Attack aircraft First flight: 1934 Kocherigin, Gurevich

In the early 30s, the speed of biplane attack aircraft barely reached 200 km/h, maneuverability was clearly insufficient, and the take-off run was very long. In 1932, a team of designers from the Central Design Bureau, headed by S.A. Kocherigin and M.I. Gurevich, began to develop a project for a heavy monoplane attack aircraft powered by an M-34 engine with a power of 750/830 hp. With.

At the end of 1933, an experimental monoplane with a low wing with an area of 45.04 m² and struts located above the center section was built and received the name TS-Z (heavy attack aircraft-third).

Weapons. The aircraft was armed with ten (two batteries of five machine guns each) wing-mounted 7.62-mm ShKAS machine guns (installed in the wing toes), one normal-caliber defensive machine gun for the gunner on the rear firing mount, and 250 kg of bombs (in three compartments with six fragmentation bombs on each side of the wing, between the spars). Large aerial bombs, pouring and chemical aircraft devices were suspended from beam holders inserted into the wing structure. The maximum load was 400 kg.

The armor protection of the TSh-3 was the same as that of its predecessors - an armored box made of flat pieces of homogeneous armor connected by 6-mm bolts on duralumin squares. The front armor plate is 8 mm, the bottom, sides and rear wall are 6 mm, the top, except for the engine, which was not armored on top, is 5 mm. At the bottom there is a retractable honeycomb radiator covered with 6 mm armor. During an attack, the radiator was completely retracted into the fuselage, and the engine was cooled through an “armored tank” (below the propeller) and a slot behind the radiator with louver plates. The total mass of the armor was 576 kg.

The rear part of the fuselage is a truss, welded from steel pipes, covered with fabric. The wing and tail are made of duralumin with canvas.

By the spring of 1934, the TSh-3 successfully passed factory tests (flying V.K. Kokkinaki), during which it showed a maximum ground speed of 247 km/h with a flight weight of 3557 kg. The time to climb to 3000 m was 11 minutes. Technical flight range - 470 km.

In general, the flight data of the new attack aircraft were higher than the requirements of 1932, but for the spring of 1934 they were no longer sufficient. Due to this, and also due to the lack of development of the engine cooling system, the car was not mass-produced.

The failures of all attempts to create a special armored attack aircraft during this period were due, as is not difficult to see, mainly to the lack of powerful engines, as well as armor and other structural materials with high specific weight and strength characteristics.

As a result, all experienced attack aircraft without exception had a low thrust-to-weight ratio. In addition, it was practically never possible to solve the problem of reliable cooling of motors placed in armor.

The next major drawback of attack aircraft was the very low combat effectiveness due to poor forward and downward visibility. The fact is that during this period of time, the main and practically the only tactical technique for attack aircraft was to attack ground targets from a strafing flight at an extremely low altitude, while the forward-downward viewing angle was extremely small.

For example, for the TSh-2 it did not exceed 1°, and the pilot, when flying at an altitude of 15 m, could see only those targets that were at least 1000 m away from the aircraft. At the same time, there is no talk of any targeted firing from machine guns , of course, it was not necessary.

Photo	Description
	Drawing Tsh-3

Bibliography

• The history of aircraft designs in the USSR, 1938-1950. /V.B. Shavrov /
• Airplanes of the battlefield /A and C. Vladimir Perov, Oleg Rastrenin./
• Airplanes of the battlefield /A and C. Vladimir Perov, Oleg Rastrenin./

Sergei Aleksandrovich Kocherigin (1893-1958) - Soviet aircraft designer.

In 1912 he entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology.

In 1917, after graduating from Theoretical Aviation Courses at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, he became a military pilot.

He worked in the design bureau of the Naval Department at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, then as an instructor at the School of Naval Aviation.

After the Civil War, he continued his education at the Air Force Academy. N. E. Zhukovsky.

Since 1926 he worked in the team of N.N. Polikarpov, after whose arrest in 1929 he headed his design bureau, then moved to the design bureau at the plant. Menzhinsky.

In 1933, he headed a team of designers at the Central Design Bureau. Among his developments are the two-seat fighter DI-6 (together with V.P. Yatsenko), reconnaissance aircraft SR, R-9, attack aircraft TSh-3, dive bomber OPB-5.

Since 1942, he worked as editor-in-chief of the scientific and technical publishing house of the Bureau of New Technology of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry.