Katyusha
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Image:Katyusha launcher rear.jpg For the song, see Katyusha (song).
The 82mm BM-8 and 132mm BM-13 (BM for Boyevaya Mashina - combat vehicle) Katyusha (Russian "Катюша") multiple rocket launchers were built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II. These launchers acquired this name, unofficial but immediately recognized in the Red Army, from the title of a popular Russian wartime song, Katyusha. The song is about a girl longing for her beloved who is away from her while serving in the military. Katyusha is a tender Russian diminutive of a female name: Ekaterina (Katherine)→Katya→Katyusha.
The weapon was also known as "Stalin's Organ" (or Stalinorgel in German), so named by German troops due to the sound of its rockets, and it's organ-like appearance (due to the missile tubes parallelly arranged along its back, just as organ tubes are arranged). It was used on many platforms during World War II, mounted on trucks (including Studebaker US6s provided by the United States Lend Lease program), on tanks, and occasionally even on tracked artillery tractors, as well as on naval and riverine vessels as an assault support weapon. Modified versions were also mounted on airplanes and used as early as in the Soviet - Japanese border clashes at the Khalkhin Gol in late thirties, and then regularly during WWII.
The design was relatively simple, consisting of racks of parallel rails on which rockets were mounted, with a folding frame to raise the rails to launch position. Each truck had between 14 and 48 launchers. The rocket of the BM-13 system, designated RS-132 (RS for Raketnyi snaryad = rocket-propelled shell) was 180 cm (5.9 ft) long, 13.2 cm (5.2 in) in diameter and weighed 42 kg (92 lb). It was propelled by a solid nitrocellulose-based propellant of tubular shape, arranged in a steel-case rocket engine with a single central nozzle at the bottom end. The rocket was stabilised by cruciform fins of pressed steel sheet. The explosive warhead, either fragmentation, high explosive or shaped-charge, weighed around 22 kg (48 lb). Smaller version RS-82 was also used. The range of the rockets was about 5.4 km (3.4 mi).
The weapon was not accurate but was extremely effective in saturation bombardment. Katyushas were often massed in very large numbers to create a shock effect on enemy forces.
Image:Zalp katyush.jpg The development of the Katyusha rocket launcher was a response to Nazi Germany's development of the six-barreled Nebelwerfer rocket mortar in 1936. The Red Army began work on rocket artillery design in 1938, and deployment of the 82mm BM-8 was approved on June 21, 1941. On July 14, 1941, an experimental artillery battery of seven launchers was first used in battle against the German army at Orsha in Belarus, under the command of Captain I. Flerov. The first eight regiments of missile artillery (36 launchers in each unit) were then created on August 8, 1941. An improved BM-13N ("normalized") design was developed in 1943, and more than 1800 of this model were manufactured by the end of WWII.
The term is now often used to describe small artillery rockets in general, whether they are Soviet-derived or originally built. Such rockets are often used in guerrilla warfare, for example by the Viet Cong, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgency, and the Taliban.
 BM-13 Katyusha on Soviet-built ZiS-6 |
 Close-up view of BM-13 Katyusha rockets on their launch rails |
 BM-13 Katyusha on Studebaker US6, front view |
 BM-13 Katyusha on Studebaker US6, side view |
 Damage caused to a German tank PzKpfw 38(t) by direct hit of RS-132 |
Designers
The Katyusha was co-designed by Georgy E. Langemak, Vladimir Artemiev,Boris Petropavlovaky, Yuryi Pobedonostsev, and others with Langemak directing the development. In 1937 Langemak would be imprisoned, tortured, tried on trumped-up charges and then executed. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev narrowly avoided a similar fate, and nearly died in a Soviet gulag, but would later return to lead the Soviet space program.
See also
- Karine A
- Multiple Launch Rocket System
- Chelyabinsk
- Qassam rocket
- Hezbollah
- Katyusha (Song)
- RS-82
- RS-132
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