DEVELOPMENT OF AIRCRAFT FUSES: SOLVING SCIENTIFIC AND PRODUCTION PROBLEMS IN THE SOVIET MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN THE LATE 1930s — FIRST HALF OF THE 1940s

The article examines the process of development and introduction into production of aircraft fuses in the USSR in the pre-war period, the period of the Great Patriotic war and in the first post-war years. Its aim is to study the issues of organizing this process and relationships between enterprises of the military-industrial complex, government agencies. The author considers different types and modifications of the aircraft fuse “AV”, the process of working on them in TsKB-22 (NII-22), Factory № 4 named after M. I. Kalinin, Factory № 42 named after A. A. Maslennikov and other organizations. The role of the fuse in the composition of an aviation munition, the importance attached to it in the USSR and the organizational measures carried out against this background by the state in the late 1930s — 1940s are analyzed. It is concluded that due to the high innovativeness of the ammunition production sphere, the creation of well-thought-out, universal domestic fuse designs made it possible, without large expenditures on new developments, to take them as a basis when new tasks arise. The presence of several specialized enterprises and research institutes in one city improved and accelerated interaction and contributed to a more rapid development of fuses. At the same time, the lack of sufficient feedback from military departments prevented from developing scientific thought at the required pace, and in combination with bureaucratic delays at each stage of work, led to the untimely setting of scientific and production tasks, delays and asynchrony of the fuse development process, and, accordingly, to the untimely development of combat-ready aviation equipment.