130 mm M-46 cannon

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130 mm M-46 cannon


130 mm M-46 cannon

General Information
Military designation: 130-mm cannon M-46
130-мм пушка 52-П-482 ( ru. )
GRAU index : 52-P-482
PLA : Type 59
NATO : M1954
Manufacturer designation: Motovilichinskije zavody ( Perm )
Manufacturer country: Soviet UnionSoviet Union Soviet Union People's Republic of China
China People's RepublicPeople's Republic of China 
Development year: 1946
Production time: 1954 to 1971
Weapon Category: cannon
Team: 8th
Technical specifications
Overall length: 11.73 m
Caliber :

130 mm

Caliber length : L / 52
Weight ready for use: 7,700 kg
Cadence : 5-6 rounds / min
Elevation range: 45 degrees
Side straightening area: 25 ° right / 25 ° left

The 130 mm gun M-46 is a solid gun of the caliber of 130 mm from Soviet production. It was developed from 1946. Western observers first noticed the cannon in 1954, which is why the gun is also known in the west as the M1954 . A Chinese version of the cannon is known as the Type 59 . For a long time, the M-46, with its range of more than 27 km, was one of the most far-reaching tubular artillery systems of the land forces that managed without an increase in range (e.g. base bleed ).

technical description

The 130 mm M-46 cannon has a characteristically long and thin barrel with a characteristic hole muzzle brake ("pepper shaker"). The hydropneumatic pipe retractor and pipe brake are arranged above and below the pipe. Operation is only slightly covered by a narrow, rear angled gun shield of 7 mm thickness. The gun is loaded manually, the ammunition is divided into propellant charge and projectile. For indirect fire there are explosive , splinter, fog and light projectiles. Chemical ammunition is also said to have been produced, filled with sarin or VX . Elevation and side are set manually by the crew in indirect straightening, with the aiming through the directional circle PG-1 (PANTEL) with the collimator K-1. For direct shots at armored, moving targets, there are special ammunition and a visor for direct aiming in daylight (optical OP 4-35) or at night (passive infrared night target device).

In order to make the gun march-ready, the crew pulls the barrel backwards from the cradle in order to reduce the overall length of the gun. The gun runs on foam-filled, large rubber wheels that are individually mounted. The carriage tail of the spreading carriage is folded up for transport and runs on a split limber with smaller wheels. The standard time for preparing to march from the firing position is approximately seven minutes. Tractors are heavy trucks (e.g. KrAZ-255 or Tatra 813 ), chain tractors (e.g. ATS-59 ) or lightly armored traction devices (e.g. MT-LB ). A team can pull the gun at a cruising speed of up to 50 km / h.

commitment

Mission profile

With its high muzzle velocity and exceptionally long range of up to 27,490 m, the M-46 was considered an excellent weapon for indirect fire at the time of its introduction into the 1970s. It also has a high penetration power when fighting armored targets, even if the manual targeting cannot keep up with the semi-automated systems of the newer tank guns. The weapon system is vulnerable because of the high personnel requirements and the lack of armor from air strikes, enemy artillery and broken tanks, especially since the time required to change position of a rifled system does not allow the enemy reaction time to be undermined (“ shoot-and-scoot ”).

In the Warsaw Pact Land Forces, the M-46 was grouped into battalion- size gun compartments , each consisting of three batteries with six M-46s each. These artillery departments were found in artillery regiments or artillery brigades on formations at the front or army level. Also division artillery groups (DAG) of breakthrough on associations division plane received M-46th The tactical role of the M-46 usually formed the counterfire against enemy artillery ("counter-battery"). For this purpose, the units are positioned around 5 km behind the front for attack and around 9 km for defense.

User states

The M-46 was exported to more than 25 countries, including practically all Warsaw Pact countries, as well as u. a. Egypt, Finland, India, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Vietnam. In the Soviet Union, the M-46 was increasingly replaced in its role as divisional artillery from the 1970s by the 2S5 Giazint self-propelled gun and the 2A36 Giatsint rifled gun, both with a caliber of 152 mm. In many other countries, the M-46 is still in use, partly by upgrading to the 152 mm caliber or mounting it on mobile platforms.

Today's users (alphabetical)

AlgeriaAlgeria In 2008, Algeria had 10 M-46 guns. The rifled artillery systems of Algeria consist mainly of 122-mm howitzers of the older ( D-30 ) and very old ( A-19 ) Russian design.

