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Katyusha is an unofficial name that appeared during the Second World War. Katyusha - a weapon of victory

, adopted for service in 1941, was in service until 1980, 30,000 pieces were manufactured during the Second World War. Legends about this weapon began to take shape immediately after it appeared. However, the history of the creation and use of the BM-13 guards mortar is indeed unusual; we will dilute the article a little with photos, although not always on time in the text, but on topic, that’s it.

BM-13 Katyusha rocket launcher volley fire photo, was demonstrated to Soviet leaders on June 21, 1941. And on the same day, literally a few hours before the start of the war, a decision was made to urgently launch mass production rockets M-13 and the launcher for them, which received official name BM-13 ( fighting machine-13).

Scheme rocket launcher BM-13 Katyusha

First field battery BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher photo , sent to the front on the night of July 1-2, 1941 under the command of Captain Flerov, consisted of seven automotive installations based on the three-axle ZiS-6 truck. On July 14, a combat premiere took place in the form of shelling of the market square of the town of Rudnya. But " finest hour“Rocket weapons came on July 16, 1941. The salvo fired by the battery literally wiped out the occupied railway junction of Orsha from the face of the earth, along with the Red Army echelons located there, which did not have time to evacuate (!).

BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher based on the ZIS-6 photo, this is a three-axle version of the ZIS-5 truck and is largely unified with it.

As a result, a huge amount of weapons, fuel and ammunition did not reach the enemy. The effect of the artillery attack was such that many Germans caught in the affected area went crazy. This was, in addition to everything else, the psychological impact of the new weapon, as many Wehrmacht soldiers and officers admitted in their memoirs. It must be said that the first use of rockets occurred a little earlier, in air battles with the Japanese over the distant Khalkhin Gol river. Then the 82-mm air-to-air missiles RS-82 developed in 1937 and the 132-mm air-to-ground missiles PC-132, created a year later, were successfully tested. It is after this that the main thing artillery department set the developer of these shells, the Jet Research Institute, the task of creating a multiple launch rocket system based on PC-132 shells. The updated tactical and technical specifications were issued to the institute in June 1938.

In the photo of "Katyusha" upon closer examination you can see a lot of interesting things

The RNII itself was created at the end of 1933 on the basis of two design groups. In Moscow, under the Central Council of Osoaviakhim, since August 1931, there was a “Group for the Study jet propulsion"(GIRD), in October of the same year, a similar group called "Gas Dynamic Laboratory" (GDL) was formed in Leningrad. The initiator of the merger of two initially independent teams into single organization was the then chief of armaments of the Red Army, M.N. Tukhachevsky. In his opinion, the RNII was supposed to solve problems of rocket technology in relation to military affairs, primarily aviation and artillery. I.T. was appointed director of the institute. Kleymenov, and his deputy - G.E. Langemak, both military engineers. Aviation designer S.P. Korolev was appointed head of the 5th department of the institute, which was entrusted with the development of rocket planes and cruise missiles. In accordance with the assignment received, by the summer of 1939, a 132-mm rocket was developed, which later received the name M-13. Compared to its aviation counterpart, the PC-132 had a longer flight range, greater mass and significantly more powerful combat unit. This was achieved by increasing the number rocket fuel and explosives, for which the missile and head parts of the projectile were lengthened by 48 cm. The M-13 projectile also had better aerodynamic characteristics than the PC-132, which made it possible to obtain a higher accuracy of fire.
During their time at the institute, Kleymenov and Langemak almost completed the development of the RS-82 and RS-132 missiles. In total, in 1933, official field tests of nine types of missiles of various calibers designed by B.S. were carried out at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory from land, sea vessels and aircraft. Petropavlovsky, G.E. Langemak and V.A. Artemyeva, II.I. Tikhomirov and Yu.A. Pobedonostsev using smokeless powder.

