Battle mole project. Tremors of the Earth: Midgard Serpent and War Mole

Since ancient times, man has been drawn to either sink to the bottom, or rise into the air, or reach the very center of the Earth. However, this was possible until some time only in fantasy novels and fairy tales. Nowadays, an underground boat is no longer just a fantasy. Successful developments and trials have been carried out in this area. After reading our article, you will learn a lot of interesting things about such an apparatus as an underground boat.

Underground boats in literature

It all started with a flight of fancy. In 1864, Jules Verne published a famous novel called Journey to the Center of the Earth. His heroes descended to the center of our planet through the mouth of a volcano. In 1883 Shuzi's Underground Fire was published. In it, the heroes, working with pickaxes, laid a mine to the earth's center. True, the book has already said that the core of the planet is hot. Alexei Tolstoy, the Russian writer, has had more success. In 1927, he wrote "Engineer Garin's Hyperboloid". The hero of the work made his way almost through the thickness of the earth, while casually and even with some cynicism.

All these authors built hypotheses that could not be substantiated in any way. The matter remained with the inventors and engineers, the rulers of people's thoughts of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. However, in the "Winners of the Subsoil" published in 1937, he reduced the problem of storming the earth's interior to the usual achievements of the USSR authorities. The design that the underground boat had in his book seemed to have been written off from the drawings of a secret design bureau. Is this a coincidence?

First developments

Now no one can answer the question of what formed the basis of Grigory Adamov's bold guesses. However, judging by the few data, there were still reasons for them. The first engineer who allegedly created the drawings of the underground apparatus was Petr Rasskazov. This engineer was killed in 1918 by an agent who stole all his documentation from him. The Americans believe that the first developments were started by Thomas Edison. However, it is more reliable that they were carried out in the late 20-30s of the 20th century by engineers from the USSR A. Treblev, A. Baskin and A. Kirilov. It was they who developed the design of the first underground boat.

However, it was intended solely for utilitarian purposes related to oil production, in order to facilitate this process and satisfy the needs of the socialist state. They took as a basis a real mole or earlier developments in this area by Russian or foreign engineers - now it's hard to say. However, it is known that in the Ural mines located under the test "floats" of the boat were carried out. Of course, the sample was experimental, rather a reduced copy than a full-fledged working apparatus. Apparently, it resembled later coal mining combines. The presence of flaws, a reliable engine, a slow penetration rate was natural for the first model. It was decided to curtail the work on the subway.

Strakhov resumes the project

After some time, the era of mass terror began. Many specialists who participated in this project were shot. However, on the eve of the war, they suddenly remembered the "Steel Mole". The authorities were again interested in the underground boat. P. I. Strakhov, a leading specialist in this field, was summoned to the Kremlin. At that time, he worked as a curator on the construction of the Moscow metro. The scientist, in a conversation with D. F. Ustinov, who headed the arms commissariat, confirmed the opinion about the combat use of the underground vehicle. He was instructed to develop an improved experimental model according to the surviving drawings.

War interrupts work

People, funds, necessary equipment were urgently allocated. The Russian underground boat had to be ready as soon as possible. However, the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, apparently, interrupted the work. Therefore, the state commission never adopted an experimental sample. He was destined for the fate of many other projects - the sample was sawn into metal. The country at that time needed more aircraft, tanks and submarines for defense. But Strakhov never returned to the underground boat. He was sent to build bunkers.

German submarines

Similar designs, of course, were also carried out in Germany. Any superweapon capable of bringing world domination to the Third Reich was necessary for leadership. In fascist Germany, according to information received after the end of the war, there were developments of underground military vehicles. The code name of the first of them is Subterrine (project by R. Trebeletsky and H. von Wern). By the way, some researchers believe that R. Trebeletsky is A. Treblev, an engineer who fled the USSR. The second development is Midgardschlange, which means "Midgard Serpent". This is a Ritter project.

After completion, the Soviet authorities discovered adits of unknown origin near Koenigsberg, next to which were the remains of a blown up structure. It has been suggested that these are the remains of the Midgard Serpent.

No less remarkable project was the "Sea Lion" (its other name is Subterrine). Back in 1933, Horner von Werner, a German engineer, filed a patent for it. According to his plan, this device could reach speeds of up to 7 m / h. On board could be 5 people, and the weight of the warhead was up to 300 kg. This device, moreover, could move not only underground, but also under water. This underground submarine was immediately classified. Her project ended up in the military archive.

Probably no one would have remembered him if the war had not started. Count von Staufenberg, who oversaw military projects, pulled it out of the archive. He suggested that Hitler use a submarine to invade the British Isles. She had to quietly cross the English Channel and secretly go underground to the right place.

However, these plans were not destined to come true. Hermann Goering convinced Adolf Hitler that England could be forced to surrender much cheaper and faster by simple bombing. Therefore, the operation was not carried out, although Goering could not fulfill his promise.

Exploring the Sea Lion Project

After the victory over Germany in 1945, an unspoken confrontation began on the territory of this country. Former allies began to compete among themselves for the possession of German military secrets. Among some other developments, the German project of an underground boat called "Sea Lion" fell into the hands of Abakumov, a SMERSH general. The group, led by professors G. I. Pokrovsky and G. I. Babata, began to study the capabilities of this apparatus. As a result of the research, the following verdict was issued - the underground vehicle can be used by the Russians for military purposes.

Designed by M. Tsiferov

Engineer M. Tsiferov created his own underground projectile at the same time (in 1948). He was even given a USSR copyright certificate for the development of an underground torpedo. This device could move independently in the thickness of the earth, while developing a speed of up to 1 m / s!

Construction of a secret factory

Meanwhile, Khrushchev came to power in the USSR. In the beginning of the Cold War, their own trump cards, military and political, were needed. The engineers and scientists who were confronted with this problem came up with a solution that took the underground boat project to a new level of development. It was supposed to be done with the type of the first submarines that had a nuclear reactor. In a short time for pilot production, it was necessary to build another secret plant. By order of Khrushchev, in early 1962, construction began near the village of Gromovka (Ukraine). Khrushchev soon announced publicly that the imperialists should be obtained not only from space, but also from underground.

Development of the "Battle Mole"

After 2 years, the plant produced the first underground boat of the USSR. She had a nuclear reactor. The underground nuclear boat was named "Battle Mole". The design had a titanium body. The stern and bow were pointed. The underground boat "Battle Mole" in diameter reached 3.8 m, and its length was 35 meters. The crew consisted of five people. In addition, the underground boat "Battle Mole" was able to take on board a ton of explosives, as well as another 15 paratroopers. "Battle Mole" allowed the boat to reach speeds of up to 7 m / h.

What was the atomic underground boat "Battle Mole" intended for?

The combat mission that was assigned to her was the destruction of missile silos and underground command bunkers of the enemy. The General Staff planned to deliver such "subs" to the United States using nuclear submarines specially designed for this. California was chosen as the destination, where high seismic activity was observed due to frequent earthquakes. She could mask the movement of the Russian subway. The underground boat of the USSR, in addition, could install a nuclear charge and, by detonating it remotely, in this way cause an artificial earthquake. Its consequences could be attributed to an ordinary natural disaster. This could undermine the power of the Americans financially and materially.

Testing a new underground boat

In 1964, in early autumn, the Battle Mole was tested. The subway showed good results. He managed to overcome heterogeneous soil, as well as destroy the command bunker located underground, which belonged to a mock enemy. Several times the prototype was demonstrated to members of government commissions in the Rostov region, in the Urals and in Nakhabino near Moscow. After that, mysterious events began. During scheduled tests, the nuclear-powered ship allegedly exploded in the Ural Mountains. The crew, led by Colonel Semyon Budnikov, died heroically (it is possible that this is a fictitious name). The reason for this is an allegedly sudden breakdown, as a result of which the "mole" was crushed by rocks. According to other versions, there was a sabotage by foreign intelligence services or even the device got into the anomalous zone.

Minimizing programs

After Khrushchev was removed from leadership positions, many programs were curtailed, including this project. The underground boat again ceased to interest the authorities. The economy of the Soviet Union was bursting at the seams. Therefore, this project, like many other developments, such as the Soviet ekranolet flying over the Caspian in the 60-70s, was abandoned. in the ideological war could compete with the United States, but noticeably lost in the arms race. I had to save money on literally everything. This was felt by the common people and Brezhnev understood. The existence of the state was put on the line, so the advanced bold projects that did not promise quick superiority were classified and curtailed for a long time.

Is work ongoing?

In 1976, information about the underground nuclear fleet of the Soviet Union was leaked to the press. This was done for the purpose of military-political disinformation. The Americans fell for this bait and set about building such devices. It is difficult to say whether the development of such machines is currently underway in the West and in the USA. Does anyone need an underground boat today? The photos presented above, as well as historical facts, are arguments in favor of the fact that this is not just a fantasy, but a real reality. How much do we know about the modern world? Perhaps, right now, underground boats are plowing the earth somewhere. No one is going to advertise the secret developments of Russia, as, indeed, of other countries.

February 19th, 2013

Almost from the very beginning of its existence, man wanted to either rise into the heavens, then descend into the earth, and even reach the center of the planet. However, all these dreams were embodied only in science fiction novels and fairy tales: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, Underground Fire by Shuzi, Engineer Garin's Hyperboloid by A. Tolstoy. and only in 1937, G. Adamov, in his work “Winners of the Subsoil”, described the construction of an underground boat as an achievement of the Soviet government. It even seemed that the description was based on real drawings. Despite the fact that at present it is impossible to determine what was the basis of such bold conjectures and descriptions of Adamov, it is still obvious that there were grounds for this.

Let's see what myths (or not myths?) the Internet lives on this topic?

There are many legends about who was the first in the world to start developing underground boats and whether they were developed at all, because there are practically no documentary materials on this topic.

Nevertheless, those wishing to dream up were still there. One of these dreamers was our compatriot Peter Rasskazov. In 1918, he made drawings of such an apparatus. But in the same year, he died at the hands of a German agent, who, in addition, also stole all the developments. But they didn’t go into business, because Germany soon lost the war. She had to pay huge indemnities to the winners, and the country was not up to any kind of underground boats.

According to the Americans, Thomas Alva Edison was the first in the world to develop in this industry. However, according to more reliable information, at the turn of the 20-30s of the last century, the design of the first underground boat was developed in the Soviet Union. Its authors were the engineers A. Treblev, A. Baskin and A. Kirilov. At the same time, it was assumed that the main purpose of the apparatus would be reduced to the oil production industry.

Meanwhile, the brains of the inventors continued to work. Peter Chalmi, an employee of the “invention factory”, which was headed not by anyone, but by the famous Thomas Alva Edison himself, tried to patent a similar design in the USA. However, he was not alone. The list of inventors of the underground boat includes, for example, a certain Evgeny Tolkalinsky, who emigrated from revolutionary Russia to the West in 1918 along with many other scientists, engineers and inventors.

But even among those who remained in Soviet Russia, there were bright minds who took up this matter. In the 1930s, the inventor A. Trebelev, designers A. Baskin and A. Kirillov made a sensational invention. They created a project of a kind of "underground vehicle", the scope of which promised to be simply fantastic. For example, an underground boat reaches an oil reservoir and floats from one "lake" to another, destroying mountain barriers on its way. She pulls the oil pipeline behind her and, having finally reached the oil "sea", begins to pump "black gold" from there.

As a prototype for their design, the engineers took ... an ordinary earthen mole. For several months they studied how he makes underground passages, and created their apparatus "in the image and likeness" of this animal. Something, of course, had to be redone: the paws with claws were replaced with more familiar cutters - about the same as those of coal mining combines. The first tests of the mole boat took place in the Urals, in the mines under Mount Blagodat. The apparatus bit into the mountain, crumbling the strongest rocks with its milling cutters. But the design of the boat was still not reliable enough, its mechanisms often failed, and further developments were considered untimely. Moreover, the Second World War was on the nose.

It is difficult to say at the moment what was taken as the basis for the development of the boat: whether it was a real mole, or the previous achievements of scientists. As a result, a small model was created, equipped with an electric motor that powered special devices for its movement and cutting devices. However, the first prototypes were tested in the Ural mines. Of course, it was just a prototype, a reduced copy of the device, and not a full-fledged underground boat. The tests were not successful, and due to numerous shortcomings, the very low speed of the apparatus and the unreliability of the engine, all work on the underground was curtailed. And then the era of repression began, and most of those who took part in the development were shot.

