New cheap fuel - liquid water gunpowder. A brief history of liquid propellant weapons (LPM) Gunpowder leaves China: Arabs and Mongols begin to produce gunpowder

Well, they piled on. Are you bored, or what?

140466 >What is the difference between cap and wedge loading, huh? I’m far from an artillery specialist, I’m just learning not to throw heavy objects (and light ones too).
I'm not an artilleryman either. But from the point of view of banal erudition, wedge loading is a four-engine bomb. The shutter is wedge. A cap is a linen bag of gunpowder that is placed in a cannon between placing a projectile in it and closing the bolt before firing.

Harpooner>>Yes, and the cryotrons in A-bombs are disposable.
CaRRibeaN>So what of this? All electronics there are disposable
CaRRibeaN>PS: Reusable cryotrons are not fantastic, just like other types of precision keys.
The above-quoted speech talked about cryotrons, like in atomic bombs, for matching a multi-chamber gun. I thought that the cryotron was actually disposable. I haven't heard of reusable ones.

Harpooner>>In a tank it’s a different matter. We need to hit the tank with a sub-caliber - fill it to the maximum. We need to throw OFS into the trench - we save. Due to this, the ammunition supply will increase by ~20%.
Baby>The number of sub-caliber and OFS shells in the stack is set before the battle. Accordingly, the required number and type of (propellant) charges are also given a priori. If you want to save on the volume of charges, then 20% is too optimistic an estimate. At best, you will receive, relatively speaking, 43 shells instead of 40.
Wrong.
a) The volume of the automatic loader is reduced
b) There is no loss of volume on the sleeves
c) The projectiles themselves (without charges) can be arranged much more tightly by reducing their dimensions.

Harpooner>>And reloading is simplified (open the faucet, close the faucet).
Baby>Or rather, load the projectile, open the tap, close the tap.
Baby>That is, by and large, the same as what we have now, plus operations with a tap. What is the simplification???
Now there are two options:
a) with an automatic loader: the automatic becomes simpler and lighter.
b) with manual loading: the loader carries half as much.

>> Plus binary MVs are fire/explosion-proof.
Baby>What are binary? Oxidizer + fuel? If yes, name the types of fireproof fuel or oxidizer. Otherwise, “fireproof” kerosene and all sorts of other passions creep into my head.
Binary are those that consist of two components, each of which is non-explosive. The devil knows what kind of components are there. Probably, an option with oxidizer + fuel is also possible. But this is more likely for Varban - he is a specialist.
As for fireproof kerosene, I conducted experiments when I was 5 years old. He threw matches into a can of kerosene. Rotten, bastards. I had to throw some kerosene on the floor, in the sawdust.

>> And the initial speed can be increased through the use of more powerful MVs.
Baby>...both liquid and solid
Baby>The phase state has nothing to do with it.
Typically, more powerful MVs are also less stable, i.e. more dangerous. The same nitroglycerin.
And if you mix them immediately before shooting, you can store them.

It all started with a super-torpedo created for the needs of the fleet in 1969...

