Tuesday 13 March 2018

F-32 in A-34

"Secret

To the ABTU Chief, Corps Commander Pavlov
NKO House, 2 Red Square, Moscow

On the issue of: production of armour and assembly of A-34 hull and turret.

The armour for the A-34 is ready, both for the hull and the turret. The hull is in the finishing stages of assembly, the turret assembly will begin on December 22nd.

According to your instructions, the turret was built to take the L-11 gun. We have learned that you intend to install the F-32 gun into the production vehicle. To this day, our factory does not have a complete set of F-32 blueprints or the gun itself. This does not permit us to design the mount for an F-32 gun in the A-34 or create working blueprints for the aforementioned mount. 

I ask you to issue instructions to send a full set of F-32 blueprints to our factory, and immediately give us at least one gun. Delays in sending the blueprints and the gun will make it much more difficult to put the A-34 with an F-32 gun into production.

Factory director Maksarev
Chief designer M.I. Koshkin
December 20th, 1939"

Handwritten notes on the document read:

"To comrade Panov: figure out this issue and take measures to ensure no production delays. I. Rogachev, December 31st."

"A letter regarding the F-32 was sent by the 4th department. No additional blueprints will be sent. A copy was sent to the military representative at #183 and the chief engineer of factory #183, comrade Makhonin, familiarized himself with the issue. I.G. Panov, January 5th, 1940"

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