On December 3, a postcard with a commemorative stamp dedicated to the 125th Birth Anniversary of Mikhail Koshkin, a design engineer, was put into postal circulation

Mikhail Koshkin (1898-1940) was a Soviet design engineer, a designer and the first Chief Designer of the T-34 tank, a Hero of Socialist Labor (1990).

He was born on November 21 (December 3) of 1898 in the Brynchagi village (presently the Pereslavl District of the Yaroslavl Region). Mikhail Koshkin participated in battles on the fronts of the Civil War and in repelling foreign military intervention in Russia. In 1934, he defended his graduation thesis in the speciality of "mechanical engineer in the design of automobiles and tractors" at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute.

Since 1934, he had worked for two and a half years in the Design Bureau of the S. Kirov Leningrad Plant. In late December of 1936, he was assigned to the Kharkov Plant to design a fast medium tank suitable for large-scale production. Mikhail Koshkin took the lead of new design department KB-24, which in less than a year designed a wheeled caterpillar tank indexed BT-20.

Early in 1939, all tank design bureaus of the plant (KB-24, KB-190 and KB-35) were merged into KB-520, and at the same time, the experimental shops were merged into a single shop. M. Koshkin was appointed the Chief Designer. In the middle of the same year, he presented in Kharkov the A-20 and A-32 prototypes. From September 1939 to February 1940, proceeding from the decision of the Army Tank-Automation Command, Mikhail Koshkin headed designing and production of two prototype caterpillar tanks A-32 with reinforced armor.

On December 19, 1939, the A-32 caterpillar tank with 45-mm thick armor, named tank T-34, was adopted by the Red Army. On February 10 of 1940, the first two T-34 tanks were manufactured and their trials began. In March of 1940, Koshkin personally took part in the army trials of two prototype T-34 (A-34) tanks with a run from Kharkov to Moscow and back.

The commemorative stamp features a portrait of Mikhail Koshkin against the background of drawings of the A-32 tank; the main illustration is a collage of photos of various modifications of the T-34 tank.

In addition to the issue of the postcard with a commemorative stamp, JSC Marka produced special cancels for Moscow, Kirov, Nizhny Tagil of the Sverdlovsk Region, Pereslavl-Zalessky of the Yaroslavl Region and Yaroslavl.


Design Artist: S. Ulyanovsky.
Quantity: 7 thousand postcards.

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