March 26, 2014. An interdepartmental committee made the decision to launch the industrial production of the new V-46 diesel engine for T-72 tank at Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant in March 1974.

‘The production launch was preceded by a lot of efforts on the part of the plant’s diesel design office headed by Ivan Trashutin and his deputies Victor Spassky and Semyen Muzikus. All three of them were the inventors of the changes incorporated into the engine design and received the USSR State Prize for this. The production workers headed by the plant’s Director-General Grigory Zaichenko, Chief Engineer Nikolai Lozhchenko, and head of the Motor Division Alexander Smirnov, contributed to the successful and speedy launch of the new engine,’ the company press service reports.

The 12-cylinder V-46 that was designed on the basis of the V-2 engine was made more powerful (780 horsepower). In addition, it could now use both diesel fuel and kerosene or gasoline. The diesel engine’s seven different modifications were used at T-72 Ural tanks, T-72K, Pion self-propelled vehicles, and other 20 different types of military and civil vehicles.

‘In the seventies and the nineties, V-46 was the most popular tank engine in the USSR. It was thought of highly in the Warsaw Treaty camp as well as in other countries that purchased military vehicles from the USSR. It proved very efficient in Afghanistan and other war zones where armored vehicles were involved. The T-72 tanks from Nizhniy Tagil, fitted with the Chelyabinsk-made V-46 diesel engine, have served the Russian Army for 40 years,’ the company says.