152-mm howitzer model 1938 - Soviet howitzer from the Second World War

152-mm howitzer model 1938 (M-10) - Soviet howitzer during the Second World War. This gun was mass-produced from 1939 to 1941 inclusive, was used throughout the Great Patriotic War and was in service with the Workers ’and Peasants’ Red Army until the end of the 1950s. The captured M-10 howitzers were adopted by the German Wehrmacht and the Finnish army. The technical design of the new gun was sent to the Artillery Directorate on August 1, 1937, the first prototype was ready on November 2, 1937, after which its factory tests began. On July 25, 1938, two prototypes were submitted for field tests, which had significant differences between themselves - howitzer No. 303 had a 20-caliber barrel with a progressive slope, and howitzer No. 302 had a 25-caliber barrel with a constant slope thread. The field tests carried out from October 19 to 23, 1938 revealed the advantage of a howitzer with a barrel length of 20 calibers, which had better accuracy at the same firing range. At the same time, the howitzer could not stand the field tests, since the insufficient strength of the upper machine tool, the unreliability of the suspension, the leakage of the rollback brake, and the poor quality of the wheels were revealed. The developer was asked to correct the shortcomings and send the gun for military trials. For military trials, which took place twice (at the beginning of 1939 and from December 22, 1939 to January 10, 1940), a modified version of the M-10 with a barrel lengthened by 2.3 caliber was submitted, which ensured complete combustion of the charge. Also in 1939, a prototype M-10 with a cartouche loading was created, but business did not go further than factory tests of this sample. As a result, even before the full completion of military tests, on September 29, 1939, the M-10 was put into service under the official name 152-mm divisional howitzer mod. 1938 “. Subsequently, the adjective “divisional“ was dropped from the official name of the weapon. In the 1930s. the government of the USSR introduced letter indices for each machine building industry. Motovilikhinsky Mechanical Plant (Perm) received the index “M“. Products developed by this plant are named with this index - M-10, M-30, etc. Serial production of the M-10 was carried out since December 1939 at factories No. 172 in Molotov and No. 235 in Votkinsk. In connection with the exclusion of 152-mm howitzers from the divisional artillery and the abolition of rifle corps in the summer and autumn of 1941, the production of the gun was completed “out of need.“ In addition, 204 M-10T guns were produced for arming the KV-2 tanks (1939-4, 1940-100, 1941-100). The well-known Russian military historian M. Svirin offers the following reasons for removing this weapon from production: • shortage of powerful tractors capable of effectively towing M-10; • high metal consumption and complexity in the manufacture of the gun carriage; • the complexity of the repair and maintenance of the tool; • employment of factories No. 9 and No. 172 with mobilization assignments for the mass production of other weapons - M-30 howitzers and ML-20 howitzers-guns, loss of factory No. 352; as a result, there was nowhere to produce the M-10. However, in 1943, with the formation of corps artillery, the need arose again for 152-mm howitzers, which had to be satisfied with the deployment of a new weapon - the D-1 howitzer, which is a “hybrid“ of the M-10 barrel group and the M-30 gun carriage. However, the production of the D-1 began only at the end of 1943 and was of a small-scale nature - only 342 guns were produced in 1943-1944. As a result, the corps artillery of the Red Army faced an acute shortage of guns, which had to be satisfied (and even then not completely) mainly due to 107-mm guns mod. 1910/30, significantly less powerful than the D-1 and M-10. Considering this, the termination of the production of the M-10 should be recognized as a generally negative circumstance for the Red Army, although the vacated production capacity after the curtailment of its production made a great contribution to equipping the divisional artillery of the Red Army with a modern excellent M-30 howitzer. On June 1, 1941, 152-mm howitzers mod. 1938, there were, according to various sources, 1128 or 1058 pieces. According to BChS No. 1 - 849. From the very first days of the Great Patriotic War, this weapon entered the battle. The howitzer was used for firing from closed positions at entrenched and openly located enemy manpower, its fortifications and barriers, and important objects in its immediate rear. The large traverse angle and powerful enough ballistics allowed the gun to successfully fight tanks. However, during the summer battles of 1941, the M-10 howitzers suffered heavy losses (there were 773 such guns in the western military districts before the war, almost all of them were lost), and in the same year their mass production was discontinued. The surviving M-10s were