Designations of Soviet artillery
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The official designations of Russian and
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, ...
artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...
consists of three sequential parts – weapon caliber, weapon type, and finally a unique identifier for each variant. This system is descended from the later
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, but its first (
caliber In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel Gauge (firearms) , bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the f ...
) and third (
unique identifier A unique identifier (UID) is an identifier that is guaranteed to be unique among all identifiers used for those objects and for a specific purpose. The concept was formalized early in the development of computer science and information systems. ...
) components were changed several times over the years.


Origin - Russian Empire

After abolishing the old system of designations based on projectile or gun weight during the early years of the 20th century,
Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army (russian: Ру́сская импера́торская а́рмия, tr. ) was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian Ar ...
designation policy was simplified. The first component of the designation was caliber in inches or lines, then type of a piece with optional producer’s name and attributes such as regimental, divisional, siege, field, fortress, etc. follows and the year of adopting the piece onto Army service finishes the name. E. g. howitzer with
Schneider Schneider may refer to: Hospital * Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel People * Schneider (surname) Companies and organizations * G. Schneider & Sohn, a Bavarian brewery company * Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG, the former owner of th ...
designation O. C. 6″ Bas became 6-дюймовая крепостная гаубица обр. 1909 г. (6-inch fortress howitzer Model of 1909) and Canon de 42‴ Schneider was designated 42-линейная полевая тяжёлая пушка образца 1910 года (42-line heavy field gun M1910).


Metric system (1917)

After the
October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
, the first change in this new system took place, when
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
officially adopted the
metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that succeeded the Decimal, decimalised system based on the metre that had been introduced in French Revolution, France in the 1790s. The historical development of these systems culminated in the d ...
and abolished old non-metric measurement units. From this point until the present caliber is expressed in millimeters; the fractional part of the caliber was rounded to the nearest integer value. In some cases, the attributes were simplified. Examples of these modified designations include 76-мм дивизионная пушка обр. 1902 г. ( 76 mm divisional gun M1902, formerly 3-inch divisional gun M1902) or 152-мм пушка обр. 1910 года (152 mm gun M1910, formerly 6-inch siege gun M1910).


Modernized weapons

The industrial growth of the Soviet Union during the late 1920s and the 1930s allowed the modernization of older or obsolescent artillery. Modernized ordnance received a second model designation after a slash, for example 152-мм пушка обр. 1910/30 гг. ( 152 mm gun M1910/30). In case of further modernizations of the piece, the intermediate modernizations were not reflected in the name, for example the later modernization was 152-мм пушка обр. 1910/34 гг. ( 152 mm gun M1910/34).


Army designation versus factory designation

After 1930, ''newly'' designed or constructed towed artillery received two official designations, the first of which was the traditional Army designation, e.g., 122-мм гаубица обр. 1938 г. ( 122 mm howitzer M1938), but another one was the index of a factory (or a developer: ordnance plants in the Soviet Union very often had their own design bureaus). This consisted of between one and three letters and the project number. For the 122 mm howitzer M1938 mentioned above, the developer index was M-30. Letters identified the developer or producer. For example, M stands for Motovilikha plant No. 172, A - for
KhPZ The Malyshev Factory ( uk , Завод імені В.О. Малишева, translit=Zavod imeni V.O. Malysheva; abbreviated ), formerly the Kharkov Locomotive Factory (, ), is a state-owned manufacturer of heavy equipment in Kharkiv, Ukraine. It ...
No. 183, B – for ‘Bolshevik’ plant, S – for
Central Artillery Design Bureau Open joint-stock company (JSC) NMZ or Nizhny Novgorod Machine-building Plant (russian: Нижегородский машиностроительный завод, links=no) is a Russian (formerly Soviet) artillery factory in the Sormovo distr ...
, D – for Factory No. 9 and so on. There were two exceptions: ‘Arsenal’ plant No. 7 (they used a '7' digit instead of a letter) and the artillery plant No. 8 named after Mikhail Kalinin (their project number was placed first, followed by the 'K' letter). Examples of these designations include 7-2 and 61-K or 20K (variants with and without a dash are both widely used in historical documents). During the World War II some indices changed: * Plant No.7 was named after
Mikhail Frunze Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (russian: Михаил Васильевич Фрунзе; ro, Mihail Frunză; 2 February 1885 – 31 October 1925) was a Bolshevik leader during and just prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Born in the modern-day ...
circa 1940 and changed index to 'ZIF'; * Plant No. 8 after evacuation to Sverdlovsk used 'KS' index placed before the project number; * Plant No. 92 got index 'ZIS' after renaming to ''Zavod imeni Stalina'' in December 1940 or January 1941. The artillery
sharashka A Special Design Bureau (, ''osoboje konstruktorskoe bûro''; ОКБ), commonly informally known as a ''sharashka'' (russian: шара́шка, ; sometimes ''sharaga'', ''sharazhka'') was any of several secret research and development laboratories ...
OTB of
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
(in 1938—1941 and 1944—1953 it was located in Kresty Prison complex in Leningrad, in evacuation it was housed in the buildings of Plant No. 172 and named ''OKB-172'') had no special index, but often used 'BL' letters after
Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ;  – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...
. For some pieces of artillery, both the Army and developer names were well known and interchangeable, such as the 76 mm divisional gun M1942 known also as ZIS-3. For some other guns, such as the 45 mm anti-tank gun M1937, the developer index (53-K) was very rarely used, even in literature of the time.


Further modifications - 1950s

This system was used throughout and well after the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. In the 1950s, another change took place. The year was dropped from the official names of newly designed pieces, and instead of the M19XX (обр. 19ХХ г.), the developer index became used as the unique identifier, e.g., 122-мм гаубица Д-30 ( 122 mm howitzer D-30). The change was not applied to old pieces, e.g., the D-1 was still referenced as a 152 mm howitzer M1943, and not as a 152 mm howitzer D-1.The official ballistic tables printed in 1968. The third change was connected with introduction of the
GRAU The Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (), commonly referred to by its transliterated Russian acronym GRAU (), is a department of the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is subordinate to the ...
system of indices for ordnance, weapons, and munitions. After this introduction, the developer index was dropped from the official piece name (but it still officially exists through the design and testing process); henceforth, the GRAU designation was used as the unique identifier, e.g., 152-мм пушка 2А36 (152 mm gun 2A36). This is the current system used by the Russian Federation's Agency for Missiles and Artillery (still known as GRAU) and the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces.


References

{{Reflist Artillery of Russia Artillery of the Soviet Union