Soviet wonder-weapons: Things that might have been

[John D Salt]

For a long time I have held a fascination for the strange devices the Red Army experimented with in the late 30s and early 40s: the Kurchevsky recoilless 76mm gun, the 37mm spade-mortar, and of course the mighty Kartukov ampulomyot (spiritual brother of the Northover Projector and Bates Eight-Barrelled Bottle-Thrower).

I have recently been making desultory attempts to read Shirokorad’s “Artillery in the Great Patriotic War”, and came across a reference to a Soviet wonder-weapon I was not previously aware of. The new (to me) device is the Taubin AG-2 automatic grenade launcher. Recoil-operated, fully automatic, and throwing 40mm grenades (of the same pattern as used in the D’yakonov rifle grenade launcher) to 1250m, it was apparently used briefly in the Winter War. A few minutes with google will turn up some pictures of the beast.

Yakov Taubin was purged in October 1941, I believe on trumped-up charges as a result of standing up to a bullying boss from the “mortar mafia”. Leonid Kurchevsky, the recoilless gun pioneer, was purged in the Yezhovschina in 1937 (or possibly 39), the same purge that killed Mikhail Tukhachesky, the genius who devised the theory of deep battle.

While researching the Taubin AG-2 and Kurchesvsky’s recoilless guns across the sprawl of the interwebs, I have also come across a single picture of a bazooka-like shoulder-fired rocket-launcher devised by Boris Petroplavovksy, a rocket pioneer who also worked on the RS-82 rockets as launched by Katyusha, the Shturmovik, and the LMG rocket-mine. Petropavlovsky seems to have died in Leningrad in 1933, at a young age, but quite probably of natural causes.

Had things been different, had Stalin not engaged in his crazed bouts of blood-letting in the purges, it is not too fanciful to imagine the Red Army at the start of Operation Barbarossa being equipped not only with the good-quality artillery and small arms and outstanding tanks that it in fact had, but also with hand-held rocket-launchers, lightweight recoilless guns, and automatic grenade launchers; perhaps also with the 6.5mm Fedorov assault rifle; and all guided by Tukhachevsky’s doctrine of deep battle, supervised by the man himself.

One thing seems to be missing; I can find no references to Soviet experiments with shaped charges, despite the fact that the principle of a lined shaped charge was widely known, and indeed the subject of published patents. The lightweight recoilless gun and shoulder-launched rocket lose much of their value without shaped charges. The first Soviet shaped-charge weapon I am aware of is the hollow charge round for the 76mm gun, introduced into service in May 42 and no doubt copied from German designs. Has anyone come across any references to Soviet work on shaped charges before this?

And are there any other wondrously off-beat 1930s-40s Soviet weapons I should know about?

All the best,

John.

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