Development History
The task to develop a light-weight airborne assault gun with 57 or 76mm gun for the airborne troops was given to two design bureaus, Astrov (OKB-40) in Mytishchi and Kravtsev in Moscow. Nikolaj Astrov's OKB-40 designed the ASU-76, based on components of the light tank T-70 and the SU-76 assault gun, and armed with the new 76mm gun D-56T. The ASU-76 turned out to be too heavy, even though the armour was only 3 mm thick, and the project was cancelled. Anatoly Kravtsev's team came up with the similar, amphibious K-73. This vehicle was armed with Charnko's 57mm anti-tank gun Ch-51 and was even more thinly armoured than the ASU-76. This project too was shelved.
In 1949, Astrov was instructed to continue with his project, but with reduced weight and with the Ch-51 gun as main armament instead of the D-56T since it offered better anti-tank performance. The redesigned Ob.572 was developed simultaneously with the light artillery tractor Ob.561 (AT-P) and was accepted for series production from 1951 as the ASU-57, after successfully passing the various test phases in 1949.
Read more about this topic: ASU-57
Famous quotes containing the words development and/or history:
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)