Artillery Directorate - History
Introduced in 1382, a new kind of weapon - the cannon - did not immediately become a native troops, and during the first century of its existence remained virtually unchanged or manufacturing technology tools or methods of using them in combat: guns were forged in the smithy of iron and used to defend the city, the Kremlin and fortresses.
Only during the reign of Tsar Ivan III was the cannon foundry born. Then in in the Grand Duke's army handguns and artillery became an integral part of Russian troops in the campaigns.
However, as evidenced by the record, production of artillery weapons at that time was of spontaneous character. Each city had someone doing something that could make him the master-gunner. The beginning of the production of artillery weapons for the troops is first mentioned in chronicles in 1475. The cannon house for a long time was the center of military supplies, the main supplier of guns and powder cores, putting an end to disunity and anarchy in their production. It was the forerunner of the Main Artillery Directorate, and ancestor of plants in Russia.
Reform of Ivan the Terrible state administrative system led to the creation of "order" as the top management bodies. Among the many industry "orders" in 1577 the Cannon Order was organized, placed in the Kremlin. It was in charge of all the affairs of the artillery - the production of weapons, ammunition, combat use them. It brings together all the major cities in the existing Cannon "huts" and originally created in Moscow the Cannon Yard.
In 1627 the Cannon Order was renamed in the Pushkarsky Order, with responsiblity increased. It is responsible for the major part of the material means of defense, namely, guns, ammunition, gunpowder, fortifications and engineering fortifications.
In 1700 Peter I issued a decree that the Order Pushkarsky renamed Order of Artillery, and all the works of artillery passed "manage Artillery General Prince Alexander Archilovich." However, the prince was bestowed the title of the new Russia in General Feldtseyhmeystera [Field Artillery Master] - General of Artillery.
There were barying functions and names of central institutions of artillery. General feldtseyhmeyster two centuries of Russian history remained a symbol of power and uniting the armed forces and the production of all that belonged to the artillery.
On June 27 1859 the "Regulations on the transformation of Garrison Artillery", divided garrison artillery in into the land guns, and the garrison, designed to carry artillery guard and maintenance of the property in the garrisons, arsenals and factories. Artillery districts were renamed District fortress artillery. In each fortresses and fortifications, on the basis of artillery garrisons were established fortress artillery, which included: Staff (later - control), headed by the commander of garrison artillery, artillery units, warehouses artillery assets, workshops and laboratories.
Overall supervision of the fortress artillery carried inspector fortress artillery at the Artillery Department (since December 28, 1862 - Main Artillery Directorate (GAU)). With the introduction of the military district (1863-1864) fortress artillery district were gradually abolished, fortified artillery artillery subordinate offices of military districts. Since that time the anem and subordination often changed.
On December 28, 1862 the Main Artillery Administration was established by order of the minister of war number 375. The same order abolished the headquarters of General feldtseyhmeystera and artillery department. The composition of GAC was included artillery branch of the Military Scientific Committee, called from now on the Artillery Committee.
Important part of the GAC was the rearmament of cannons and guns. It was created and delivered to equip the Russian army following samples artillery and small arms: 37 mm trench gun, 76 mm field gun, 76 mm mountain gun, a 280-mm gun, 122 mm Howitzer, 152mm Howitzer, 203- mm howitzer, 305 mm howitzer, 7.62mm Infantry Mosin rifle, a 7.62-mm machine gun "Maxim" and others.
While in previous years, when the artillery was small in number and scope of tasks of leadership it was small, the existence of a single governing body was natural, as the quantitative and qualitative growth artillery volume management tasks it has increased significantly. There was an urgent need to share a single supreme governing body of artillery (GAC) into two independent body with the separation of production and supply functions from the command inspector. Therefore, in 1905, there was established the post of Inspector-General of Artillery, charged with command and supervisory functions.
In the Great War, the military leadership of Russia was not able to foresee the scale of operations. It was confident that existing reserves will last for a whole year of the war, and it will last a maximum of 4-6 months. In fact, the hostilities in August-September 1914 caused a huge demand in the army ammunition, far surpassed all calculations mobilization. At the same time it was necessary to equip numerous newly formed military units of artillery and infantry. Since the end of 1914 GAC had hastily ordered armaments not only in the Russian factories and abroad, providing them an army at war.
During the October Revolution and after the GAC did not stop their work. In December 1917, the Soviet government began to reorganize the old apparatus of the War Ministry. For GAU this reorganization was carried out without major changes, because its device were not deleted or dissolved, as was done with respect to other departments of the Ministry. According to the new state of the GAC were: Council of GAC; departments orders and supply troops with artillery weapons, ammunition, property, ammunition and instruments; Artillery Committee and the Office. The total number of GAC was 734 employees.
The process of technical rearmament and modernization artvooruzheniya. Create a network of research institutes and design bureaus. By the end of 1938, the GAC has developed and approved a new plan for the weapon system artillery, infantry, tanks, air defense from a pistol and ending with field guns 305 mm caliber, as well as the creation of mortars. Equipped and filled with new arms and ammunition arsenals, bases and depots. In 1932 the troops there were 10,700 guns and mortars, and by the beginning of the Second World War, in 1939, there were 34,000.