We are not talking about military equipment, but about the cheapest fuel for expansion-type engines: A + K + water + catalyst + stabilizer (where A and K are ingredients produced by industry for the needs of rural chemistry in hundreds of thousands of tons)! Yes! Substances obtained literally from the air (from nitrogen) and which then turn into nitrogen and water after working in the engine!
Fuel, or rather, is an energy carrier that could have changed our world a long time ago. .
* For those who are interested in technical and scientific details, -.
Unfortunately, at the request of special government services, we removed the exact recipe of the composition.
And so, it all started with a torpedo. Then, in the distant past, the military could not help but rejoice at its peroxide torpedo with a jet propeller. And there was something to rejoice at - only three parts in the propulsion unit, a tank with hydrogen peroxide, a bearing with a hollow tube axis and a self-propelled jet propeller with motor nozzles at the end of the blades. Reliable, simple and effective.
But this toy had one unpleasant side - concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The substance is expensive, very caustic, aggressive and also explosive when in contact with rust and oxides of many metals...
So the military ordered scientists to replace the peroxide with something cheap and safe.
This is how this wonderful story began...
It is no secret that in the 21st century, “conventional” internal combustion engines (ICEs) will be replaced by alternative power technologies, just as in the 20th century, the engines of N. Otto and R. Diesel replaced the steam engines of the 19th century. Leading centers and car companies are already competing for “alternative” fuels and energy-saving cycles. Adaptation of existing internal combustion engines to more “hydrogenous” and environmentally friendly fuels: alcohols, methane, hydrogen is promising. Alternative cycles of power plants are being mastered (electric fuel cells, hybrid electric-internal combustion engines, with braking energy recovery, etc.). The main problems so far are the high cost and complexity of everything “alternative”.
However, even with “alternative” fuel, the design of a piston or gas turbine internal combustion engine - as a heat engine for converting chemical energy into mechanical work - is in fact “non-alternative”. In the same way, doses of fuel (fuel) must burn in compressed air (oxidizer), and the combustion products, expanding from the heat received in the reaction, push the piston or rotate the turbine.
Adaptation of a serial “mechanical” internal combustion engine to methanol fuel or even hydrogen does not pretend to be an “alternative power plant”. The fundamental disadvantages of the air-fuel cycle remain: limited useful expansion of flash gases and power consumption for pre-compression of oxidizer air.
For these reasons, the efficiency of piston and turbo internal combustion engines is limited to 30-35%, and up to 60-70% of the released energy - they uselessly heat the environment with exhaust gases, through the radiator and friction units.
We are not talking about the “environmental friendliness” and “renewability” of oil resources.
But let’s formulate the problem of “alternativeness” in the absolute “alternative” limit: alternative fuel is fuel not for HEAT ENGINES, but for alternative cycles, plus: safety, renewable resources, independence from the environment. Ideally, the energy carrier should be generated directly from the air and all kinds of waste using electricity (nuclear or hydra - cheap), and then, after working in the engine, it should return to the air itself in the form of water and ordinary atmospheric gases. Could this be possible?
The new is the well-forgotten old. Now it’s time to remember about the peroxide torpedo. In order to understand what scientists were looking for to replace it, and why their search was crowned with triumph, let’s look at the difference between a peroxide torpedo engine and a heat engine.
The peroxide engine is not a heat engine, but an expansion engine. Omitting all the technical details, we will only point out that hydrogen peroxide is a dense liquid with a density approximately 900 times denser than air.
Under certain conditions, it undergoes a phase transition, i.e. decomposes into oxygen and water vapor. In this case, the volume increases 900 times, and the pressure increases accordingly. Those. One cubic centimeter of peroxide after decomposition tends to occupy almost a liter of volume!
We draw conclusions: peroxide does not need to be compressed (spending energy on compression); it is already compressed to the limit, being a liquid. It does not need a carburetor and does not need an oxidizer at all, which means the engine is significantly simplified. Peroxide is a spring ready to straighten upon contact with the catalyst and perform mechanical work, and the output is simply water and gas.
It is clear that such an engine with only tension can be called thermal, since it is expansion. With a prototype, Soviet scientists not only found a cheap and safe replacement for peroxide, but also significantly surpassed it in their new energy carrier.
The unique substance they created, just like hydrogen peroxide, was a unitary energy carrier that did not require oxygen, capable of working either under water or in space.
But it was environmentally sustainable, biologically harmless and non-explosive. In addition, if peroxide, with some stretch, was a calorific fuel (water vapor is generated by peroxide at a very high temperature), then the new energy carrier was completely decomposed into atmospheric gases.

Unitary fuel is quite functional and is not a distant future: high-speed torpedoes float hundreds of kilometers under water; “powder” shells fly at high speed and “non-atmospheric” turbo pumps of liquid rockets operate; Unitary fuels burn with cosmic efficiency in solid fuel accelerators.
However, “defense” oxidizers are not suitable for civilian technologies due to high cost, dangerous handling or toxicity (hydrogen peroxide, liquid oxygen, nitrogen dioxide, perchlorates, and other exotic things).
The problem of a “civilian” unitary energy carrier is solved for water-uitrate fuels - on the basis of some **fertilizers and catalysts. The properties of these substances according to GOST and their solutions have been studied very well in the theory of industrial explosives. Water-filled compositions of these substances with non-explosive flammable substances at ordinary temperatures are incapable of detonation or even combustion, and at atmospheric pressure they are completely fireproof in comparison with gasoline. World production of these fertilizers is about 20 million tons per year. The most technologically advanced formulations of these energy carriers can be produced by almost any farm.
Let us remember that we are talking about ammonium nitrate (ammonium nitrate) and the second component - urea (urea), the cost of which is less than $50 per ton.
The mass fraction of carbon in the stoichiometric composition of AC/urea is only 4%, which is approximately 20 times lower than the “carbon content” of gasoline fuel (86-90%) and methane (75%). Note that for 100% carbon-free combustible substances (ammonia, hydrogen, hydrazine, etc.) mixed with an oxidizing agent, the “carbon content” of fuel mixtures will be 0%, which can be classified as a type of hydrogen energy of unitary fuels.
The degree of expansion of the working fluid-gas from the condensed phase of the energy carrier can reach up to V2/V1 ~1500 units, which is 2 orders of magnitude greater than the expansion of air-fuel charges in conventional internal combustion engines, and the thermodynamic efficiency of the “pure” expansion cycle reaches up to 87% - with temperature limitation exhaust gases up to Т2 ~1000С (water – steam). In the most extreme case of zero expansion of gases - an explosion or flash in the own volume of the condensed phase (ρ0 ~ 1.5 g/cm3) - the maximum parameters of anhydrous systems reach up to T0 ~ 28000 K, P0 ~ 5 * 104 atm. Energy release (Q, kcal /kg) of hot compositions “disappears” when the water content exceeds 50-60% (water - steam).

Calculations for reducing the initial parameters (T1, P1) of fuel dose outbreaks depending on the degree of expansion V2/V1 in the adiabatic cycle to the final values ​​(T2, P2) are given in the table. Polytropic index for water-nitrate flashes k=1.294.

The potential energy saturation of most water-nitrate compositions is in the range of 800-950 kcal/kg, with a specific gas formation of approximately 1000 l/kg, which corresponds to the performance of modern smokeless pyroxylin powders.
Omitting boring calculations with the expansion of gases in the internal combustion engine (not available to all internal combustion engines), the specific consumption of “liquid gunpowder” compared to fuel-gasoline with a degree of gas expansion V2/V1 = 50 will increase up to 4-5 times by weight (or by 2-2.5 times - by volume). However, the “large fuel tank” is compensated by the low cost of the “water-powder” components and an almost tenfold reduction in engine weight. And the ability to speed up the “powder” cycle meets the needs of the toughest sports racing car or jet fighter.
. Since cold “water gunpowder” cannot become “dynamite” in any accident, a functional tank will be a “front safety bumper”.
On a laboratory installation, a correlation was discovered between the ability of water-nitrate thermolysis products to move the piston and the calculated heat of explosion (flash) - in terms of dry substances.

It turns out that in the theory of heat engines nothing can be simpler than gunpowder.
It turns out that the age of “oil” development of the Otto and Diesel internal combustion engines is a mistake.

For alternative fuel, “gunpowder,” alternative “non-atmospheric” engine circuits are also needed. By eliminating ventilation cycles in the circuit of a 4-stroke internal combustion engine, you can make it work as a 2-stroke “hyperdiesel” with a hot pre-chamber of a mini-reactor, or even rebuild a 1-stroke piston cylinder so-called. “double action”.
As already mentioned, simpler engines are best suited for this energy carrier. It is in them that, based on this technology, you can get the maximum. efficiency not achievable for internal combustion engines.

It is obvious that for continuous turbine cycles, expensive and complex air compressors are unlikely to be needed, and the requirements for the heat resistance of working areas are reduced in proportion to the “water cut” of the new energy carrier.
Liquid gunpowder

Motor-wheel
There is no engine under the hood of the car at all.
The wheels are driven by pneumatic motors “built into” the wheels, powered by a central mini-reactor – a high-pressure working gas generator. The main difficulty is the creation of “inscribed” gas expansion mini-machines with a high degree of useful expansion of the working gas. But - without cardan shafts, crankshafts, transmissions, differentials, etc. crazy engine engineers. As a last resort, “sprung” gas expansion turbines or hydraulic motors can be placed above a pair of drive wheels with axle shafts.
It is also unpleasant to create a high-pressure pump for injecting energy into a gas reactor.