Missile shells M-13 combat vehicle rocket artillery BM-13 "Katyusha"

And everything would be fine if... Over time, two opposing groups formed in the RNII. It was believed that the disagreement arose over what fuel to fill the rocket with. In fact, the roots of the conflict and subsequent tragedy should be sought deeper. Some of the employees led by A.G. The Kostikovs believed that they were being unfairly “overwritten” by Kleymenov, Langemak, Korolev and Glushko who took command posts. The method of fighting for a place in the sun was known and tested. Kostikov began writing denunciations against his colleagues to the NKVD. “The revelation of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist sabotage and sabotage gang, their methods and tactics, persistently requires us to again take an even deeper look at our work, at the people leading and working in this or that section of the Institute,” he wrote in one of his letters. - I assert that in production a completely unsuitable system was clearly adopted, inhibiting development. This is also not a random fact. Give me all the materials, and I will clearly prove with facts that someone’s hand, perhaps due to inexperience, slowed down the work and brought the state into colossal losses. Kleymenov, Langemak and Padezhip are to blame for this, first of all...”

132-mm multiple launch rocket system BM-13 Katyusha photo of various chassis

Feeling that he would not be allowed to work at the RNII in peace, Kleymenov at the end of the summer of 1937 agreed with the head of TsAGI Kharlamov about his transfer there. However, he didn’t have time... On the night of November 2, 1937, Ivan Terentyevich Kleimenov was arrested as a German spy and saboteur. At the same time, the same fate befell his deputy G.E. Langemak (German by nationality, which was an aggravating circumstance).

BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher on the ZiS-6 chassis, almost all rocket launcher monuments are based on this chassis, pay attention to the square wings, in fact the ZiS-6 had rounded wings. Some BM-13 units on the ZIS-6 chassis served throughout the war and reached Berlin and Prague.

Soon both were shot. Perhaps an additional (or main) role in this crime was played by the close contacts of those arrested with Tukhachevsky. Much later, November 19, 1955, Military Collegium Supreme Court The USSR determined: “... the verdict... of January 11, 1938 against Georgy Erikhovich Langemak, due to newly discovered circumstances, is canceled, and the case against him on the basis of clause 5 of Art. 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR should be terminated criminally due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions...” Almost four decades later, by Decree of the President of the USSR of June 21, 1991, Langemaku G.E. awarded the title of Hero Socialist Labor(posthumously). The same Decree was awarded to his colleagues - I.T. Kleymenov, V.P. Luzhin, B.S. Petropavlovsky, B.M. Slonimer and II.I. Tikhomirov. All the heroes turned out to be innocent, but you can’t bring the dead back from the other world... As for Kostikov, he achieved his goal by becoming the head of the RPII. True, thanks to his efforts, the institute did not last long. On February 18, 1944, the State Defense Committee, in connection with the “unbearable situation that has developed with the development of jet technology in the USSR,” decided: “... The State Institute of Jet Technology under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR should be liquidated and the solution of this problem should be entrusted to the People’s Commissariat of the Aviation Industry.”

Katyusha multiple rocket launcher on a Studebaker chassis photo

So, one might say, the legendary Katyusha was born despite many circumstances. Poe was born! Its rockets were launched from guides located in the body of a self-propelled multi-charge launcher. The first option was based on the chassis of the ZiS-5 truck and was designated MU-1 (mechanized unit, first sample). Field tests of the installation carried out between December 1938 and February 1939 showed that it did not fully meet the requirements.

Installation of MU-1 photo, late version, the guides are located transversely, but the chassis is already used by the ZiS-6

In particular, when firing, the vehicle began to sway on the suspension springs, which reduced the accuracy of the fire, which was already not very high. Taking into account the test results, RPII developed a new launcher MU-2 (ZiS-6), which in September 1939 was accepted by the Main Artillery Directorate for field testing. Based on their results, the institute was ordered five such installations to carry out military tests. Another stationary installation was ordered by the Navy Artillery Directorate for use in the coastal defense system.

BM-13 "Katyusha" on the chassis of the STZ-5-NATI tractor

The exceptional effectiveness of the combat operations of Captain Flerov’s battery and seven more such batteries formed after it contributed to the rapid increase in the rate of production of jet weapons. Already in the autumn of 1941, 45 divisions operated on the fronts, each of which consisted of three batteries with four launchers each. For their armament in 1941, 593 BM-13 installations were manufactured. As military equipment arrived from factories, the formation of full-fledged rocket artillery regiments began, consisting of three divisions armed with BM-13 launchers and an anti-aircraft division.