Nevertheless, a few years later, on the eve of the Second World War, the Soviet leadership nevertheless remembered this fantastic project. At the beginning of 1940, D. Ustinov, who soon became the People's Commissar of Armaments of the Soviet Union, summoned P. Strakhov, Doctor of Technical Sciences, who was engaged in the design of underground tunneling machines. The conversation that took place between them is interesting. Ustinov was interested in whether the designer had heard about the development of an autonomous underground self-propelled vehicle of the 30s, carried out by Treblev. Strakhov answered in the affirmative. Then the people's commissar said that for the designer there was much more important and urgent work related to the creation of a self-propelled underground vehicle for the needs of the Soviet army. Strakhov agreed to take part in the project. He was given unlimited human resources and material resources, and supposedly a year and a half later, the prototype was being tested. The underground boat created by the designer could work offline for about a week, it was for such a period that the reserves of oxygen, water and food were calculated.

Nevertheless, when the war began, Strakhov was forced to switch to the construction of bunkers, so the further fate of the underground apparatus he created is unknown to the designer. But it is quite possible to assume that the prototype was never accepted by the state commission, and the device itself was sawn into metal, since at that time the army needed planes, tanks and submarines much more.

One of the many myths about the Third Reich's secret supertechnology says that there were developments of underground combat weapons codenamed "Subterrine" (project by H. von Wern and R. Trebeletsky) and "Midgardschlange" ("Midgard Serpent"), (project by Ritter).

In Germany, the same war just served as a catalyst for a revival of interest in this idea. In 1933, the inventor W. von Wern patented his version of the subway. The invention, just in case, was classified and sent to the archive. It is not known how long it could lie there if Count Klaus von Stauffenberg had not accidentally stumbled upon it in 1940. Despite his pompous title, he enthusiastically embraced the ideas outlined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. And when the newly-minted Fuhrer came to power, von Staufenberg was among his associates. He quickly made a career under the new regime and, when Verne's invention caught his eye, he realized that he had attacked his own gold mine.

The leadership of the Third Reich needed any superweapon that would help achieve world domination. According to information that was made public after the end of the war, underground military vehicles were being developed in Germany, which were given the names "Subterrine" and "Midgardschlange". The last of these projects was supposed to be a super-amphibian, which could carry out movement not only on the ground and underground, but also under water at a depth of about a hundred meters. Thus, the device was created as a universal combat vehicle, consisting of a large number of interconnected compartments-modules. The module had a length of six meters, a width of about seven meters, and a height of about three and a half meters. The total length of the device was approximately 400-525 meters, depending on what tasks were set for this vehicle. The underground cruiser had a displacement of 60,000 tons. According to some reports, tests of the underground cruiser were carried out as early as 1939. On board it was placed a large number of small shells and mines, Fafnir underground combat torpedoes, coaxial machine guns, Alberich reconnaissance shells, and the Laurin transport shuttle for communication with the surface. The crew of the apparatus left 30 people, and inside it very much resembled a submarine device. The device could reach speeds on the ground up to 30 kilometers per hour, under water - three kilometers, and in rocky soil - up to two kilometers per hour.

The underground boat was an apparatus, in front of which there was a drilling head with four drills (each one had a diameter of one and a half meters). The head was driven by nine electric motors, the total power of which was about 9 thousand horsepower. Its undercarriage was made on caterpillars, and was serviced by 14 electric motors, which had a total capacity of about 20 thousand horsepower.

Under water, the boat moved with the help of 12 pairs of rudders, as well as 12 additional engines, the total power of which was 3,000 horsepower. The explanatory note to the project provided for the construction of 20 such underground cruisers (each costing about 30 million Reichsmarks), which were planned to be used to attack strategically important French and Belgian targets, and to mine the ports of England.

After the Second World War was over, Soviet counterintelligence discovered adits of unknown origin and purpose near Konigsberg, and not far from them - the remains of a structure, presumably the "Midgardschlange".

In addition, some sources mention another German project, less ambitious, but no less interesting, which was launched much earlier - "Subterrine" or "Sea Lion". A patent for its creation was received back in 1933 and it was issued in the name of the German inventor Horner von Werner. According to the inventor's plan, his apparatus was supposed to have a speed of about seven kilometers per hour, a crew of 5 people, and carry a warhead equal to 300 kilograms. It was assumed that he would be able to move not only underground, but also under water. The invention was immediately classified and transferred to the archive. And if the war had not started, hardly anyone remembered about this project. However, Count von Stauffenberg, who oversaw some military projects, stumbled upon him quite by accident. In addition, in those years, Germany had just developed a military operation called the Sea Lion, the purpose of which was to invade the British Isles. Therefore, the existence of an underground boat with the same name could be very useful. The idea was as follows: an underground apparatus, on board of which saboteurs should be, had to cross the English Channel, and then get to the right place underground. Nevertheless, as history testifies, these plans were not destined to come true, because Hermann Goering managed to convince the Fuhrer that bombing would be enough for the surrender of England, especially since Fau was required to achieve this goal, and, accordingly, and huge resources. As a result, the operation "Sea Lion" was canceled, and the project itself was closed, despite the fact that Goering failed to fulfill his promises.

Meanwhile, machines similar in their functions were being developed in England. They were usually designated by the abbreviation NLE (that is, naval and land equipment). Their main purpose was to dig passages through enemy positions. Through these passages, equipment and infantrymen were supposed to penetrate enemy territory and organize unexpected attacks. English developments had four names: "Nellie", "Excavator without human intervention", "Cultivator 6" and "White Rabbit". The final version of the English project was an apparatus about 23.5 meters long, about 2 meters wide, about 2.5 meters high and consisted of two compartments. The main compartment was placed on a caterpillar track, and very reminiscent of a tank. It weighed one hundred tons. The second compartment, which weighed about 30 tons, was designed to dig trenches up to 1.5 meters deep and up to 2.3 meters wide. In the English design, there were two motors: one set the conveyors and cutters in motion in the front compartment, and the second set the machine itself in motion. The device could reach speeds of up to 8 kilometers per hour. After reaching the extreme point of movement, "Nellie" had to stop, turning into a platform for the exit of equipment.

