ZIS-6 and other 100-107 mm tank guns developed in 1941
Vasiliy Gavrilovich Grabin is one of the best known Soviet gun designers. It just so happened that design bureaus under his direction created the most common tank and divisional guns used by the Red Army in the war. Grabin rose to fame as an artillery designer in the second half of the 1930s. He first created the F-22 and F-22 USV guns, then the F-32 and F-34. Far from all products developed at factory #92 went into mass production, but that was a typical scenario. The most important thing was that Grabin's designs were often better than its competitors. Factory #92's design bureau has no equal in 1940-1942. Their F-34 gun became the T-34's main weapon, and a variant of it called ZIS-5 became the main gun of the KV-1 in the fall of 1941. The Red Army's main towed gun was the ZIS-3, a grassroots initiative that could be used both as field artillery or an anti-tank gun. As an anti-tank gun, it was only beaten by another of Grabin's creations, the ZIS-2. The Central Artillery Design Bureau created on Grabin's initiative began to lose ground to factory #9's design bureau, but nevertheless the S-53/ZIS-S-53 was the T-34-85's main gun. The TsAKB was also responsible for the BS-3, another combination anti-tank and field gun. The BS-3, ZIS-S-53, and ZIS-3 still fight in distant corners of the world.
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KV-2 with a ZIS-6 at the Gorohovets ANIOP, June 1941. |
Factory #92 was working on a whole family of guns in early 1941, both towed and tank. They included the main character of this article: the 107 mm F-42 gun, later renamed to ZIS-6. Unlike most of factory #92's designs, this one was a grassroots initiative. However,
a proposal to develop a 107 mm gun with the ballistics of the M-60 came about in June of 1940, and not from Grabin. In March of 1941 the ZIS-6 became relevant to a tank other than the KV-2. The gun became necessary for a whole number of new tanks that entered development that spring. Rumours and omissions are common when discussing the history of this gun, so let's fill in the gaps.