RP79TT
Tagilskie tanki (Uralskiy vagonostroitelnyy zavod)

During the Great Patriotic War, Uralvagonzavod was converted into the largest tank production plant. At the end of 1941, eleven enterprises were evacuated from the western part of the USSR, including the Kharkov Locomotive Plant and the Bezhitsky Steel Plant.

The first echelon left Kharkov on September 19 and headed for the Urals, Nizhny Tagil, to the vast territory of the Ural Railway Car Building Plant (a total of 43 echelons were sent by the second decade of October). The Ordzhonikidze Moscow Machine Tool Plant, part of the equipment of the Moscow factories Krasny Proletariy, Stankolit and some other institutions arrived at the same site. On the basis of these enterprises, the Ural Tank Plant No. 183 was formed.

The first tank was assembled at the new location on December 18, and by December 31, 25 combat vehicles were assembled and transferred to the troops from the nodes and parts brought from Kharkov. The arrangement of equipment at the new site of the plant was carried out at the rate of production of 20 T-34 tanks per day. To do this, it was necessary to have 1,200- 1,250 machines and at least 2,000 workers. 1254 machines (including auxiliary ones) arrived from Kharkov.

During the war, UTZ produced 25,266 T-34 tanks. Every second T-34 tank that took part in the fighting came off the assembly line of this plant. In addition, the plant produced 63 thousand artillery fore-ends, hundreds of thousands of bombs, shells and guides for self-propelled anti-aircraft missile launchers (katyusha). For two aircraft factories evacuated from Moscow and Leningrad, UTZ supplied about four thousand armored hulls of IL-2 aircraft. Every ninth legendary attack aircraft had an armored UTZ hull.

In 1943, the Ural Tank Factory played an exceptional role in the creation of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps. Of the more than 200 tanks needed to complete the hull, he produced 145. 185 factory workers went to the front as volunteers in the spring of 1943. In total, more than six thousand workers fought on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, of which 3,111 people gave their lives for their Homeland.