S-60 / Type 59 57mm Anti-Aircraft Artillery
The S-60 is a towed, road-transportable, short- to medium-range, single-barrel 57-mm antiaircraft gun system. The S-60 recoil-operated weapon replaced the earlier 37mm models in most Warsaw Pact units. It is a powerful weapon, well suited to attack armored vehicles as well as low-flying aircraft. In addition to on-carriage optical fire control, the S-60 also employs off-carriage fire control with the PUAZO-6/60 director and the SON-9 or SON-9A radars. Originally the PUAZO-5 director and SON-4 radar were used. Further improved director/radar combinations became available in subsequent years.
Recognition features of the S-60 are the long, thin tube with multi-perforated muzzle brake, distinctive gun shield which folds down and the horizontal feed tray which holds the four-round clips. The normal Soviet prime mover was the Ural-375 truck. The four-wheel carriage can be leveled and stabilized on jacks to form a point firing base. Loading is accomplished by 4-round horizontally fed clips. The S-60 also has an ammunition ready rack that can hold 4 four-round clips near ammunition feed mechanism on left side of the breech.
A twin version, the S-68, was mounted on the self-propelled ZSU-57-2, and twin and quad versions are used by the Soviet Navy. It should be noted that the ammunition for the 57mm antiaircraft guns was not interchangeable with that used by the 57mm antitank and assault guns. This was due to the different configuration and dimensions of the cartridge cases. Besides on-carriage optical fire control, the S-60 also employs an off-carriage FLAP WHEEL fire control radar, mounted on a separate van.
The towed S-60 system lacks the mobility of the newer SAM systems with which it was replaced. A self-propelled version, the ZSU-57-2, with twin 57-mm guns mounted on a modified T-54 tank chassis, was introduced in 1957. The ZSU-57-2 has the same characteristics as the S-60 except that it was not radar-controlled. It is now considered obsolete.
Tactical AA range is 4,000 meters with optical sights and 6,000 meters with radar guidance. This weapon, designed to provide defense against aircraft and helicopters, can also be used against lightly armored ground vehicles in a ground support role.
S-60 is a single-barreled anti-aircraft gun with a 57mm caliber and 72 times the diameter. It adopts a longitudinally moving screw breech block, a spring type recuperator, and a hydraulic recoil machine with a foldable gun mount. Its length is 4850mm, and its combat weight is 4.8t. Its practical 57X348mmSR ammunition has a maximum range of 6000m, a maximum firing height of 5000m, and a rate of fire of 70rpm. It uses magazines to feed the ammunition and has 24 rounds of ammunition. When using APCBC, it can penetrate 90mm homogeneous steel at a distance of 1000m, which can effectively deal with some light tanks. , also has good ballistic performance. Its maximum pitch angle is -4°~87°, and its direction angle is 360°. Ural 375 trucks are generally used for traction, with a maximum speed of 50km/h.
It only takes 8 minutes to switch from transport mode to combat mode. S-60s are generally used in battalions. There are 8 S-60s in a battalion, and each requires 4 operators. Although this kind of artillery was a towed artillery, it has very powerful fire control at that time. It has son-9 gun sight radar, PUAZ0-5 fire control computer, D-49 radar range finder, E-18 automatic vector sight It has a high degree of automation and can fight around the clock. For quite a period of time, the S-60 can be described as the most powerful anti-aircraft weapon of the Soviet Union. After that, it often exists as a low-altitude escort for the SAM series of missiles.
Compared with other medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns, it has significant advantages in terms of artillery range and ammunition damage capability. At present, many military aircraft (such as armed helicopters) have the ability to defend against direct fire of several small-caliber artillery shells, and can leave the theater after being shot, while medium-caliber anti-aircraft guns can accommodate more powerful battles with a larger warhead internal volume.
The gun is a fully automatic gun, and the entire shooting process is automatically completed by using recoil energy, and the operation is simple and fast. The artillery design is reasonable, the ballistic performance is good, and it has good shooting accuracy with all-weather combat capability.
