Industrial science of the tank industry during the Great Patriotic War: contribution to solving problems of engineering and technical optimization of armored production in 1941–1945. Part 2

Abstract

The work is devoted to the contribution of leading research institutes of the People’s Commissariat of Tank Industry to improve the metallurgical, welding and machining industries in the tank industry of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. The evacuation of main capacities of the USSR’s tank industry at the east demanded to transfer not only workers and industrial equipment to the base of civil engineering plants, but also to ensure the restoration of key technological processes in a new place. It was required in emergency conditions of war, at a new place, in conditions of personnel, equipment and energy shortage, industrial cooperation collapse, to create workable units, for mass production of tanks. Thanks to the concentration of industry management in the hands of the People’s Commissariat for Tank Industry, the country’s establishment was able to maintain the scientific and technical potential of industrial research institutes that had been engaged in core work in armor metallurgy, electric welding, mechanical processing and mechanical engineering technology before the war. They managed to integrate their personnel and technical potential into the production stuff of tank-building giants, created in the east after the evacuation. It made possible to create under extremely war conditions, a workable territorial production complexes for the production of medium and heavy tanks, which nevertheless got under the conditions of serious personnel and technological limitations.