"To the Chairman of the Committee of Defense, comrade I.V. Stalin
In June of 1941 the 23 mm aircraft gun designed by us passed trials in an airplane, showing good results firing both on the ground and in the air. In addition to the good performance, NKV experts remarked that the gun is 50-60% simpler to produce than the VYa gun that is currently in production. Half as much time, tools, plants, workers, etc. will be required to make our gun, which is important at this time to ensure defeat of fascism.
Despite the obvious advantage of our gun, the issue of putting it into production is not yet solved and production has not started.
In September we also designed a 7.92 mm anti-tank rifle for the German cartridge. Our rifle is simple to produce and has only 50 parts, while the German rifle has 209 parts. Despite the massive difference, factory #65 continues to produce the German type rifle, disregarding the domestic design.
Having informed you of the above, we deem it necessary to:
- Put the 23 mm aircraft gun into production as the technologically superior variant.
- Build at least a large batch of our anti-tank rifle for the 7.92 mm German cartridge.
TsKB-14 designers
V.Salishev
V.Galkin
December 15th, 1941
Zlatoust"