However, the project was closed after the fall of France. Until that period, only five cars were produced. By the end of World War II, four of them were dismantled. The fifth car suffered the same fate in the early 50s.

However, the idea of creating an underground boat has not sunk into oblivion. In 1945, after the defeat of fascist Germany, trophy teams of the former allies scoured its territory with might and main. Special agents of the department of Beria found drawings and the remains of a strange mechanism. After examining the finds, the experts came to the conclusion that in front of them was an apparatus for making passages underground. General Abakumov sent it for revision.

The project was sent for revision. Leningrad professor G.I. Babat suggested using microwave radiation to supply the "subterranean" with energy. And the Moscow professor G.I. Pokrovsky made calculations showing the fundamental possibility of using cavitation processes not only in a liquid, but also in a solid medium. Bubbles of gas or steam, according to Professor Pokrovsky, were able to destroy rocks very effectively. He spoke about the possibility of creating "underground torpedoes" and Academician A.D. Sakharov. In his opinion, it was possible to create conditions under which the underground projectile would move not in the thickness of the rocks, but in a cloud of sprayed particles, which would provide a fantastic speed of advance - tens or even hundreds of kilometers per hour!

After the research, they came to the conclusion that the device can be used for military purposes. At about the same time, the Soviet engineer M. Tsiferov received a patent for the creation of an underground torpedo - an apparatus that could move underground at a speed of one meter per second. Tsiferov's ideas were continued by his son, but it was not possible to solve the problem of maintaining the rocket's course. In 1950, A. Kachan and A. Brichkin received a patent for the creation of a thermal drill, which very much resembled a rocket.

Again, they remembered the development of A. Trebelev. Given the trophy developments, the case looked promising. Moreover, Comrade Khrushchev, who replaced the deceased Stalin at the helm of the state, became personally interested in the project. For the serial production of underground boats, the testing of which, in essence, had not yet begun, a huge plant was urgently erected in the Crimean steppes. And Nikita Sergeevich himself publicly promised to get the imperialists not only from space, but also from underground!

Several variants of the created underground vehicles were sent for testing in the Ural Mountains. The first cycle was successful - the underground boat at the speed of a pedestrian confidently made a move from one side of the mountain to another. Which, of course, was immediately reported to the government. Perhaps it was this news that gave Nikita Sergeevich the grounds for his public statement. But he hastened. During the second series of tests, a mysterious explosion occurred, and the underground boat with all its crew died, being walled up deep in the earth's thickness.

The development of underground vehicles began again. Engineers and scientists who were involved in solving this problem proposed a project to create a nuclear underground boat. Especially for the first pilot production, a secret plant was built in the shortest possible time (it was ready by 1962 and was located in Ukraine, not far from the village of Gromovka). In 1964, the plant allegedly produced the first Soviet underground nuclear boat, which was called the Battle Mole. It had a diameter of about 4 meters, a length of 35 meters, a titanium case. The crew of the device consisted of 5 people, in addition to it, another 15 landing people and a ton of explosives could be placed on board. The main task that was set before the boat was to destroy underground missile silos and enemy bunkers. There were even plans to deliver these boats to the shores of American California, where earthquakes often occur. The boat could leave a nuclear charge and detonate it, thereby causing an artificial earthquake, and attribute all the consequences to the elements.

Tests of the nuclear underground boat, according to some reports, began in 1964, during which amazing results were obtained. In the future, tests continued in the Urals, in the Rostov region, since there are more solid soils, and in Nakhabino near Moscow

The photo shows traces of tests. A subterrane passed here.

Further tests were already carried out in the Urals, but during one of them a tragedy occurred, as a result of which the boat exploded and the entire crew died. After the incident, the tests were terminated. Moreover, when L. Brezhnev came to power, the project was generally closed and classified. And in 1976, for the purpose of disinformation, in the press, at the initiative of the head of the Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets Antonov, reports began to appear not only about this project, but also about the existence of an underground nuclear fleet in the Soviet Union, while the remnants of the “Battle Mole » rusted in the open air.

A dull echo of these works remained only in Eduard Topol's novel Alien Face, where the master of the detective genre describes how they intended to test the subterrine off the coast of North America. The nuclear submarine was supposed to unload the “subterrine” there, and the latter was going to get under its own power to California itself, where earthquakes are known to occur quite often. In a pre-calculated place, the crew left a nuclear warhead, which could be detonated at the right time. And all its consequences would then be attributed to a natural disaster ... But all this is just a fantasy: the tests of the underground boat were not completed.

They also say that there are patented tunneling machine technologies that do not leave rocks behind. in fact, the tunnel is not cut through, but melted. There are even indirect "evidence" that such machines exist, for example, the DUMB (Deep Underground Military Bases) program, where there are tunnels, but there is no ejection of rocks. Of course, there are a lot of crazy patents, but there is no direct evidence, and in fact it is all speculation, but the very possibility of the existence of such machines cannot be denied.

Or one more thing: the Americans were also engaged in similar developments in the 40s. Their project looked something like this: the boat was a hollow 2- or 3-story cylinder without bottoms, filled with 800 blacks. Part of the Negroes, concentrated in front of the cylinder, with the help of a pick, crowbar and shovel, pierced the rocks. Falling stones were crushed by another group of Negroes with sledgehammers and hammers and stuffed into bags and wheelbarrows. The third group took waste to the surface. The fourth group pushed the cylinder forward. With good feeding and changing groups in places, a decent penetration rate was achieved - about 2-3 meters per day. In the future, it was planned to install weapons on these devices or fill all the free space with dynamite to deliver an unexpected blow to the enemy.

Many enthusiasts of creating "underground vehicles" are not satisfied with the idea of crushing rocks mechanically. As modern tunneling shields show, this process consumes a huge amount of energy. And yet the shield moves at a speed of several meters per day. It's not "swimming", but rather "crawling".