Each regiment had 1414 personnel,
36 launchers BM-13
twelve 37-mm anti-aircraft guns.
The artillery regiment's salvo amounted to 576 132 mm shells.
At the same time, enemy manpower and equipment were destroyed over an area of over 100 hectares. Officially, such units began to be called “guards mortar regiments of the reserve artillery of the Supreme High Command.”

The crew, having driven to the rear, reloads the BM-13 combat mount based on the Chevrolet G-7117 truck, summer 1943.

What was the exceptional combat power of the Guards mortars based on? Each projectile was approximately equal in power to a howitzer of the same caliber, and the installation itself could almost simultaneously fire, depending on the model, from 8 to 32 missiles. Moreover, in each division, equipped, for example, with BM-13 installations, there were five vehicles, each of which had 16 guides for launching 132-mm M-13 projectiles, each weighing 42 kg, with a flight range of 8470 m. Accordingly, only one division could fire 80 shells at the enemy.

BM-8-36 rocket launcher based on the ZIS-6 vehicle

If the division was equipped with BM-8 launchers with 32 82-mm shells, then one salvo consisted of 160 smaller-caliber missiles. A literally avalanche of fire and metal fell on the enemy in a few seconds. It was the highest fire density that distinguished rocket artillery from cannon artillery. During offensives, the Soviet command traditionally tried to concentrate as much artillery as possible at the forefront of the main attack.

The device of rockets BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher photo : 1 - fuse retaining ring, 2 - GVMZ fuse, 3 - detonator block, 4 - bursting charge, 5 - head part, 6 - igniter, 7 - chamber bottom, 8 - guide pin, 9 - rocket charge, 10 - missile unit, 11 - grate, 12 - critical section of the nozzle, 13 - nozzle, 14 - stabilizer, 15 - remote fuse pin, 16 - remote fuse AGDT, 17 - igniter.
The super-massive artillery barrage, which preceded the breakthrough of the enemy front, became one of the main trump cards of the Red Army. No army in that war could provide such a density of fire. Thus, in 1945, during the offensive, the Soviet command concentrated up to 230-260 cannon artillery pieces on one kilometer of the front. In addition to them, every kilometer there were, on average, 15-20 rocket artillery combat vehicles, not counting the larger stationary M-30 missile launchers. Traditionally, Katyushas completed an artillery attack: rocket launchers fired a salvo when the infantry was already attacking. The front-line soldiers said: “Well, the Katyusha started singing...”

Multiple rocket launcher on GMC CCKW chassis photo

By the way, why the gun mount received such an unofficial name, no one could really answer, either then or even today. Some say that it was simply in honor of a popular song at that time: at the beginning of the shooting, the shells, falling off the guides, flew off on their last eight-kilometer path with a drawn-out “singing.” Others believe that the name came from homemade soldier lighters, also nicknamed “Katyushas” for some reason. Even during the Spanish War, Tupolev SB bombers, sometimes armed with RSs, were called by the same name. One way or another, after the Katyusha mortars finished their song, the infantry entered the shelled settlement or enemy positions without encountering any resistance. There was no one to resist. The few enemy soldiers who remained alive were completely demoralized. True, over time the enemy reorganized. Yes, this is understandable. Otherwise, the entire Wehrmacht would have been completely demoralized after a while, gone crazy from the Katyusha rockets, and the Red Army would have had no one to fight with. German soldiers learned to hide in well-fortified dugouts at the first sounds of “Stalin’s organs,” as the enemy nicknamed our missiles for their unbearable howl. Then our rocket men also reorganized. Now the Katyushas began the artillery preparation, and the guns finished it.

BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher on a Ford chassis WOT photo

“If you bring in a gun regiment for artillery preparation, the regiment commander will definitely say: “I don’t have accurate data, I have to shoot the guns...” If they started shooting, and they usually shoot with one gun, taking the target into the “fork,” this is a signal to the enemy to hide. Which is what the soldiers did in 15-20 seconds. During this time, the artillery barrel fired only one or two shells. And in 15-20 seconds I will fire 120 missiles as a division, all of which fly at once,” said the commander of the rocket mortar regiment A.F. Panuev. But, as you know, there are no pros without cons. Mobile installations of rocket mortars usually moved into position immediately before the salvo and just as quickly after the salvo they tried to leave the area. At the same time, the Germans, for obvious reasons, tried to destroy the Katyushas first. Therefore, immediately after a salvo of mortars, volleys, as a rule, fell on the positions of those who remained German artillery and bombs from instantly arriving Yu-87 dive bombers. So now the rocket men had to hide. Here is what artilleryman Ivan Trofimovich Salnitsky recalled about this:

“We are choosing firing positions. They tell us: there is a firing position in such and such a place, you will wait for soldiers or placed beacons. We take a firing position at night. At this time the Katyusha division is approaching. If I had time, I would immediately remove my guns from there. Because the Katyushas fired a salvo and left. And the Germans raised nine Uikers and attacked our battery. There was a commotion! An open place, they were hiding under the gun carriages...”

Destroyed rocket launcher, photo date unknown

However, the rocket scientists themselves also suffered. As veteran mortarman Semyon Savelyevich Kristya said, there were the strictest secret instructions. On some forums there is a dispute that it was precisely because of the secret of the fuel that the Germans tried to capture the installation. As you can see in the photo, the installation was captured and not alone.

Rocket launcher BM-13-16, on the chassis of a ZIS-6 vehicle captured intact by German troops, photo Eastern Front, autumn 1941

A BM-13-16 rocket launcher abandoned during the retreat. Summer 1942, Eastern Front photo, as can be seen from both photos, the ammunition was fired, in fact, the composition of the shells was no secret, but at least for our allies, they made the bulk of the shells

B-13-16 Katyusha rocket launcher on a ZIS-6 chassis (captured by the Germans), as seen in the photo with full ammunition

In the event of a threat of possible capture of the missile launcher by the enemy, the crew " BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher photo "was supposed to blow up the installation using a self-destruction system. The compilers of the instructions did not specify what would happen to the crew themselves... This is exactly how the wounded captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov committed suicide while surrounded on October 7, 1941. But comrade Cristea was captured twice, caught by special teams of the Wehrmacht, who were sent to capture the Katyushas and their crews. Semyon Savelyevich, I must say, was lucky. He was able to escape from captivity twice, stunning the guards. But upon returning to his native regiment, he remained silent about these exploits. Otherwise, like many, he would have fallen from the frying pan into the fire... Such adventures happened more often in the first year of the war. Then our troops stopped retreating so quickly that it was impossible to keep up behind the front even with a car, and the rocket men themselves, having acquired the necessary combat experience, began to act more carefully.

BM-13 Katyusha rocket mortar on the chassis of the T-40 tank, by the way, the Americans also installed their multiple launch rocket systems on the Sherman

First, officers took positions and made the appropriate calculations, which, by the way, were quite complex, since it was necessary to take into account not only the distance to the target, the speed and direction of the wind, but even the air temperature, which also influenced the flight path of the missiles. After all the calculations were made, the vehicles moved into position, fired several salvos (usually no more than five) and quickly rushed to the rear. Delay in this case was indeed like death - the Germans immediately covered the place from which the rocket mortars were firing with return artillery fire.
During the offensive, the tactics of using Katyushas, which were finally perfected by 1943 and were used everywhere until the end of the war, were as follows: at the very beginning of the offensive, when it was necessary to break through the enemy’s deeply layered defenses, the artillery formed a so-called “barrage of fire” . At the beginning of the shelling, all howitzers (often heavy self-propelled guns) and rocket mortars worked on the first line of defense. Then the fire moved to the fortifications of the second line, and the attacking infantry occupied the trenches and dugouts of the first. After this, the fire was transferred to the third line, while the infantrymen occupied the second line.