The ammunition of the 57mm artillery is more than 600mm long and weighs more than 5kg. Such a large ammunition makes automatic loading difficult and limits the increase in the rate of fire of the artillery. For example, the rate of fire of the traditional 35mm air-guided automaton can reach 550 rounds/min, and the rate of fire of the rotary-bore automaton is as high as 1100 rounds/min, while the rate of fire of a single 57mm gun is only about 100 rounds/min. It is difficult to effectively cover the cluster target in use. On the other hand, although the 57mm artillery is powerful, its excessive ammunition volume also greatly affects the ammunition load.
S-60 57mm AAA - History
The S-60 can almost be said to be the T-55 in the anti-aircraft gun world. As long as the Soviet forces had their hands, there would be such anti-aircraft guns. There are still countless countries still using this anti-aircraft gun and its imitations.
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union improved the M1943 57mm anti-tank gun to replace the M1939 37mm anti-aircraft gun. In 1944, the Soviets wanted to develop a new type of anti-aircraft gun to replace the old 61K 37mm anti-aircraft gun. 57-mm towed anti-aircraft automatic gun mod. 1950 S-60 , was developed at the Lev Loktev Design Bureau in the second half of the 1940s, and entered service with the Soviet Army in the early 1950s to replace the 37-mm towed anti-aircraft gun mod. 1939 The chief designer of the S-60 was the famous gunsmith Vasily Gavrilovich Grabin.
Grabin integrated a large number of German G58 anti-aircraft artillery technologies, which enabled the Central Artillery Design Bureau to successfully complete this new artiller. The S-60 was adopted by the Soviet Army in January 1950 under the designation " AZP-57 57-mm anti-aircraft automatic gun ". In the same year, its mass production began.
Equipped with troops in 1950, replacing the M1939 37mm anti-aircraft gun. The gun is now out of production and has been mostly replaced in the Soviet Army by the Sam-8 anti-aircraft missile. After the Indian army introduced it, it was called the S60 57mm anti-aircraft gun. It wa mainly used to deal with medium and low-altitude targets, and can also be used to attack ground targets.
The S-60 was found in the antiaircraft regiment of some motorized rifle and tank divisions to protect critical assets. However, by the 1980s it had been replaced in most Soviet divisions by the SA-6/GAINFUL or SA-8/GECKO SAM systems. It also may be found in territorial defense units, especially around airfields. An S-60-equipped regiment has 24 guns: four firing batteries each consisting of six guns and a fire control center. A S-60 battery will generally consist of six guns, a fire-control radar, and a fire-control director. Some versions may have the FLAP WHEEL as the primary fire control radar.
China imitated the S-60, the model is the Type 59 anti-aircraft gun, and it still occupies a large position in the country's air defense force. The S-60 was built by the Chinese [designated Type 59] and has seen combat in the Middle East. In Vietnam it was the keystone of North Vietnamese low-altitude air defense and was most effective between 460 meters (1,500 feet) and 1,500 meters (5,000 feet).
In addition to the states of the former Soviet Union, it was in service with the armies of more than 35 countries, including the former Warsaw Pact, as well as Algeria, China, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and the former Yugoslavia. The gun was produced in the USSR, as well as under license in Poland and China (Type 59).
In the 1990s, the Research and Production Center for Professional Electronics Radwar SA (Poland) modernized the S-60 guns for use in the Umbrella-57 anti-aircraft artillery system, which interacts with the N-22 radar to detect low-flying targets. It consists of a battery of four S-60M cannons, a WD-95 fire control vehicle, a TZKM surveillance monocular, and a PAD-20 field generator.
The S-60M guns are equipped with a new electric drive system and digital systems for interaction with the fire control machine, so they can be aimed at the target automatically or semi-automatically, as well as manually (emergency). The WD-95 fire control vehicle provides reception and display of information about the situation in the air received from the radar, detection and tracking of targets using a television camera or FLIR (up to 10 km), selection of a target for destruction, automatic guidance of each gun, reception of coordinate information targets from the TZKM monocular, the main task of which was to search and track targets.
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