Tuesday 19 March 2019

Heavyweight

"To Chief of the 8th Department, Military Engineer 1st Class comrade Afonin
November 18th, 1939

Summary
  1. A-34 vehicle (as of November 16th, 1939):
    1. Blueprints for 31 groups have been sent to the plant.
    2. Blueprints for 3 groups have not been sent to the plant completely.
    3. Blueprints for 4 groups are not yet ready: the driver's seat, the radio equipment, the turning mechanism, the instruments.
    4. 307 parts have been produced out of 1229.
  2. Parts for convertible drive trials on the A-20 will be ready no sooner than December 1st, 1939. Delays are caused by plant #500 being overloaded with orders for other tanks (A-7, D-3, D-5).
  3. Trials of the A-32 (loaded to the weight of an A-34) are complete. The tank drove for 1230 km, including 200 km on the highway. Mechanisms functioned in a satisfactory manner during the tests. During trials on the highway the drive sprockets wear heavily. Special trials (grades and slopes) are still to be performed on the A-32.
Senior Military Representative of the ABTU, Military Engineer 2nd Class, Kozyrev
Military Representative of the ABTU, Military Engineer 3rd Class, Baikov"

2 comments:

  1. Is there a list somewhere with all of the development/industrial designations (A-7, D-3, D-5)? I don't know what those three are (BT-7, KV-1, and KV-2???).

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    Replies
    1. "A" is the factory #183 code, so the A-7 is the BT-7, A-34 is the T-34 prototype, etc.

      I don't know what D-3 and D-5 are. D is usually the letter code for factory #9 guns (D-25, D-5, D-10, etc).

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