Zavod #1
Engineers and technicians formerly employed by Junkers Siebel and Heinkel were taken to Podberesge to set up and operate an aircraft development plant. The personnel at this plant (Zavod #1) were divided into two groups - Junkers and Soviet personnel in one group (OKB-l) and Siebel, Heinkel, and Soviet technicians in the other group (OKB-2). The total labor force was about 3000-3500. In addition to the 365 Junkers and l92 Siebel and Heinkel technicians the total figure included plant maintenance groups, security police, party organizations, and company operated stores. All of the equipment and machinery was taken from the former Junkers Dessau and Siebel Halle plants.
Both Siebel and Halle groups were under the supervision of a Soviet Plant Director who was responsible to the Deputy Minister for Aircraft Industry in Moscow. It is to be noted that the Plant Director reported directly to the Air Ministry and not through the Central Institute of Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics [TsAGI].
The Director's Administrative Staff under Birke direct raised payrroll accounting, and other plant administrative maatters. Wosnizenski, the Chief Engineer, advised the Plant Director on matters. He was the superior of both Junkers and Siebe chief Designers, but did not actually direct the design work.
It is extremely difficult to present an organization chart that would be completely accurate at any given time. Personnel at Zavod #1 were continually transferred as dictated by the work load in different departments. Furthermore, when the Soviets felt that Soviet workers had acquired sufficient experience they began to combine departments and to take over jobs formerly occupied by Germans. The Junkers and Siebel Groups each worked independently on their design projects, but they shared most of the facilities for shops and laboratories. Design and production methods and procedures were the same for both groups, but since the Siebel (OKB-2) operations were less extensive, some of their design sections were combined. The authority of both the German and Soviet management of the departments varied from complete to orally administrative control.
For convenience in referencing, names and department numbers were assigned by participating USAF specialists. These department numbers are purely arbitrary. The English names are those which may be used for comparable departments in US aircraft factories. Estimates of the number of people employed were given for the OKB-1 Group; this was not attempted for OKB-2 except that where the departments were combined the estimate is given for the entire shop. In most of the OKB-2 design sections, the status of Soviet personnel was unkown.
Chief Designer's Office (Chefkonistrukeur) Responsible for the entire design and construction of new aircraft which included all research, design, testing and buildingof prototypes. Airplane design and tooling drawings were made for series production aircraft but there was no mass production of aircraft at Podberesje. OKB-1 and OKB-2 were completely separate in this office.
Technical Liaison Office (Technisches Verbindungsbuero) This office was responsible for coordinating the work of the design offices and the various shops and laboratories. It assisted the shop personnel by explaining ideas of the designers and helped in the interpretation of drawings. This office expedited design changes and helped in setting up means whereby damaged parts could be salvaged. The Chief Liaison Engineer was present at the preliminary design discussions, but the real work of theoffice did not begin until the first detail design drawings of a plane were completed and the shop started work on the parts. The liaison engineers worked on any problem of all airplanes. One exception was Goretsk who usually was the liaison man assigned to Flight Test because of his fluency in Russian, in addition to his technical capabilities.
OKB-1. Chief Designer Brunolph Baade (Junkers). The engineer TsAGI Petr Nikolayevich Obrubov was appointed as his deputy. As part of OKB-1 there were many scientists - doctors of science. The subject of activity is heavy aircraft.
OKB-2. Chief Designer Hans Ressing, his deputy - engineer Alexander Yakovlevich Bereznyak. Subdivisions were directed by: engineer Heinson-the flying department, engineer Shepp-engine department. There was still a department of physics. The thematic of OKB-2 was high-speed aircraft with LRE.
In 1949, the chief designer of both design bureaus was Semyon Mikhailovich Alekseev.
The OKB-1 designed and built the following aircraft:
In OKB-2, two supersonic aircraft were designed and built. The goal was to achieve a speed corresponding to 1.5-2 M.
- "346" - experimental single-seat aircraft with a two-chamber LPRE on a retractable landing skis at the start from a carrier aircraft. The project was developed at Siebel in Halle. The aircraft was built in the USSR, it was flown in three prototypes, one of them with a working LPRE,
- "468" became a further development of the previous type. It was being built, but it was not brought and tested in connection with the closure of the works of German design bureaus.
By the end of the 1940s, the presence of a large number of Germans in aviation enterprises in the USSR was also weighing on Soviet leaders. They had to pay their salaries, provide jobs, and solve their socio-political problems. Meanwhile, the benefits of German specialists working in a closed environment, without contact with other scientific and design organizations and therefore quickly losing their qualifications, became less and less. In a letter to Assistant Director of Plant No. 1 Murashev in the MAP of December 5, 1949, it was stated: "The collective of German specialists is working at the factory with the mood of a forced temporary stay in the Soviet country, in the hope of resolving the issue of their return to Germany, working slowly, without initiative and without the desire, with the exception of a small group, to transfer to us their accumulated technical experience in the field of the latest aircraft engineering if they have it in the size of today's requirements."
Two more circumstances pushed the decision to return the Germans to their homeland. First, in factories where German specialists were involved, the production of new samples of Soviet military equipment was unfolding and the presence of foreigners there became extremely undesirable. Secondly, by the end of the 1940s Soviet Soviet aviation could successfully develop independently and German knowledge at the level of 1944-1945. no longer represented an interest for Soviet scientists and designers. All this led to a decision on the beginning of the phased export of Germans from the USSR.
The participation of the Germans in the creation of powerful turboprop engines was useful for the USSR. None of the planes designed by German designers went into the series. One of the reasons for the failure was the futility of the main design ideas, which were the basis for the concept of these aircraft. As time has shown, neither the wing of reverse sweep, nor the use of rockets or pulse-jets as powerplant, nor the bicycle scheme landing gear, found wide application in Soviet aviation. Soviet engineers gained experience on certain particular design issues, such as the use of a new V-45 rivet alloy and V-95 structural alloy, and the design of hydraulically controlled turrets. The attempt to use German specialists for the development of Soviet jet aircraft did not yield any noticeable results.
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