Exercise for combat shooting in direct judging with the Finnish variant 130 K 54 (2010)

FinlandFinland Finland : In 1993 the Finnish Armed Forces took over 166 M-46 from Germany from NVA stocks. These guns were technically revised and designated as 130 K 54 . Land forces and navies each received 72 guns for coastal defense. There are also 15 coastal guns of the 130 mm caliber from Finnish production (type K 90-60 , Tampella / Vammas), but they have a different technical basis.

Guinea-aGuinea In 2000, Guinea took over twelve used M-46 guns from Romania . The sale was handled by the Israeli company Gatestar. After the army of the African state, which is considered corrupt and undisciplined, used new weapons against demonstrators and killed hundreds of people in the process, an arms embargo was issued in 2009 by the EU. The twelve M-46 guns were still in existence in 2013 and are organized there together with ten 122-mm guns of Russian design in the only existing artillery battalion of the Army of Guinea.

IndiaIndia India was equipped with M-46 by the Soviet Union in the 1960s . The ammunition for this was produced locally. In the third Indo-Pakistani War (1971), the Indian army suffered from the low mobility of the rifled artillery, including the M-46. From the early 1980s, the Indian Vijayanta battle tank was also considered obsolete. After removing the turret and assembling the M-46, the M-46 Catapult (Vijayanta SPG) was created from the extended platform of the tank in 1986. India converted about 100 M-46s to self-propelled guns in this way . At the end of the Cold War India had around 700 M-46s, with which 36 regiments were equipped. In 1994 another 120 M-46 were added. In 2012, the porting of the Catapult concept to the newer Arjun tank was examined.

IranIran Iran : The Iranian army , including the Revolutionary Guard , had around 800 M-46s in 2000, which thus form a large part of the approximately 2,000 drawn artillery systems in Iran.

LibyaLibya Libya had 330 M-46s in 2008. The M-46 thus represented a good half of the rifled artillery systems in Libya.

MoroccoMorocco In 2008, Morocco had 18 M-46 guns, almost a fifth of the Moroccan stock of rifled artillery systems.

PakistanPakistan In 2000, Pakistan obtained 60 pieces of the Type 59-1 gun from the Chinese manufacturer Norinco . While the Chinese-made Type-59 gun is a 1: 1 copy of the M-46, the later version Type 59-1 contains construction elements of the Type 60 , a copy of the Russian 122-mm howitzer D-74. The semi-automatic closure enables a higher rate of fire, the limber is no longer necessary.

Former users

Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR : From the mid-1960s, the National People's Army replaced the 152 mm ML-20 cannon howitzer in its role as army artillery with the M-46. The introduction was completed by 1972, the NVA had a total of around 180 M-46s. These were each 72 M-46 guns both artillery regiments ( AR -3 in Leipzig and AR-5 in Dabel ) of the military districts III and V allocated. In the 40th ABR in Blankenfelde, which was intended for the battle for West Berlin , there were another 18 M-46. This gun department was under the border troops until 1986 . The remaining M-46 stock of the NVA of 16 to 18 guns formed an artillery department in the AR-8 in Rostock, which belonged to the 8th MSD . When the NVA was dissolved in 1990, 178 M-46 cannons were handed over to the Bundeswehr . Of these, 166 guns were exported to Finland in 1993.

Combat missions

The Egyptian army used the M-46 in the Six Day War against Israel in 1967 and was thus far superior in range to the artillery used by the IDF , since their standard howitzers of caliber 105 mm ( M101 ) and 155 mm ( M114 ) only have a range of 12 and respectively Owned 15 km. However, the IDF more than made up for this advantage with the use of self-propelled guns , mobile warfare and the air supremacy it had gained . By the 1973 Yom Kippur War , the IDF had upgraded to the 155 mm M109 howitzer and the 203 mm M110 howitzer , which partially closed the range gap to the M-46.

In the Vietnam War , the North Vietnamese Army used the M-46 in large numbers, for the first time in 1968 in the Battle of Khe Sanh . There, the superior range of the M-46 firing positions, some of which are located in Laos, compared to the American guns, despite the massive use of bombers (especially Arc Light ), resulted in a constant artillery threat to the trapped marines . This only ended with Operation Pegasus, when the artillery of 1st Cav. Division were able to counter-fire the M-46 positions.

Destroyed Republican Guard M-46 in the Gulf War (1991)

Before the Gulf War (1991), the Iraqi armed forces had around 3,000 to 5,000 rifled artillery systems, mostly of Soviet origin, including M-46. During the Gulf War, this number halved, primarily through air strikes and the superior reconnaissance of the American armed forces, to only around 1,500 to 1,800 drawn artillery systems (as of 1999). The Iraqis' artillery units were also defeated in the Iraq War (2003).

