Katyusha
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- For the song, see Katyusha (song).
The 132mm BM-13, 82mm BM-8, and 300mm BM-31 Katyusha (Russian "Катюша") multiple rocket launchers were built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II (BM stands for for Boyevaya Mashina, 'combat vehicle'). 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. Abroad the weapon became known as a Stalin organ.
The term is today often used to describe any small rocket artillery, especially newer Soviet models such as the 140mm BM-14, 122mm BM-21, and 220mm BM-27 multiple rocket launchers, or ones built in other countries, but also for artillery rockets used individually instead of multiple launches from a rocket launcher. This is a mode of attack sometimes used in guerrilla warfare, for example by the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgency, and the Taliban.
Original Katyusha
The weapon was also known as a "Stalin organ" (or Stalinorgel in German), so named by German troops due to the sound of its rockets, and its organ-like appearance (the missile tubes were arranged in parallel along its back, just as organ pipes 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 T-40 and T-60 light 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 the 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.
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.
Designers
The Katyusha was designed by Georgy Langemak, directing a development team including Vladimir Artemiev, Boris Petropavlovsky, Yuriy Pobedonostsev, and others. During the Great Purge in 1937, Langemak would be imprisoned, tortured, tried on what are commonly viewed as trumped-up charges and then executed.#redirect [[Template:fact]]See also
- Nebelwerfer, the first German rocket launcher
- Panzerwerfer, a German rocket launcher mounted on a half-track
- Wurfrahmen 40, another German rocket launcher mounted on a half-track
- Chelyabinsk, the town where the original Katyusha was manufactured
- Multiple Launch Rocket System, a modern U.S. rocket launcher
External links
- [Rocket Launchers ("Katyushas")], photos of various mounts
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