The GAC had to deal with the improvement of the new chief GAU Marshal of Artillery Nikolai Yakovlev. He accepted a position from the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War and brilliantly led the GAU throughout 1,418 days and nights.
Pre-war extensive program of qualitative and quantitative rearmament could not be fully implemented by the beginning of the war because of the large amount of work and lack of capital investment, however, despite the difficulties, the beginning of 1941 have been established regiment, anti-tank, anti-aircraft artillery and modern mortars, namely 37-mm antitank gun model 1930, 57-mm anti-tank gun of the sample of 1941, 45mm PT gun model 1937, 50-, 82-, 107- and 120-mm mortar sample of 1938, 40 and 76- mm anti-aircraft guns, in 1939, was developed 14.5-mm anti-tank semi-automatic gun, 12.7 mm anti-aircraft gun DSK, which is used in the army so far, 25-mm automatic anti-aircraft gun of the sample of 1940, 7.62-mm machine gun Degtyarev DP system, 7.62 mm self-loading rifle Tokarev 7.62mm SMG (PPD) Degtyareva, 7,62- mm submachine gun Shpagin - known PCA and others. In addition, the development and testing of a new type of weapon - fighting vehicles rocket artillery BM-13, which later became the legendary "Katyusha" and the BM-8-24, were completed.
In general, for the period from 1917 to 1941 GAU has done a great job of upgrading the existing and creation of new models of weapons and ammunition and equip their forces. There were adopted 23 samples of ground artillery, anti-aircraft artillery 5 samples, 5 samples of mortars, tank shells 2, 18 samples of small arms and around 118 different nomenclatures ammunition. The Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army, as a general contractor and contentment authority to ensure troops artillery and ammunition, provided during the years of the Great Patriotic War, the development and scale production of 30 new models of artillery ground artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, armored rocket artillery, mortars, Tanks and self-propelled guns, 10 new models of small arms.
According to the plans and orders of the GAC during the Second World War, industry made 12 million rifles and carbines, more than 6 million Submachine guns, about 1 million machine guns, over 600 thousand pieces of artillery, mortars, tanks and self-propelled guns, and more than 450 thosand wagons of ammunition.
After the war, before the GAC has been tasked with the development of new types of weapons that were superior to samples of foreign armies. In this regard, SAU in the early 1950s launched work on the creation of nuclear missiles, air defense systems, radar equipment, multiple launch rocket systems, means of automated control systems (ACS) arms and troops, as well as new systems, models and systems of self-propelled ground and anti-aircraft artillery, anti-tank missiles, small arms and close combat. The objective was to share with the industry in the short term to create new weapons, to organize its serial production, and then to introduce the troops.
In 1946, DF Ustinov, VM Ryabikova and LM Gaidukov on the results of the Soviet Institute of Nordhausen in the zone of occupation in Germany, created for the study of the military-industrial complex of the plant "Montagna" for the production of V-2 rocket, together with the staff of the Institute Nordhausen decide that the missile is not a munition is a promising new type of weapon based on the military-industrial complex. In 1956, due to the emergence of new types of weapons of missile technology, the notation (indexes) of the samples of weapons used in the non-confidential correspondence, had undergone a number of changes.
Given the large proportion of the work in the field of missiles, on November 19, 1960 the Ministry of Defence on 19 November 1960 renamed the Main Artillery Administration (GAU) to the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU), which is a state customer of military equipment, at the beginning of 1960 the military representative of the customer are placed in the factories.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sacked on 24 November 2009 a number of high-ranking officers after two explosions at an arms depot in the city of Ulyanovsk, in Russia's Volga region. Ten people were killed and dozens injured in separate explosions on November 13 and 23 at the Arsenal 31 arms depot, which belongs to the Russian Caspian Sea Fleet.
The list of those released from duty includes the chief of the Engineer Troops (Yu. P. Balkhovitin), the head of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (O. Chikirev), the deputy commander of the Volga and Ural Military District for armaments (V. G. Khalitov), and the acting commander of the Engineer Troops (Col. A. A. Bobrakov).
The November 13 explosions are believed to have occurred while ammunition was being dismantled at the depot. Two naval personnel were killed at the depot. Six unexploded artillery shells were later found in the vicinity of the depot. More than 1,000 local residents were evacuated from the area. The November 23 explosion occurred when ammunition was being loaded into a truck. Eight servicemen were killed in the incident.
As the head of GRAU, Major-General Alexander Romanovsky, stated 06/20/2011 that information in the media that the Russian Defense Ministry abolished the archive of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU), which contained information about all Russian arsenals and arms production for more than 500 years of history, is untrue. "It can not be done under any circumstances, since all the documents Grau until the 18th century stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents from 18-19 centuries - the Russian State Military History Archives, in the early 20th century to the 40s - in the Russian State Military Archive, "- said Alexander Romanovsky.
As for the documents the period from the 40s of the 20th century to the present time, they are kept in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. However, there is a small part of the documents, mainly on the history of Grau, which focuses directly to the management, also its safety reliably ensured.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