Jet propeller
Actually, this is where it began - with a torpedo.
A “jet propeller” type propulsion unit, rotating by jet exhaust from nozzles at the ends of the blades. If mini-reactors of “liquid gunpowder” are placed in the same place, we will get a power unit that combines the functions of “engine”, “propulsion” and “fuel pump”; friction units are only two support bearings of the rotating axis of the screw. Centrifugal-radial forces “pull and pump” the high-density solution from the tank through the channels of the axis and blades into the hot reactor, from where compressed gases are ejected through peripheral nozzles. The starting “spin” of the propeller is from the electric motor on the axis of which the propeller is actually fixed. After starting, the motor becomes a current generator for the on-board network.
By enclosing the jet propeller in an annular aerodynamic segment, it is possible to increase the safety and useful “directivity” of the impulse of the gas-air masses.
A pushing jet propeller can be a propulsion device for individual aircraft, and the cylindrical segment around the propeller can be an annular wing or “tail” of a flying air vehicle.
It is appropriate to remember here that snowmobiles, airboats and cars have the incomparable advantage of cross-country ability and simplicity compared to their all-wheel drive counterparts. And the emergence of a self-propelled, relatively silent propeller could once again change the appearance of land and water transport.
By the way, in 2011, the production of a civilian jet helicopter powered by hydrogen peroxide was launched abroad. This helicopter also does not have an engine and could well be replicated on our energy carrier with higher commercial performance...
The very number of jet-propeller helicopters powered by hydrogen peroxide being created by foreign companies and amateurs indicates the need to commercially supplant them with our version.

However, the very, very alternative engine runs on the very, very alternative fuel - without any moving mechanical parts or friction units at all. Is it possible to use a “free” environmental substance, for example, water, as a “piston support” for vapors and gases expanding “out of nothing”?..

The simplest diagram of a “non-mechanical” gas-water jet is, of course, a pipe. The principle is simple: water, a high-density working fluid, is accelerated in a pipe by oriented exhaust from the reactor. And that's it (!). The efficiency of such a gas-water jet will depend on the expansion of reactor gases in a pipe with water, “throwing away” water masses with a reactive effect, and the thrust will depend on the “flow” of the pipe. Grid nozzles or “ring” nozzles may be optimal, partially covering the internal cross-section with the effect of “locking” the moving masses and an adjustable free-flow diffuser. It is advisable to accelerate “dense” water through a pipe in several stages of accelerating nozzles. For submarines, it is possible to sharply reduce the resistance of the environment with a bubble “coat” of bow thrusters. The energy intensity of water-nitrate fuel is 2 orders of magnitude higher than the battery compartments of conventional submarines.

Based on such elements, it is possible to construct very simple household mechanization machines - lawn mowers, drills, screwdrivers - operating far from the power grid.

The concept of unitary fuels in civil technologies

The natural balance and functioning of the Earth's biosphere is based on three natural cycles: the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the water cycle. Until now, practical and economic activities of humans have been based on the extraction and combustion of carbon-containing minerals of organic origin accumulated in the Earth’s crust: coal, oil, combustible gases, and wood.
When they are burned, atmospheric oxygen is consumed, reserves of valuable hydrocarbon and natural raw materials are irreversibly depleted, and the atmosphere is polluted with toxic carbon products and “greenhouse” carbon dioxide (CO2). By the beginning of the 21st century, the natural balance of the planet’s geoclimatic machine has already been disrupted and all of humanity has been brought to the brink of a global environmental catastrophe.
The main source of oil consumption and environmental pollution is road transport (~80%). Let us note that all the pacifist appeals “for the environment,” the desperate efforts of globalist scientists and spiritual leaders are still ineffective.
At the same time, there is the possibility of a sharp reduction in the environmental load on the biosphere using carbon-free nitrogen-containing renewable energy sources, as well as industrial, “alternative” and natural technologies for its transformation and accumulation, “inscribed” in the natural cycles of the planetary circulation of nitrogen and water.
As an “alternative fuel” for gas expansion machines, water-nitrate compositions of the OXIDIZER+FUEL+SOLVENT type, with molecular homogenization of co-soluble reacting components, are offered.
The most technologically advanced are low-melting compositions of ammonium nitrate with some flammable eutectics of amine nature.
***From the editor. Left for review. For a number of technological reasons, NOT PROSPECTIVE. We recommend.

