Mikhail Koshkin
Mikhail Ilyich Koshkin (Russian: Михаил Ильич Кошкин, December 3, 1898, Yaroslavl Oblast – September 26, 1940) was a Soviet tank designer, chief designer of the famous T-34 medium tank. The T-34 was the most effective and most produced tank of World War II. He started out in life as a candy maker, but then studied engineering.[1]
In 1937, the Red Army assigned him to lead a new team to design a replacement for the BT tanks at the Kharkiv Komintern Locomotive Plant (KhPZ) in Kharkiv.
He died after contracting pneumonia while driving prototypes of T-34 tank - А-20 and А-32 on a grueling 2,000-kilometre (1,250 mi) drive from Kharkiv to Moscow for a demonstration for the Kremlin leaders, to the Mannerheim Line in Finland, and back to Kharkiv via Minsk and Kiev.
Mikhail Koshkin was posthumously awarded the State Stalin Prize in 1942 and the Order of the Red Star.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Panther Vs T-34: Ukraine 1943 By Robert Forczyk, Osprey Publishing, 2007, ISBN 1846031494, 9781846031496, on Google Books
  |
This Soviet biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 |
This article about an engineer, inventor or industrial designer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