They tried to speed up the penetration processes more than once. In 1948, engineer M. Tsiferov received a USSR author's certificate for the invention of an underground torpedo - an apparatus capable of moving independently in the thickness of the earth at a speed of 1 m / s (for comparison: the speed of the Trebelev unit is 12 m / h). Tsiferov proposed a method of drilling using a hidden explosion. He designed a special drill head, resembling a giant drill with cutting edges. In the powder compartment there was a charge that exploded from an electric fuse. At the time of the explosion, powder gases created a pressure of 2-3 thousand atmospheres in the combustion chamber! With great force they burst out of the narrow slots of the head, their jet streams turned the drill. As soon as one checker burned out, a new one was fed from a special compartment.

However, the rod or cable on which the drill hangs, when immersed more than 10-12 km, can break, unable to withstand its own weight. To overcome this limitation, Tsiferov also proposed an underground ... rocket. It was inverted to burn and actively push the soil out of the well being made. Half a century has passed since the first application. Underground rockets are now being improved by the inventor's son. But they did not take root in wide practice. Why? The fact is that such a process is difficult to manage. A launched rocket really goes deep into the depths of tens of meters in a matter of seconds. But will her path be straight? After all, the bowels are heterogeneous, and there is a very high chance that the projectile will “lead” to the side. And the Caucasian proverb says that even the lame, wandering on the right path, will overtake the horseman who is galloping the wrong way ...

Whether such underground boats are currently being developed is unknown. This topic is both secret and mythical at the same time, and a country that will have such devices in its arsenal will, of course, receive a great advantage. If we talk about the scientific value of such devices, then it is obvious that only with their help it will be possible to answer the fundamental questions of the structure of the planet.

Here's what the skeptics say:

Why an autonomous subway is impossible:

1. With the classical scheme of rock drilling (with a cutter or a chisel), a huge amount of heat is generated, which is removed by the drilling fluid. Where will the dredger get enough drilling fluid from? And nowhere. For the same reason, he will not be able to wash out the drilling cuttings from under the bit (mill), and in a couple of minutes the cuttings will clog the bit tightly.

2. Where will the dredger carry cuttings? When drilling wells, the cuttings are carried up by the drilling fluid. We have already talked about drilling mud reserves. The “throw into the tunnel” option is not an option, since the volume of drilled rock due to its looseness will be greater than the volume of the tunnel. Simply put, if you freeze water in a glass, and then crush the ice, all of it will not enter the glass.

3. Option with the "melting" of the rock. OK, let's imagine a submersible equipped with such a powerful nuclear reactor that it melts the rock around it. Where to put the melt? Throw back? In this case, it forms a plug that tightly clogs the tunnel from behind. Well, after all, no one thinks to go back the same way, and we have a reactor. BUT! Where to remove the heat, which sooner or later will melt the subway itself or, at least, bring the temperature of its insides to the temperature of the reactor? A refrigerator of any design is indispensable here - since heat must be removed somewhere in any case, but where can you take it in a molten tunnel?

The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -

On the eve of World War II, the Soviet Union and Germany were actively developing new weapons - combat subterrins (underground boats) designed to strike at strategically important enemy targets literally from the ground.

The ideas of the underground war were not forgotten even after the victory over Germany, but until now, developments in this area are under a veil of secrecy. According to some reports, 50 years ago, a successful prototype of a new type of combat vehicle was created in the USSR.

Back in 1904, Russian inventor Pyotr Rasskazov published material in an English magazine about a self-propelled capsule that could move underground. Moreover, later his drawings surfaced in Germany. And the first underground self-propelled vehicle in the 1930s of the last century was created by the Soviet engineer and designer A. Trebelev, who was assisted by A. Kirilov and A. Baskin.

The principle of operation of this underground boat was largely copied from the actions of a mole digging a hole. Before proceeding with the design of the subterrine, the designers carefully studied the biomechanics of the movements of the animal placed in a box of earth using X-rays.

Particular attention was paid to the work of the head and paws of the mole, and on the basis of the results obtained, its mechanical “double” was designed. Trebelev's capsule-shaped subterrine was propelled underground by a drill, an auger, and four stern jacks that pushed it like a mole's hind legs.

The machine could be controlled both from the inside and outside - from the surface of the earth using a cable. The underground boat also received power through the same cable. The average speed of the subterrane was 10 meters per hour.

But due to a number of shortcomings and frequent failures of the apparatus, the project was closed. According to one of the versions, the unreliability of the subterrine was already revealed during the first tests. According to another, just before the war, they still tried to finalize it on the initiative of the future People's Commissar of Arms of the USSR D. Ustinov.

According to the second version, at the beginning of 1940, the designer P. Strakhov, on the personal assignment of Ustinov, improved the Trebelev subterrine. Moreover, this project was originally created exclusively for military purposes, and the new underground boat was supposed to operate without communication with the surface.

A prototype was created in a year and a half. It was assumed that he would be able to work autonomously underground for several days. For this period, the subterrine was supplied with fuel, and the crew, consisting of one person, with oxygen, water and food. However, the war prevented the completion of the project. The fate of the prototype of Strakhov's underground boat is unknown.

Interest in underground boats was shown not only by the Soviet Union. Before the war, German designers also developed subterrins. In the 1930s, engineer von Wern (according to other sources - von Werner) filed a patent for an underwater-underground "amphibian" which was called Subterrine.

The device had the ability to move both in the water element and under the surface of the earth, and, according to von Vern's calculations, in the latter case, the subterrine could reach speeds of up to 7 kilometers per hour. At the same time, the Subterrine was designed to transport a crew and troops of five people and 300 kilograms of explosives.

In 1940, Germany seriously considered the von Wern project for use in military operations against Great Britain. In the plans of Operation Sea Lion, developed by Hitler, which provided for the landing of German troops on the British Isles, there was a place for von Wern's submarines.

His amphibians were supposed to swim unnoticed to the British shores and continue moving through English territory underground, in order to then deliver a surprise blow to the British defenses in the most unexpected area for the enemy.

The Subterrine project was destroyed by the arrogance of G. Goering, who led the Luftwaffe and expected to defeat the British in an air war without help from underground. As a result, von Vern's underground boat remained an unrealized idea, as did the fantasies of his famous namesake Jules Verne, who wrote the science fiction novel Journey to the Center of the Earth long before the appearance of underground boats.

Another even more grandiose project of the German designer named Ritter was named with a fair amount of pathos "Midgard Serpent" (Midgard Schlange) in honor of the mythical reptile - the world serpent encircling the entire inhabited earth.