A bullet is pressed into a cartridge-shaped powder block. When fired, the checker burns out. With the same ballistic characteristics, these cartridges are 30-45% lighter than conventional ones, 29-35% smaller in volume and 3-25% cheaper.

The designers even intend to replace the usual gunpowder with liquid fuel. This operation will not only seriously change and lighten the weapon, but will also help solve the ammunition problem. It must be said that this idea has come a long and painful way - after all, until recently, gunsmiths were confident that liquid fuel was suitable only for large-caliber machine guns and automatic cannons. But times are changing, and now designers are increasingly inclined to the opinion that it may also be promising for small-caliber weapons.

The first samples of such weapons have already been created. Thus, one of the experimental rifles uses 90% monomethylhydrazine nitrate. It is ignited by a percussion cap mounted in the bullet holder. She herself is feathered (initial speed is about 1500 m/s).

In other samples, the fuel is ignited by a spark. Or they divide it into components (oxidizer and fuel), which instantly flare up upon contact.

As you can see, the soldier’s individual weapon is being modernized, and it is quite possible that the rifle of the 80s will differ from the current one in the same way as, say, a machine gun from a three-line rifle.

(Based on materials from foreign press.)

In the pictures:

And the water line is not an obstacle for motorized infantry (p. 8).

The landing ship ports opened, and an avalanche of tanks and armored personnel carriers rushed to the shore (p. 9).

Photo by Anatoly Romanov, Boris Ivanov, Yuri Pakhomovz and Georgy Shutov.

LIQUID FUEL RIFLE

This is how experts imagine the design of an automatic rifle running on liquid top-LNV. Fire from it is carried out by feathered bullets 1, which are held in holders by 4 spring fingers 3. A hole 2 is made in the navel for the passage of liquid fuel, and to prevent the breakthrough of gases between the bullet and the walls of the barrel bore, a seal 6 is installed on it. The automation operates on the principle of removing powder gases The shutter 10 is locked with a wedge. In the front part of the disposable magazine 14 there are bullets with holders, and in the rear there is a container with liquid fuel. The magazine feeder, which directs bullets into the receiver 8 and lifts the container with liquid fuel, is kinetically connected to the moving parts of the internal housing. When moving forward, the bolt sends a bullet into the barrel bore 13. Through valve 7, pipeline 9, check valve 12 and the pump hole in the holder

the device pumps a portion of liquid fuel into the combustion chamber. Due to the pressure of the liquid fuel, the bullet is separated from the holder and sent to the stop of the shutter into the barrel bore, and the holder, together with the bolt, is slightly shifted back. Impact 11 breaks the capsule 5, and the liquid fuel located in the combustion chamber ignites. After the shot, under the influence of the gases removed from the barrel, the bolt is unlocked, the moving parts move back, and the holder is reflected. Then the return spring moves the moving parts forward, and the automation cycle repeats.

The letters indicate the following positions: a) feeding the bullet together with the holder from the magazine; b) sending a bullet into the barrel; c) separating the bullet from the holder and sending it into the barrel; d) the position of the rifle parts when fired; e) the position of the rifle parts when the reflector is reflected.

In the summer of 1942, in the village of Bilimbae, a group of engineers from an aircraft plant evacuated from Moscow tried (privately) to find a means of significantly increasing muzzle velocities, and therefore the armor-piercing power of bullets and shells.

These engineers graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, had a satisfactory knowledge of mathematics and mechanics, but in the field of firearms they were, to put it mildly, amateurs. This is probably why they came up with a weapon that “shoots kerosene”, because if a decent artilleryman told him this, it would only make him smile.

First, the long-known circuit of an electric gun in the form of two solenoids, a stationary part - the barrel - and a moving part - the projectile - was subjected to calculations. The resulting power requirements were such that the size and weight of the capacitor grew unacceptably. The electric gun idea was rejected.

