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Rockets and People
difficult situation, our certainty about our ultimate victory and the security of
Moscow was simply understood.This mood distinguished the hungry Muscovites
of the summer of 1942 from the satisfied Muscovites in October 1941.
On 16 October 1941, all the People’s Commissars and senior staff of the government
institutions had abandoned Moscow in a terrible hurry. In the summer of
1942 they tried to forget about that. Once again all branches of the defense industry
and the restructuring of all non-military industries was being directed from
Moscow under the slogan All for the Front, All for Victory. At the People’s
Commissariat of the Aircraft Industry I could see that all the offices were occupied.
There were typewriters chattering in the reception rooms.The hallways were once
again filled with clerks, hurrying to deliver reports, and messengers sent from distant
factories, gray-faced from the fatigue of travel.
without any red tape,I was provided with a night pass and ration cards then
ordered to go, without delay, to our abandoned factory in Khimki and set up the
production of remote-controlled onboard radio stations and suitable control
knobs. I was to work out ways to protect the onboard receivers against interference
from spark ignition.They disregarded my objections that this was not my area
of expertise and that I had flown here specifically with the assignment to come up
with a radio control system for the BI interceptor.“A war is going on, every day
is precious.Your BI is still to come, but we need radio communications in battle
not tomorrow, but today—yesterday even.We already have fighters that are as good
as the Germans’, but our radio communications are deplorable!”
At the Scientific Institute of Aircraft Equipment (NISO), which was tasked
with helping me, I met many old acquaintances who had already returned from
a brief evacuation. 2 Among those who worked there were Sergey Losyakov, my
old school chum; his chief,Veniamin Smirnov; engineers and avionics specialists
Nikolay Chistyakov and Viktor Milshteyn; and radio communications
systems developer Yuriy Bykov.They were all subordinate to the extraordinarily
dynamic and energetic chief engineer Nikolay Ryazantsev. I received help
in the form of advice, drawings, and individual pieces of equipment from allies
and captured materials.
By late summer, at the same Factory No. 293 we had abandoned in October
1941, a special equipment department (OSO) was already in operation. Jack-ofall-trades
Sokolov and his team of two mechanics and one lathe operator were the
production division. Three designers and two drafters drew from early morning
until late in the evening, and after my inspection they redid the greater part of their
labors.Two radio engineers darted about Moscow and combat airfields trying to
equip the laboratory with instruments and models of real radio stations. I considered
the five-man “special purpose” team our main accomplishment. This team,
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2. NISO—Nauchnyy institut samoletnogo oboroduvaniya.