Katyusha multiple rocket launcher based on Ford-Marmon photo

Most likely the same part, the photo was taken from a different angle

Moreover, the further forward the infantry went, the less cannon artillery could support it - towed guns could not accompany it throughout the entire offensive. This task was assigned to much more mobile self-propelled guns and Katyushas. It was they, along with the slippers, who followed the infantry, supporting it with fire.
Now the Wehrmacht soldiers had no time to hunt for Katyushas. And the installations themselves, which increasingly began to be based on the all-wheel drive American Studebaker US6, did not represent much of a secret. Steel rails served as missile guides during launch; their angle of inclination was manually adjusted by a simple screw gear. The only secret was the rockets themselves, or rather, their filling. And after the salvo, there weren’t any of them left on the installations. Attempts were made to install launchers on the basis of tracked vehicles, but the speed of movement for rocket artillery turned out to be more important than maneuverability. Katyushas were also installed on armored trains and ships

BM-13 Katyusha firing photo

BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher on the streets of Berlin photo

By the way, Kostikov was never really able to organize the production of gunpowder for equipping missiles at the RNII. Things have come to the point where the missile solid fuel At one time the Americans produced for us according to our recipes (!). This was another reason for the disbandment of the institute... And as things stood with our opponents, they had their own six-barreled mortar rocket launcher, the Nebelwerfer.

Nebelwerfer. German rocket launcher 15 cm photo

It was used from the very beginning of the war, but the Germans did not have such massive formations of units as we did, see the article “German six-barreled mortar.”
The design and combat experience gained with Katyushas served as the basis for the creation and further improvement of Grads, Hurricanes, Typhoons and other multiple rocket launchers. Only one thing remained almost at the same level - the accuracy of the salvo, which even today leaves much to be desired. Jewelry work jet systems you can't call it anything. That’s why they hit them mainly in squares, including in the current Ukrainian war. And it is often civilians who suffer more from this fire, like Soviet citizens who had the imprudence to end up in their huts in 41 near the Orsha station...

July 14, 1941 at one of the defense sites 20 th Army, in the forest to the east Orshi, tongues of flame shot up to the sky, accompanied by an unusual roar, not at all similar to the shots of artillery guns. Clouds of black smoke rose above the trees, and barely visible arrows hissed in the sky towards the German positions.

Soon the entire area of the local station, captured by the Nazis, was engulfed in furious fire. The Germans, stunned, ran in panic. It took the enemy a long time to rally his demoralized units. Thus, for the first time in history, they declared themselves "Katyusha".

The first combat use of a new type of powder rockets by the Red Army dates back to the battles at Khalkhin Gol. On May 28, 1939, Japanese troops that occupied Manchuria, in the area of the Khalkhin Gol River, launched an offensive against Mongolia, with which the USSR was bound by a mutual assistance treaty. A local, but no less bloody war began. And here in August 1939 a group of fighters I-16 under the command of a test pilot Nikolai Zvonarev first used RS-82 missiles.

The Japanese at first decided that their planes were attacked by a well-camouflaged anti-aircraft installation. Only a few days later, one of the officers who took part in the air battle reported: “Under the wings of Russian aircraft, I saw bright flashes of flame!”

"Katyusha" in a combat position

Experts flew in from Tokyo, examined the damaged aircraft and agreed that such destruction could only be caused by a shell with a diameter of at least 76 mm. But calculations showed that an aircraft capable of withstanding the recoil of a gun of this caliber simply could not exist! Only experimental fighters tested 20 mm guns. To find out the secret, a real hunt was announced for the planes of Captain Zvonarev and his comrades, pilots Pimenov, Fedorov, Mikhailenko and Tkachenko. But the Japanese failed to shoot down or land at least one car.

The results of the first use of missiles launched from aircraft exceeded all expectations. In less than a month of fighting (a truce was signed on September 15), the pilots of Zvonarev’s group flew 85 combat missions and shot down 13 enemy aircraft in 14 air battles!

Rockets, which showed themselves so successfully on the battlefield, were developed from the beginning of the 1930s at the Jet Research Institute (RNII), which after the repressions of 1937-1938 was headed by a chemist Boris Slonimer. He worked directly on rockets Yuri Pobedonostsev, to whom now belongs the honor of being called their author.

The success of the new weapon spurred work on the first version of a multi-charge unit, which later turned into the Katyusha. At NII-3 of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, as the RNII was called before the war, he led this work as chief engineer Andrey Kostikov, Modern historians speak rather disrespectfully of Kostikov. And this is fair, because the archives revealed his denunciations against his colleagues (the same as Pobedonostsev).

The first version of the future Katyusha was charging 132 -mm shells similar to those that Captain Zvonarev fired at Khalkhin Gol. The entire installation with 24 guides was mounted on a ZIS-5 truck. Here the authorship belongs to Ivan Gvai, who had previously made the “Flute” - an installation for rockets on I-15 and I-16 fighters. The first field tests near Moscow, carried out at the beginning of 1939, revealed many shortcomings.