During the Bosnian War , Bosnian-Serb troops shelled the city of Tuzla , causing 71 deaths and 173 injuries when a single HE shell from an M-46 hit a busy district. The youngest fatality was a child of two and a half years. This incident is known as the Tuzla massacre .

The Syrian Army possessed before the outbreak of civil war in Syria about 700 to 800 M-46 guns that were used on both sides of the conflict.

literature

Web links

Commons : M-46 130 mm gun  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Threat Support Directorate, US Army (Ed.): Russian 130-mm Towed Gun M-46 . In: Worldwide Equipment Guide (WEG / Interim FM 100-65). Ft. Leavenworth (Kansas), 1999, pp. 6-6.
  2. ↑ Anthony H. Cordesman, Aram Nerguizian: The North African Military Balance. Force Developments in the Maghreb. CSIS, Washington DC 2009, ISBN 978-0-89206-552-3 , p. 45 .
  3. ^ A b Edward J. Laurance, Tracy M. Keith: The United Nations Register of Conventional Arms: On Course in Its Third Year of Reporting. In: The Nonproliferation Review. Vol. 3, No. 2 (Winter 1996), ISSN  1746-1766 , p. 89 ( ANNEX: Reports Submitted to the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms Calendar Year 1994 ).
  4. ↑ "Kenttäkanuuna 130 K 54" maavoimat.fi, as of February 20, 2017.
  5. ↑ United Nations (Ed.): Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms , Document No. A / 56/257 for the calendar year 2000, published July 31, 2001, p. 45.
  6. ↑ Guy Martin: Republic of Guinea Armed Forces . In: defenseWeb: Africa's Defense and Security News Portal of July 4, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b Christopher F. Foss (Ed.): Jane's Armor and Artillery. Vol. 23 (2002), p. 755.
  8. ↑ Christopher F. Foss (Ed.): Jane's Armor and Artillery. Vol. 23 (2002), p. 47.
  9. ↑ Arjun Catapult on military-today.com (accessed July 31, 2019.)
  10. ↑ Shlomo Brom, Yiftah Shapir (Ed.): The Middle East Military Balance, 2001-2002. MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 2002, ISBN 0-262-06231-3 , p. 152 .
  11. ↑ Anthony H. Cordesman, Aram Nerguizian: The North African Military Balance. Force Developments in the Maghreb. CSIS, Washington DC 2009, ISBN 978-0-89206-552-3 , p. 62 .
  12. ↑ Anthony H. Cordesman, Aram Nerguizian: The North African Military Balance. Force Developments in the Maghreb. CSIS, Washington DC 2009, ISBN 978-0-89206-552-3 , p. 27 .
  13. ↑ United Nations (Ed.): Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. Document number. A / 56/257 for the calendar year 2000, published July 31, 2001, p. 39.
  14. ↑ NORINCO 130 mm Field Gun (Type 59-1). ( Memento from April 24, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) on the Pakistan Military Consortium website.
  15. ^ Wilfried Copenhagen: The land forces of the NVA. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-02297-4 .
  16. ↑ Inventory overview of various users 1990 , users: Rak.- und Waffentechn. Dienst (according to numbered delay), p. 7, entry 130-MM-KANONE M-46 with catalog no. 201300.
  17. ↑ Jay A. Menzoff, David T. Zabecki: Artillery . In: Spencer C. Tucker (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars. Volume 1. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2010, ISBN 978-1-85109-947-4 , pp. 156-159.
  18. ↑ Jonathan BA Bailey: Field Artillery and Firepower. 2nd Edition. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2004, pp. 57-58.
  19. ↑ John C. Love: Artillery Ambush. In: Marine Corps Gazette. Vol. 52, No. 7 (July 1968), pp. 36ff.
  20. ↑ Anthony H. Cordesman: Iraq and the War of Sanctions. Greenwood Publishing, Westport (CT) 1999, ISBN 0275965287 , pp. 104-105.
  21. ^ Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Case No .: X-KR-07/394. ( Memento of April 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Judgment of June 12, 2009, published September 14, 2009, pp. 2–3.
  22. ↑ Anthony H. Cordesman: Israel and Syria. The military balance and prospects of war. Praeger Security, Westport 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-35520-2 , p. 173.
  23. ↑ Jeffrey White: Syria's Rebels Gain Heavy Weapons. In: Policy Watch 2013, Washington Institute, January 10, 2013.