significantly surpassed the German He-III bombers (by more than 100 km / h) and Yu-88 (by 75 km/h). A total of 11,427 Pe-2 aircraft were built during the war.
In January 1941, Andrei Tupolev's ANT—58 bomber (Tu-2 in the new classification) made its first flight. It differed from the Pe-2 in serious armor and impressive armament: two 20mm ShVAK aviation cannons and three 12.7 mm UBT machine guns. At the same time, it could lift up to 3 tons of bombs into the air.
The Tu-2 had many modifications — it was used as a reconnaissance, transport and even mail aircraft, as well as as a platform for scientific research. It was recognized as the best war machine in its category. On September 16, 1945, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Andrei Tupolev the title Hero of Socialist Labor "for his work in the field of national defense during the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against the Nazi invaders."
LaGG-3, La-5, La-7 fighters designed by Semyon Lavochkin, and the Yak-1, created by Alexander Yakovlev, also played a major role in gaining dominance in the sky. A total of 22,281 LaGG and La fighters and more than 40,000 Yak aircraft were produced during the war.
At the same time, when Sergey Ilyushin was designing an attack aircraft, he focused on booking the main components of the machine. As a result, the Il-2 turned out to be a real "flying tank", and the Germans nicknamed it the black death.
Inventions for infantry
At the very beginning of the war, the task arose of creating simple, reliable, anti-tank weapons for the infantry. In a short time, the plants created and mastered a single-shot anti-tank rifle designed by Vasily Degtyarev and a five-shot anti-tank rifle designed by Sergey Simonov.
In addition, in 1942, instead of the oversized PPSh submachine gun, a lighter, more compact and cheaper-to-produce submachine gun designed by Alexei Sudaev was developed. The first samples of these weapons were field tested in units of the Leningrad Front. The PPP was a weapon that was simple in design and application and cheap to manufacture.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 The Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942 – February 2, 1943). Soviet armored trucks with PTRD-41 (single-shot Degtyarev anti-tank rifle) are firing near Stalingrad.
It was almost completely assembled from stamped parts, was lighter and more convenient to handle. Its serial production was established at the Sestroretsk Arms Factory.
A valuable source
According to experts, patents and copyright certificates are an important source of information, which, however, does not always reliably and fully reflect the contribution of specialists who participated in the development.
— For example, there is an episode with the military invention of physicist Isaac Khalatnikov, made "on his knee," said Olga Selivanova, Deputy Director of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. — We are talking about a method of conducting anti-aircraft barrage fire at targets when they are not visible. Such shooting protected against attacks from the air in conditions of poor visibility (at night or in cloudy weather). At the same time, it was the calculations that were difficult when creating the methodology, and its application was no longer difficult for the battery commanders. The method was widely used in combat shooting, but the development was not officially registered.
This illustrates, the expert noted, that many inventions of that time were not legally registered.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 The Battle of Stalingrad. Senior Lieutenant Anatoly Kiselyov's anti-aircraft battery crew is firing a 37mm automatic anti-aircraft cannon on the roof of a house in Stalingrad.
— The Patent Archive is a valuable database on the history of science and technology. It allows us not only to fix the priority of certain developments, but also helps to trace trends in engineering decision—making and the development of design ideas," said historian Alexander Zheleznyakov.
At the same time, the expert added, it should be borne in mind that in certain historical epochs the attitude towards patenting was different. So, in Soviet times, when unique developments were carried out in the nuclear and aviation industries, in rocket engineering, in materials science and many other industries related to the country's defense capability, there was a strict secrecy regime that did not allow many decisions to be transferred to the category of patents.
In addition, Alexander Zheleznov noted, the Soviet patenting system was isolated and operated in isolation from other countries.
— The protection of intellectual property in the USSR to a greater extent meant not the rights to this property, but the protection of his family name as a priority developer, — said Pavel Gaiduk, senior researcher at the Museum of Cosmonautics.
According to him, so-called copyright certificates were issued, which were used, rather, to understand which team and which person, conditionally, should be awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. At the same time, not all developments received copyright certificates, and the teams of authors within the copyright certificate might not correspond to reality.
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