Viktor Tikhomirov - World War II Activities

World War II Activities

Germany began the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The NII-9 was evacuated eastward from Leningrad, and their engineers working on radio-location joined the NII-20. The major portion of the Aviapribor Plant evacuated to Kazan, and the part remaining in Moscow was designated Factory 339. To assist in defending Moscow against German aircraft, an improved RUS-2 was set up and operated by NII-20 personnel including Tikhomirov; it was first used on the night of July 22 when it detected a flight of 200 Luftwaffe bombers when they were 100-km (62-mi) away. This success led authorities to request additional radio-location sets.

Under Tikhomirov’s leadership, NII-20 redesigned the RUS-2 to become a fixed radio-location station. With other improvements, this was designated the RUS-2C, and also called the Pegmatit-2 (P-2). It operated at 4 m (75 kHz) with a pulse-power of near 40 kW. This was actually the Soviet Union’s first fully capable, pulsed, radio-location system; several hundred sets in different versions were produced at Factory 339. Tikhomirov received his first Stalin Award (1943) for the RUS-2C development. Throughout the war, NII-20 and Factory 339 dominated radar equipment development and fabrication in the USSR.

In late 1940, the Soviet Air Forces developed a requirement for an on-board enemy aircraft radio-location system. The NII-9 was directed to design such a set for the new Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bomber. With size and weight restrictions, a microwave design using a recently developed reflex klystron (as it was later called) was selected. The experimental set was called Gneis (Origin) and operated at 16 cm (1.8 GHz). When the war started and the NII-9 radio-location capabilities went to Moscow, NII-20 took over the development of Gneis. Tikhomirov was assigned Chief Designer, and retained this role through all future upgrades.

The NII-20 was evacuated to Barnaul in July 1941. Under Tikhomirov’s leadership, the Gneis-2 radar was created ‘from scratch’ with limited staff and in an extremely challenging environment. At this time, the so-called ‘Tikhomirov style’ originated: frantic work schedules, extraordinary working capacity, incredible self-discipline, and insistence on high performance by the staff. In only a few months, the first pilot sets were tested with positive results.

During the battle of Stalingrad in late 1942, Tikhomirov and his design team went to the fighting scene where they installed airborne radars on Pe-2 frontline bombers and performed all set-up procedures on the spot. Official testing of the Pe-2 with Gneis-2 onboard took place at Leningrad in 1943, and it was then that the radar was commissioned. Tikhomirov received his second Stalin Award for the Gneis-2 design (1946).

In mid-1943, NII-20 moved back to Moscow, and in the same year Tikhomirov completed the Gneis-2M airborne radar design. Gneis-2 radars were also mounted on Pe-3 bombers and Li-2 Douglas transport aircraft. In the wartime, about 230 sets with various Gneis designations were built. Gneis-5 and Gneis-5C were also put into serial production, but were not fielded until after the war.

In 1944, the aircraft radar activity was separated from NII-20 and became the Central Design Bureau-17 (TsKB-17). It was responsible for design of all airborne radars, as well as weapon control systems (WCS). Tikhomirov was assigned as Deputy Director for Research in TsKB-17, and remained in the role of Chief Designer in several design trends. The TsKB-17 is today the Vega Radio Engineering Corporation.

As the war was drawing to a close, TsKB-17 designed and prepared production plans for several new airborne radars, including the Argon for tail-protection of Tu-16 aircraft. The Soviet Union had begun experimenting with jet aircraft, and in support of this, Tikhomirov and the TsKB-17 initiated a number of designs for new aircraft microwave radars; these used magnetrons that had been developed in the Soviet Union.