This machine was supposed to move above and below ground, as well as on water and under water at a depth of up to one hundred meters. At the same time, it was assumed that the "Snake" would move underground at a speed of 2 km / h (in hard ground) to 10 km / h (in soft ground), 3 km / h - under water and 30 km / h - on the surface earth.

But most of all, the colossal dimensions of this gigantic machine are striking. Midgard Schlange was conceived as an underground train consisting of many caterpillar compartment cars. Each one is six meters long. The total length of the “serpentine” phalanx wagons connected together was from 400 meters, in the longest configuration - more than 500 meters.

The path of the "Snake" in the ground was punched by four one and a half meter drills. In addition, the car had three additional drilling kits, and its weight was 60,000 tons. To manage such a colossus, 12 pairs of rudders and 30 crew members were required.

The armament of the giant subterrin was also impressive: two thousand 250-kilogram and 10-kilogram mines, 12 coaxial machine guns and six-meter underground torpedoes. Initially, it was planned to use the Midgard Serpent to destroy fortifications and strategic objects in France and Belgium, as well as to undermine British ports.

But in the end, the underground colossus of the Reich did not take part in any of the military operations. There is no exact data on whether at least a prototype of the “Snake” was made or whether this idea, like Subterrine, remained only in paper incarnation.

It is known that the advancing Soviet troops discovered mysterious adits near Koenigsberg, and nearby - a destroyed machine of unknown purpose. In addition, technical documentation describing German underground boats fell into the hands of scouts.

After the war, the subterrina project was attempted to be implemented by the head of SMERSH, V. Abakumov, who involved professors G. Babat and G. Pokrovsky to work with captured drawings and materials. But it was only in the 1960s, when N. Khrushchev came to power, that real progress was made in this area.

The new leader of the USSR liked the idea of "getting the imperialists out of the ground." Moreover, he even announced these plans publicly. And, apparently, for such statements by that time there were already good reasons. In particular, it is known that a secret plant for the production of underground boats was built in Ukraine near the village of Gromovka.

In 1964, the first Soviet subterrine with a nuclear reactor was released, called the Battle Mole. Little is known about this development, however. The underground boat had an elongated titanium cylindrical hull with a pointed end and a powerful drill.

According to various sources, the size of the atomic subterrine ranged from 3 to almost 4 meters in diameter and from 25 to 35 meters in length. Underground speed - from 7 km/h to 15 km/h. The crew of the "Battle Mole" consisted of five people. In addition, the car could carry up to 15 paratroopers and about a ton of cargo - explosives or weapons.

Such combat vehicles were supposed to destroy fortifications, underground bunkers, command posts and rocket launchers in mines. In addition, the "Battle Moles" were preparing for a special mission. According to the plan of the military command of the USSR, in the event of an aggravation of relations with the United States, the subterrins could be used for an underground strike against America.

With the help of submarines, it was planned to deliver the Battle Moles to the coastal waters of seismically unstable California, then drill into the United States and install underground nuclear charges in areas where American strategic facilities were located.

In the case of bringing atomic mines into action, powerful earthquakes and tsunamis would arise in the region, which could be attributed to an ordinary natural disaster. According to some reports, the tests of the Soviet atomic subterrane were carried out in different soils - in the Moscow region, the Rostov region and in the Urals.

The test of the newest "wonder weapon" took place on the territory of the Sverdlovsk region, near the town of Kushva, in the area of Mount Blagodat. The first Ural test was completed successfully. All test participants were amazed by the result of the first launch in the conditions of solid Ural soils - the underground boat passed at low speed through from one mountain slope to another.

However, during the second test, in the thickness of the rock of Mount Blagodat, an experimental machine with a nuclear reactor exploded for unknown reasons, the entire crew of the boat died due to the explosion, and the boat remained immured in the thickness of the rock. The fate of the boat's nuclear reactor remained unknown.

Mount Grace with a chapel on top, 1910

After the accident, the project was closed, and all data on testing the latest weapons were either destroyed or classified. There was no official confirmation of the tests and there is still no.

After the closure of the project, according to some reports, they tried to convert equipment and prototypes of installations for civilian needs and adapt combat vehicles for mining needs, for example, for the construction of a subway. But military technology required significant improvements before it could be used in a civilian environment.

As a result, it was decided not to spend money on the re-equipment of machines and their processing, but simply to eliminate everything. Thus was put an end to the history of the underground combat vehicle. Unfortunately, the Soviet designers failed to make the fairy tale come true.

Used materials from the article by Andrey Lyubushkin from the site

More than 50 years ago, a combat vehicle was created in our country that passed through granite like butter. The “battle mole” calmly bit into the rocks and went into their depths at an unprecedented speed for tunneling machines. However, during the next test in 1964, a car that penetrated the Ural Mountains near Nizhny Tagil at a distance of 10 km exploded for unknown reasons.

But first things first.

Today, you will not surprise anyone with various mining equipment. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, a great many have been developed and created. However, in addition to peaceful vehicles, under the cloak of secrecy, combat "moles" were developed that could destroy the enemy's underground communications, destroy his buried command posts, and undermine arsenals hidden in the rock masses. And they could also imperceptibly break through underground into the deep rear of the enemy, crawl out and land troops where no one expected him. How much truth is here, and how much fiction?

The first project of a military underground self-propelled vehicle was developed by our compatriot Peter Rasskazov back in 1904. But during the revolutionary events he was killed and before the First World War his drawings disappeared, it is believed that they were stolen by German intelligence and in the 30s surfaced, of course, in Germany

In 1930, the engineer Trebelev was engaged in the creation of a "battle mole". It was even possible to build and test a prototype, but things did not go further. The Trebelev subway was tested in the Urals, on Mount Blagodat, in 1946, during the tests, the experimental model was able to make a tunnel 40 m long.

In 1933, the German engineer W. von Wern patented his version of an underground boat. The invention was classified and sent to the archive.
Then the Nazis came to power in Germany, in 1940 the Vern project caught the eye of Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who informed the Wehrmacht leadership about it, the Vern Underground Boat project began, and in parallel they began to intensively develop the Battle Mole based on Trebelev’s drawings (began in 1934), but the project was called the "Midgard Serpent" (Midgard Schlange) - after the underground monster from the Scandinavian sagas. They say that the weight of the underground "serpent" was 60 thousand tons with a crew of 30 people. The implementation of the project turned out to be insanely expensive, the head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Goering convinced Hitler of the futility of the underground boat; Germany relied on an air war, and the von Wern project was closed, and the Wern project was also buried there.

