On Quality of Soviet Military Products during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945)

Abstract

The author offers a methodological approach to assessing the quality of Soviet military products during the great Patriotic war, which includes three interrelated characteristics of comparable “military machines”: design, production technology and performance. The advantages and disadvantages of technical control and military acceptance departments at enterprises of the military-industrial complex of the USSR are shown. The risk of penetration into the war army of products with hidden production and technological defects is assessed. It is proved that to the greatest extent this risk is inherent in products of aviation and armored industry as well as production ofs weapons cartridges and artillery shells. It is proved that according to a set of selected quality criteria, Soviet infantry small arms and artillery-mortar weapons were neither defective nor excellent in comparison with similar types of enemy weapons. At the same time, the quality of Soviet aviation and armored vehicles is characterized by large and small design flaws, such as instability of production and technological process and low, compared to similar examples of enemy military equipment, motor resource. The lag in the quality of military equipment had to be balanced by a large number of relatively short-lived in operation and cheaper in manufacture “military vehicles”, which is why some of them, for example, the Il-2 attack aircraft, became products of “one-time use”.