Then one of these engineers, who had previously worked at the rocket research institute in S.P. Korolev’s group on powder cruise missiles and knew about the regressiveness of the pressure curve of powder gases in the rocket chamber and the bore of a weapon (at the RNII he sometimes leafed through Serebryakov’s “Internal Ballistics”), proposed to construct a weapon loaded with ordinary gunpowder, but with a charge distributed along the bore in separate chambers communicating with the channel. It was assumed that as the projectile moves along the barrel, the charges in the chambers will begin to ignite in turn and maintain the pressure in the space behind the projectile at an approximately constant level. This was supposed to increase the work of the powder gases and increase the muzzle velocity while maintaining the same barrel length and the maximum permissible pressure in it.

It turned out to be cumbersome, inconvenient to use, dangerous, etc., as a result of which the scheme was also rejected. After the war, in some magazine or newspaper there was a photograph of such a gun, created by the Germans and, apparently, also rejected.

Our efforts reached a dead end, but chance came to the rescue. One day, on the shore of the factory pond, a liquid-propellant rocket engine, being tested at a neighboring plant, by chief designer Viktor Fedorovich Bolkhovitinov, rumbled, where BI-1, the first fighter with a rocket engine in the USSR, was then being created.

The roar of the rocket propeller gave us the idea of ​​using liquid rocket fuel instead of gunpowder in a firearm, with its continuous injection into the space behind the projectile throughout the entire duration of the shot.

The idea of ​​“liquid gunpowder” also attracted inventors because the specific energy intensity of known liquid mixtures, say kerosene with nitric acid, significantly exceeded the energy intensity of gunpowder.

The problem arose of injecting liquid into a space where the pressure reached several thousand atmospheres. Memory came to the rescue. Once upon a time one of us read a book translated from English by P.W. Bridgman's "high pressure physics", which describes devices for experiments with liquids under pressure of tens and even hundreds of thousands of atmospheres. Using some of Bridgman's ideas, we came up with a scheme for supplying liquid fuel to a high-pressure area by the force of that same pressure.

Having found schematic solutions to the main issues, we began to design liquid weapons (unfortunately, immediately automatic) for the finished barrel of the Degtyarev anti-tank rifle of 14.5 mm caliber. We carried out detailed calculations, in which invaluable assistance was provided by my now deceased friend at the RNII, a prominent scientist-engineer Evgeniy Sergeevich Shchetinkoe, who then worked at the V.f. Bolkhovitinov Design Bureau. The calculations gave encouraging results. We quickly produced drawings for a “liquid automatic weapon” (LWW) and put it into production. Fortunately, one of the co-authors of the invention was the director and chief designer of our plant, so the prototype was produced very quickly. Due to the lack of standard PTRD bullets, they sharpened homemade ones made of red copper, loaded the weapon with them, and on March 5, 1943, in a shooting range made up of the casings of destroyed cupola furnaces (the aircraft factory was located on the territory of a former pipe foundry), they tested a “kerosene” machine gun. An automatic burst of shots should have followed, equal to the number of bullets placed in the magazine box. But she didn’t follow. There was only one, judging by the sound, a full-fledged shot.

It turned out that the column of bullets in the barrel was subjected to such gas pressure from the side of the projectile space that the mechanism for automatically feeding bullets and the liquid fuel component jammed.

The mistake of the inventors, who decided to immediately create a machine gun to finalize the single-shot system, was noted in his (mostly positive) review of the invention by the deputy. Chairman of Artkom, Lieutenant General E.A. Berkalov. We immediately took this into account.

The red copper bullet from the first liquid shot penetrated an 8mm steel plate and lodged in the brickwork against which the plate was leaning. The diameter of the hole significantly exceeded the caliber of the bullet and from the side of impact, clearly visible in the photo, there was a crown of steel splashing towards the bullet, which reformed into a “mushroom”. Artillery scientists decided that the splash of material at the entrance of the bullet into the plate should apparently be explained by the high speed of the encounter, as well as the mechanical properties of the plate and bullet.

