Designations of Russian towed artillery

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The official names of Russian/Soviet towed artillery pieces consist of three sequential parts – the piece caliber, the piece type and finally the piece unique identifier. This system is invariable from the late times of Russian Empire but its first and third components were the subject of changes several times. After abolishing old designation system based on projectile or gun weight at early years of XX century Imperial Russian Army naming rules were quite simple. First component was caliber in inches or lines, then type of a piece with optional producer’s name and attributes such as regimental, divisional, siege, field, fortress, etc follows and the year of adopting the piece onto Army service finishes the name. E. g. 6-дюймовая гаубица обр. 1909 г. (6 inch howitzer M1909) or 6-дюймовая осадная пушка образца 1910 года (6 inch siege gun M1910).

After October Revolution first change took place, when Soviet Union officially adopted metric system and abolished old non-metric measurement units. From this point till now caliber expressed in millimeters (despite the fact that there was not complete caliber switching to the ‘round numbers’ such as 50, 75, 100, 150 and so on). Old guns inherited from the Czarist Time were remeasured in millimeter units and in some cases part of attributes was dropped. The fractional part of caliber was rounded to the nearest integer value. The examples of such designations are 76-мм дивизионная пушка обр. 1902 г. (76 mm divisional gun M1902) or 152-мм пушка обр. 1910 года (152 mm gun M1910, former 6 inch siege gun M1910).

The growth of industrial strength of Soviet Union allowed to modernize old guns and began to develop new pieces. Modernized ordnance received ‘slashed’ model designation, e. g. 152-мм пушка обр. 1910/30 гг. (152 mm gun M1910/30). If the piece was modernized more than twice, the two digits of year of late modernization included into official name, e. g. 152-мм пушка обр. 1910/34 гг. (152 mm gun M1910/34). But pieces, which were designed in Soviet Union after 1930 got two official names. One of them was traditional Army designation, e. g. 122-мм гаубица обр. 1938 г. (122 mm howitzer M1938) but another was the index of developer or producer (ordnance plants in Soviet Union very often had their own designer bureaus). The latter consists from one-three letters and project number. For mentioned above 122 mm howitzer M1938 developer index is M-30. Letters identified the developer or producer. For example, M stands for Motovilkha plant, B – for ‘Bolshevik’ plant, S – for Central Artillery Design Bureau, D – for Factory No. 9, ZiS – for Factory No. 92 named after Joseph Stalin and so on. The exception was plant named after Mikhail Kalinin, their project number was ahead of ‘K’ letter. Their guns designated e. g. as 61-K or 20K (both variants with and without dash are widely used in historical documents). For some guns both Army and developer names were well known and interchangeable such as 76 mm divisional gun M1942 / ZiS-3 (in that case the Army name was given after fire baptism). For some other guns such as 45 mm anti-tank gun M1937 the developer index (53-K) was very rarely used even in popular literature.

This system was in action through all Second World War and some time after it. But in 1950s some change took place. In the official names of newly designed pieces M19XX (обр. 19ХХ г.) was dropped and developer index was instated as unique identifier, e. g. 122-мм гаубица Д-30 (122 mm howitzer D-30). But unlike first naming change, old pieces of WW2 era never renamed, e. g. in the official ballistic tables printed in 1968 howitzer D-1 still referenced as 152 mm howitzer M1943 and not as 152 mm howitzer D-1.

The third change was connected with introduction of GRAU new system of indices regarding ordnance and munitions. After it developer index was dropped from official piece name (but it still officially exists through design and testing process) and GRAU designation was instated as unique identifier, e. g. 152-мм пушка 2А36 (152 mm gun 2A36). This situation is functioning in modern Russian Rocket Troops and Artillery.