Military experts who approached the assessment rocket artillery from the position of cannon artillery, they saw these strange machines as a technical curiosity. But, despite the ridicule of the artillerymen, the institute’s staff continued to work hard on the second version of the launcher. It was installed on a more powerful ZIS-6 truck. However, 24 guides, mounted across the vehicle, as in the first version, did not ensure stability of the vehicle when firing.

Field tests of the second option were carried out in the presence of a marshal Klima Voroshilova. Thanks to his favorable assessment, the development team received support from the command staff. At the same time, designer Galkovsky proposed completely new option: Leave 16 guides and mount them longitudinally on the machine. In August 1939, the pilot plant was manufactured.

By that time the group led Leonid Schwartz designed and tested samples of new 132 mm rockets. In the fall of 1939, another series of tests was carried out at the Leningrad artillery range. This time, the launchers and their shells were approved. From that moment on, the rocket launcher began to be officially called BM-13, which meant "combat vehicle", and 13 was an abbreviation for the caliber of the 132 mm rocket.

At the end of 1939, the Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army gave an order to NII-3 for the production of six BM-13s. By November 1940, this order was completed. On June 17, 1941, the vehicles were demonstrated at a review of Red Army weapons that took place near Moscow. BM-13 was inspected by the marshal Tymoshenko, People's Commissar of Armaments Ustinov, People's Commissar of Ammunition Vannikov and boss General Staff Zhukov. On June 21, following the review, the command decided to launch missile production M-13 and BM-13 installations.

On the morning of June 22, 1941, employees of NII-3 gathered within the walls of their institute. It was clear: the new weapon would no longer undergo any military tests - now it was important to assemble all the installations and send them into battle. Seven BM-13 vehicles formed the backbone of the first rocket artillery battery, the decision to form which was made on June 28, 1941. And already on the night of July 2, she left under her own power for the Western Front.

The first battery consisted of a control platoon, a sighting platoon, three fire platoons, a combat supply platoon, a utility department, a fuel and lubricants department, and a medical unit. In addition to seven BM-13 launchers and a 122-mm howitzer of the 1930 model, which served for sighting, the battery had 44 trucks for transporting 600 M-13 rockets, 100 shells for a howitzer, an entrenching tool, three refills of fuels and lubricants, seven daily norms of food and other property.

Captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov - first commander of the experimental Katyusha battery

The command staff of the battery was staffed mainly by students of the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy, who had just graduated from the first year of the command department. Captain was appointed battery commander Ivan Flerov- an artillery officer who had experience of the Soviet-Finnish war behind him. Neither the officers nor the numbers of the combat crews of the first battery had any special training; during the formation period they managed to conduct only three classes.

They were led by missile weapons developers, design engineer Popov and military engineer 2nd rank Shitov. Just before the end of class, Popov pointed to a large wooden box mounted on the running board of a combat vehicle. “When we send you to the front,” he said, “we will fill this box with sabers and put a squib, so that at the slightest threat of capture rocket weapons the enemy could have blown up both the installation and the shells.” Two days after leaving Moscow, the battery became part of the 20th Army of the Western Front, which fought for Smolensk.

On the night of July 12-13, she was alerted and sent to Orsha. At the Orsha station, many German trains with troops, equipment, ammunition and fuel accumulated. Flerov ordered the battery to be deployed five kilometers from the station, behind a hill. The engines of the vehicles were not turned off in order to immediately leave the position after the salvo. At 15:15 on July 14, 1941, Captain Flerov gave the command to open fire.

Here is the text of the report to the German General Staff: “The Russians used a battery with an unprecedented number of guns. The shells are high-explosive incendiary, but have an unusual effect. The troops fired at by the Russians testify: the fire raid is like a hurricane. The shells explode simultaneously. The loss of life is significant." The morale effect of the use of rocket mortars was stunning. The enemy lost more than an infantry battalion and a huge amount of military equipment and weapons at the Orsha station.