Detailed German drawings were already obtained by Soviet intelligence officers at the end of the Great Patriotic War. The German drawings of the underground miracle weapon gave rise to the development of the Soviet "underground boats" or "combat mole": they did not decide on a code name.

USSR Minister of State Security Abakumov demanded from the USSR Academy of Sciences to create a group of scientists to study the possibility of designing an underground boat. The creation of the “battle mole” was even more classified than the Soviet nuclear project. Still, they say, the Soviet underground apparatus could make its way through the thickness of the earth, passing rocks like a knife through butter.
Professor G. N. Pokrovsky and academician A. D. Sakharov developed more efficient and faster ways of moving in rocks. GI Pokrovsky carried out calculations and proved the theoretical possibility of cavitation in rocks. In his opinion, bubbles of gas or steam can effectively destroy rocks. According to Academician Sakharov, under certain conditions, an underground boat will move in a cloud of hot particles, which will give a speed of movement of tens or even hundreds of kilometers per hour. Trebelev's earlier developments also came in handy.

Some experts argue that the underground fighting machine was not only built, but also had truly fantastic abilities. They called it all the same "Fighting mole." The installation had a nuclear power plant, like a classic nuclear submarine.

Here are the parameters of the "Battle Mole": hull length 35 m, diameter 3 m, crew 5 people, speed 7 km/h. The secret plant for the production of "Battle Moles" was built in 1962 in Ukraine, in the Crimea. After 2 years, the first copy was made.
The first tests gave amazing results. The “battle mole” really calmly bit into the rocks and went into their depths at an unprecedented speed for tunneling machines.

Minister of Defense Malinovsky to the Commander
troops of the Ural Military District
Groznetsky:

I order to ensure the conduct of exercises with
using a new type of weapon. Chiefs
branches of the armed forces to establish operational cooperation
personnel and equipment.

The first test was successful. All test participants
were amazed. The underground boat passed at low speed through from one side of the mountain to another. During the second test in 1964, a car that penetrated a distance of 10-30 km (it was not possible to determine exactly) into the thickness of the Ural Mountains near Nizhny Tagil in Mount Blagodat exploded for unknown reasons. Mount Grace was chosen for the second time as a test site for the underground "mole". Since the explosion was nuclear, the apparatus itself with the people in it simply evaporated, and the broken tunnel collapsed.

But there has never been any official confirmation of this. The project was closed, all documentary evidence about it was classified or destroyed, as if nothing had happened. Why did it happen so?
There have long been legends that inside our planet there is another intelligent civilization unknown to us, which actually controls the Earth. And as if there are some portals that allow the chosen ones to enter this other world, as well as exit it. Nazi mystical scientists from the secret society Ahnenerbe seriously looked for these portals.

It is no secret that the Urals is a place of concentration of observed UFOs, and those that go underground or under the water of lakes. There are enough myths, legends and fairy tales about the Northern Urals, as about the gates to other worlds. And here they are testing the "Battle Mole" not somewhere in Siberia or the desert-steppes of Central Asia, but in the Urals, before even near Nizhny Tagil: a place of concentration of inexplicable phenomena, 25 km north of the city, in Mount Blagodat. Mount Grace is part of the Ural Range and is located on the outskirts of the town of Kushva. Now, on the site of the central part of Mount Blagodat, there is a quarry with a kilometer diameter and a depth of 315 meters.

Rumor has it that the underground civilization presented a tough ultimatum to the earthlings: "do not climb into our world", therefore the creation and testing of combat "Mole" has since been stopped all over the world. Well, or, most likely: it makes no sense to gnaw the earth's crust with expensive devices where aircraft and missiles can handle bunkers.

An underground nuclear explosion near Nizhny Tagil was recorded by seismic stations in different parts of the Earth and was felt by residents of neighboring settlements: Kushva, Verkhnyaya Tura, Krasnouralsk, Baranchinsky. The Americans, who recorded an underground nuclear explosion, sent a request: “How so ?! After all, we recently agreed on a ban on nuclear tests.”
In connection with this incident, the tests were terminated. The specific reasons for the explosion of the underground boat were classified.

Mine, Mount Grace. Photo from the archive

In the archives of the Seismological Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences, there is a record that the seismic sensors of the Nizhny Tagil weather station recorded tremors on the day of the tests, but their epicenter could not be found.

According to the test results, the boat went underground for a total of about 10-30 kilometers, and possibly much more, but its trail was lost somewhere on the border of the earth's crust and mantle. It seems that the titanium case could not withstand diving to the maximum depth, which led to the explosion of a nuclear reactor.

Here is a legend about underground boats. What is true here, what is fiction?

Incredible combat vehicles created for various tasks do not cease to amaze so far.

What seemed to us a fantasy in the work of Grigory Adamov (one of the best science fiction writers of the USSR), "The Secret of Two Oceans" was a device really created at that time: an underground cruiser.
A machine capable of cutting its way through hard rock, carrying out acts of sabotage behind enemy lines!

In 1976, at the initiative of the head of the Main Directorate of State Secrets Antonov, reports about this project began to appear in the press. And the remains of the underground cruiser itself rusted in the open air until the 90s. Now the former landfill seems to want to be declared a restricted area.
A dull echo of these works remained only in Eduard Topol's novel Alien Face, where the master of the detective genre describes how they intended to test the subterrine off the coast of North America. The nuclear submarine was supposed to unload the “subterrine” there, and the latter was going to get under its own power to California itself, where earthquakes are known to occur quite often. In a pre-calculated place, the crew left a nuclear warhead, which could be detonated at the right time. And all its consequences would then be attributed to a natural disaster ... But all this is just a fantasy: the tests of the underground boat were not completed.

