Mikhail Ilyich Koschkin

Koshkin on a postage stamp

Mikhail Ilyich Koschkin ( Russian Михаил Ильич Кошкин ; * December 3, 1898 in Bryntschagi , Yaroslavl Oblast ; † September 26, 1940 Ferienhaus Sanki, Kharkov Oblast ) was a Soviet engineer and head of the development team for the famous T-34 medium tank . The Soviet T-34 was the most produced tank of World War II .

Koschkin studied mechanical engineering in Leningrad after the world war and civil war and graduated in 1934. He then worked as a designer in the Leningrad Kirov Plant in duct drafts before 1936 the locomotive factory "Comintern" by Kharkov was transferred. Mikhail Koschkin died in 1940 of pneumonia that he contracted during an extensive test and demonstration drive with two T-34 prototypes. This stretched over 2900 km and led from Kharkov to Moscow to a military demonstration, then to Finland , where the tanks came too late for the winter war, via Minsk and Kiev back to Kharkov.

literature

• Matthew Hughes, Chris Mann: T-34 tanks . Karl Müller, Erlangen 1999, ISBN 978-3-86070-799-9 (96 pages, English: The T-34 tank . Translated by Jürgen Brust).

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Ilyich Koschkin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• PKKA-CA: T-34 Ukrainian tank? In: pkka.narod.ru. Retrieved September 7, 2018 (English, in Hughes / Mann is given for Koschkin's transfer to Charkow in 1936, which is more plausible.).