Vyacheslav Ivanovich Silin (1907—1975) was a leading

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

weapons engineer Military technology is the application of technology for use in warfare. It comprises the kinds of technology that are distinctly military in nature and not civilian in application, usually because they lack useful or legal civilian application ...

Biography

Silin was born in

Tula Tula may refer to: Geography Antarctica *Tula Mountains *Tula Point India *Tulā, a solar month in the traditional Indian calendar Iran * Tula, Iran, a village in Hormozgan Province Italy * Tula, Sardinia, municipality (''comune'') in the pr ...

on February 22, 1907. In 1919, he began working at the

Tula Arms Plant Imperial Tula Arms Plant (russian: Императорский Тульский оружейный завод, Imperatorskiy Tulsky Oruzheiny Zavod) is a Russian weapons manufacturer founded by Tsar Peter I of Russia in 1712 in Tula, Tula Oblast a ...

. His work was halted while he served in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

from 1931-1932, but throughout the rest of his life, he was a leading figure in the engineering and construction of military technology for the Soviet Union. He was awarded the

Order of Lenin The Order of Lenin (russian: Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina, ), named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6, 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration b ...

in 1939 and the Lenin Prize in 1967. He died on November 20, 1975.

Technology produced

Silin produced several important weapons for the USSR, both through his own engineering work and under his direction. Most notably, whilst working at the Central Bureau for the Construction and Research of Recreational and Hunting Weapons during the 1960s, he was directly involved in the creation of the main armament for the

BMP-1 The BMP-1 is a Soviet amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicle, in service 1966–present. BMP stands for ''Boyevaya Mashina Pyekhoty 1'' (russian: link=no, Боевая Машина Пехоты 1; БМП-1), meaning "infantry fighting ...

and

BMD-1 The BMD-1 is a Soviet airborne amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicle, which was introduced in 1969 and first seen by the West in 1970. BMD stands for ''Boyevaya Mashina Desanta'' (Боевая Машина Десанта, which literally ...

infantry fighting vehicles - the 73mm

2A28 Grom A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes'' ...

. In 1935, his involvement with a project to develop a new machine-gun for the

Soviet Air Forces The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

led to the development of the 7.62mm Sibemas aircraft machine gun (VI Silin, M. E. Berezin, P. Morozenko) with a rate of fire of 6,000 rounds/min. Work on the design of such weapons was halted in the late 1940s, due to shortcomings in the design. In 1939 Silin participated in a competition to create a 7.62mm machine gun. He developed the TCB-67 machine gun, which successfully passed field testing. Silin participated in the design of the VYa-23 and B-20 aircraft automatic cannons. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Silin developed the TKB-440 and TKB-458M 7.62mm machine-guns, as well as the 23mm TKB-505 and 30mm TKB-515 revolving automatic cannons. As chief designer at the Central Bureau in

from 1960 until his death, Silin spearheaded the development of anti-tank grenade launchers. From 1960 to 1963, he worked with AT Alekseev to develop the

SPG-9 The SPG-9 Kopyo (''Spear'') (Russian: СПГ-9 Копьё) is a tripod-mounted man-portable, 73 millimetre calibre recoilless gun developed by the Soviet Union. It fires fin-stabilised, rocket-assisted HE and HEAT projectiles similar to those fir ...

73mm Smoothbore Recoilless Gun, which was significantly lighter and more effective than other foreign Recoilless weapons of the period. In 1961-1966, Silin, together with VI Zaitsev, NS Pasenko, and VI Volkov, developed the smoothbore 73mm semi-automatic

, which was used as the primary armament for the

and

Infantry Fighting Vehicles. For his work, Silin was awarded the

, the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd degree, and two Orders of Red Banner of Labour.

External links

Silin gun

{{DEFAULTSORT:Silin Firearm designers Soviet engineers Soviet military personnel of World War II Weapons scientists and engineers 1907 births 1975 deaths