From fantasy to reality

Nevertheless, those wishing to dream up were still there. One of these dreamers was our compatriot Peter Rasskazov. Despite his last name, he was not a writer at all, but an engineer and expressed his idea not in words, but in drawings. For which, they say, he was killed in the troubled times of the First World War. And his drawings mysteriously disappeared and "surfaced" after a while, not just anywhere, but in Germany. But they didn’t go into business, because Germany soon lost the war. She had to pay huge indemnities to the winners, and the country was not up to any kind of underground boats.

Meanwhile, the brains of the inventors continued to work. A similar design in the United States tried to patent Peter Chalmi - an employee of the "factory of inventions", which was headed not by anyone, but by the famous Thomas Alva Edison himself. However, he was not alone. The list of inventors of the underground boat includes, for example, a certain Evgeny Tolkalinsky, who emigrated from revolutionary Russia to the West in 1918 along with many other scientists, engineers and inventors.

"Mole" under Mount Grace

But even among those who remained in Soviet Russia, there were bright minds who took up this matter. In the 1930s, the inventor A. Trebelev, designers A. Baskin and A. Kirillov made a sensational invention. They created a project of a kind of "underground vehicle", the scope of which promised to be simply fantastic, up to the installation of metal lighting poles along the route of the car. For example, an underground boat reaches an oil reservoir and floats from one "lake" to another, destroying mountain barriers on its way. She pulls the oil pipeline behind her and, having finally reached the oil "sea", begins to pump "black gold" from there.

As a prototype for their design, the engineers took ... an ordinary earthen mole. For several months they studied how he makes underground passages, and created their apparatus "in the image and likeness" of this animal. Something, of course, had to be redone: the paws with claws were replaced with more familiar milling cutters - about the same as those of coal mining combines. The first tests of the mole boat took place in the Urals, in the mines under Mount Blagodat. The apparatus bit into the mountain, crumbling the strongest rocks with its milling cutters. But the design of the boat was still not reliable enough, its mechanisms often failed, and further developments were considered untimely. Moreover, the Second World War was on the nose.

Meanwhile in Germany

However, in Germany, the same war just served as a catalyst for a revival of interest in this idea. In 1933, the inventor W. von Wern patented his version of the subway. The invention, just in case, was classified and sent to the archive. It is not known how long it could lie there if Count Klaus von Stauffenberg had not accidentally stumbled upon it in 1940. Despite his pompous title, he enthusiastically embraced the ideas outlined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. And when the newly-minted Fuhrer came to power, von Staufenberg was among his associates. He quickly made a career under the new regime and, when Verne's invention caught his eye, he realized that he had attacked his own gold mine.

After the end of World War II, not far from Koenigsberg, Soviet counterintelligence authorities discovered adits of unknown origin, and nearby were the remains of an exploded structure, it was assumed that these were the remains of the “Midgard Serpent” - an experimental version of the “Weapon of Retribution” of the Third Reich, some writers even associated this with the famous "Amber Room", which the Nazis hid in one of these adits.

Von Staufenberg brought the essence of the matter to the influential officials of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht. The inventor was soon found and all conditions were created so that he could put his idea into practice. The fact is that in 1940 the General Staff developed Operation Sea Lion, the main goal of which was the Nazi invasion of the British Isles. Underground boats would be very useful in this operation: having plowed the land under the English Channel, they could freely deliver detachments of saboteurs to the UK, which would sow panic among the British.

The development is based on Horner von Wern's patent, registered back in 1933. The inventor promised to make an apparatus with a capacity of up to 5 people, capable of moving underground at a speed of 7 km / h and carrying a warhead weighing 300 kg (this is quite enough to carry out an impressive sabotage). Moreover, von Wern's boat "floated" both under water and underground.

The Germans managed to develop and test this boat.

However, the initiative was seized by Hermann Goering, chief of the Luftwaffe. He convinced the Fuhrer that it was not worth engaging in "mouse fuss" when the valiant aces of the Third Reich could bomb Britain from the air in a matter of days. By order of Hitler in 1939, work on the underground boat was curtailed. The famous air war began in the skies of Britain, which, in the end, was won by the British. Wehrmacht soldiers were never destined to set foot on British soil.

Khrushchev's dream

However, the idea of creating an underground boat has not sunk into oblivion. In 1945, after the defeat of fascist Germany, trophy teams of the former allies scoured its territory with might and main. The project fell into the hands of General SMERSH Abakumov. Experts gave a conclusion - this is a unit for moving underground. In the spring of 1945, it was discovered on the Lubyanka that one Russian self-taught engineer, Rudolf Trebeletsky, who graduated from the gymnasium and Moscow University as an external student, was shot during the repressions in 1933, took part in the German project. Copies of drawings brought by him from Germany were found in the special depository.

Trebeletsky significantly improved von Wern's invention. Now the boat could move equally successfully both underground and under water. In addition, he invented the "thermal super circuit", which greatly facilitated the movement underground. He named his boat "Subterina".
Trebeletsky told his classmate, the famous science fiction writer Grigory Adamov, about his ideas. Adamov used Trebelecki's ideas in his novels The Secret of Two Oceans and The Subsoil Conquerors. For mentioning secret technologies, Adamov was punished by complete oblivion during his lifetime and died before reaching his 60th birthday.

Again, they remembered the development of A. Trebelev. Given the trophy developments, the case looked promising. But Beria, with the support of Ustinov, convinced Stalin that the project had no prospects. But in 1962 the project was developed - in Ukraine. For the serial production of underground boats, the testing of which, in fact, had not yet begun, in the town of Gromovka, on the orders of Khrushchev, a strategic plant for the mass production of underground boats was built! So this is where the well-known saying came from... And Nikita Sergeevich himself publicly promised to get the imperialists not only from outer space, but also from underground!
By 1964 the plant was built. The first Soviet underground boat was titanium with a pointed bow and stern, 3 meters in diameter and 25 meters long, a crew of 5 people, and could accommodate 15 fighters, and a ton of weapons, speed - up to 15 km / h. The combat mission is to detect and destroy enemy underground command posts and missile silos. Khrushchev personally examined the new weapon.
Several variants of the created underground vehicles were sent for testing in the Ural Mountains. The first cycle was successful - the underground boat at the speed of a pedestrian confidently made a move from one side of the mountain to another. Which, of course, was immediately reported to the government. Perhaps it was this news that gave Nikita Sergeevich the grounds for his public statement. But he hastened.