A model of the weapon from which, according to artillery scientists, the first shot with liquid “gunpowder” was fired, is stored in the plant museum.

After the first, not entirely successful (the machine gun did not work) test of a liquid automatic weapon on March 5, 1943, we began testing a shot from a PTRD with a unitary cartridge, filled with liquid components of fuel and oxidizer instead of gunpowder. For a long time they shot with homemade copper bullets, but with the return of the plant from evacuation in the summer of 1943 to Moscow, with the help of Central Committee workers I.D. Serbin and A.F. Fedotikov, received a sufficient number of standard anti-tank rifle cartridges and began firing “liquid gunpowder” at the armor plates with armor-piercing incendiary bullets. Having brought the thickness of the pierced plates to 45 mm, with a charge of 4 grams of kerosene and 15 grams of nitric acid, instead of 32 grams of the standard powder charge, we compiled a detailed report and sent it to Stalin.

Soon, an interdepartmental meeting was held in the People's Commissariat of Armaments, chaired by General A.A. Tolochkov, with the participation of representatives of the People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry, Arms, Ammunition and the Artillery Committee. A decision was made: NKAL - to submit to the People's Commissariat of Armaments working drawings and technical specifications for the manufacture of a pilot plant for studying the internal ballistics of liquid weapons; The People's Commissariat of Armaments is to manufacture a device at one of its factories and transfer it to the People's Commissariat of Ammunition for research. As far as I remember, the meeting entrusted the general scientific management of all the work to Artcom.

Time has passed. And one day, after a whole series of approvals, connections with the plant, with the Research Institute of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, we finally received an invitation for one of the employees of this research institute, Comrade Dobrysh, to defend his PhD thesis on the topic “Internal ballistics of a gun...” (followed by the name of one of inventors - according to the tradition of gunsmiths: “Mosin rifle”, “Kalashnikov assault rifle”, “Makarov pistol”, etc.). The defense was successful. The authors of the invention were mentioned in the report, and the applicant noted their merit. More years passed, about ten years after the invention of ZhAO, the authors were invited to defend their second dissertation. This time, Adjunct of the Art Academy, Lieutenant Colonel I.D. Zuyanov on a topic with a title approximately - “Theoretical and experimental studies of artillery systems using liquid explosive mixtures.” The authors of the invention were pleased to read I.D.’s dissertation in the abstract. Zuyanoea their names, remembered with a kind word. The applicant’s thesis supervisor was Professor I.P. Grave.

We don’t know what the future fate of our invention is, but we know from foreign open press that since the 70s, many patents and works have appeared in the USA, England and France on the topic of liquid fuel firearms.

Persons known to me who contributed to the work on liquid weapons, in alphabetical order: Baydakv G.I. - director of a branch of the aircraft plant mentioned above. Berkalov. E.A. - Lieutenant General, Deputy Chairman of Artcom, Grave I.P. - Major General, Professor of the Art Academy, G.E. Griichenko - plant turner, Dryazgov M.P. - beginning brigades of the plant's design bureau, Efimov A.G. - factory turner. Zhuchkov D.A - beginning laboratories of the plant, Zuyanov I.D - lieutenant colonel, adjunct of the Art Academy, Karimova XX - calculation engineer of the plant's design bureau, Kuznetsov E.A - design engineer of the plant's design bureau, Lychov VT. - factory mechanic, Postoe Ya" - factory mechanic, A.I. Privalov - director and public designer of the plant, Serbia ID - employee of the Central Committee of the party, A.N. Sukhov - plant mechanic, A.A. Tolochkov - major general, deputy chairman. NTK of the People's Commissariat of Armaments, Fedotikov A.F. - employee of the Central Committee of the party, Shchetknkov E. S. - chemical safety engineer of the aircraft plant, headed by V.F. Bolkhovitinov.

M. DRYAZGOV, laureate of the USSR State Prize

P.S Everything would be fine... But it turns out that many years ago, Lieutenant Colonel I.D. Zuyanov, who became a candidate of sciences for the ZhAO, discovered that his dissertation in the archives of the Higher Attestation Commission was obscenely worn out. That is, someone studied it. Who is not established. And you can’t ask Lieutenant Colonel Zuyanov, he’s dead.