On the same day, Flerov’s battery fired at the crossing of the Orshitsa River, where a lot of Nazi manpower and equipment had also accumulated. In the following days the battery was used for various directions actions of the 20th Army as a fire reserve for the chief of artillery of the army. Several successful salvoes were fired at the enemy in the areas of Rudnya, Smolensk, Yartsevo, and Dukhovshina. The effect exceeded all expectations.

The German command tried to get samples of the Russian wonder weapons. The hunt began for Captain Flerov's battery, as once for Zvonarev's fighters. October 7, 1941 near the village of Bogatyr, Vyazemsky district Smolensk region The Germans managed to surround the battery. The enemy attacked her suddenly, on the march, firing from different sides. The forces were unequal, but the crews fought desperately, Flerov used up the last of his ammunition and then blew up the launchers.

Having led people to a breakthrough, he died heroically. 40 out of 180 people survived, and everyone who survived the death of the battery in October 1941 was declared missing, although they fought until the victory. Only 50 years after the first salvo of the BM-13, the field near the village of Bogatyr revealed its secret. There, the remains of Captain Flerov and 17 other rocket men who died with him were finally found. In 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, Ivan Flerov was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Russia.

Flerov's battery was destroyed, but the weapon existed and continued to inflict damage on the advancing enemy. In the first days of the war, the production of new installations began at the Moscow Kompressor plant. There was no need to customize the designers either. In a matter of days, they completed the development of a new combat vehicle for 82-mm projectiles - the BM-8. It began to be produced in two versions: one - on the chassis of a ZIS-6 car with 6 guides, the other - on the chassis of an STZ tractor or T-40 and T-60 tanks with 24 guides.

Obvious successes at the front and in production allowed the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command to decide already in August 1941 to form eight regiments of rocket artillery, which, even before participating in the battles, were given the name “guards mortar regiments of the reserve artillery of the Supreme High Command.” This emphasized the special importance attached to the new type of weapons. The regiment consisted of three divisions, the division - of three batteries, four BM-8 or BM-13 in each.

For the 82 mm caliber rocket, guides were developed and manufactured, which were later installed on the chassis of the ZIS-6 vehicle (36 guides) and on the chassis of the T-40 and T-60 light tanks (24 guides). Special launchers for 82 mm and 132 mm caliber rockets were manufactured for their subsequent installation on warships- torpedo boats and armored boats.

The production of BM-8 and BM-13 was continuously growing, and the designers were developing a new 300-mm M-30 rocket weighing 72 kg and with a firing range of 2.8 km. They received the nickname “Andryusha” among the people. They were launched from a launching machine (“frame”) made of wood. The launch was carried out using a sapper blasting machine. “Andryushas” were first used in Stalingrad. The new weapons were easy to manufacture, but installing them in position and aiming at the target required a lot of time. In addition, the short range of M-30 missiles made them dangerous for their own crews. Subsequently, combat experience showed that the M-30 - powerful weapon offensive, capable destroy bunkers, trenches with canopies, stone buildings and other fortifications. There was even an idea to create a mobile anti-aircraft missile system based on Katyushas to destroy enemy aircraft, but the pilot installation was never brought to production.

About efficiency combat use"Katyusha" During an attack on an enemy fortified unit, an example can be given of the defeat of the Tolkachev defensive unit during our counteroffensive near Kursk in July 1943. Village Tolkachevo was turned by the Germans into a heavily fortified resistance center with a large number of dugouts and bunkers of 5-12 roll-ups, with a developed network of trenches and communication passages. The approaches to the village were heavily mined and covered with wire fences. Salvos of rocket artillery destroyed a significant part of the bunkers, the trenches, along with the enemy infantry in them, were filled up, and the fire system was completely suppressed. Of the entire garrison of the node, numbering 450-500 people, only 28 survived. The Tolkachevsky node was taken by our units without any resistance.

By the beginning of 1945, 38 separate divisions, 114 regiments, 11 brigades and 7 divisions armed with rocket artillery were operating on the battlefields. But there were also problems. Mass production of launchers was established quickly, however wide application"Katyusha" was held back due to lack of ammunition. There was no industrial base for the production of high-quality gunpowders for projectile engines. Ordinary gunpowder could not be used in this case - special grades with the required surface and configuration, time, character and combustion temperature were required. The deficit was limited only by the beginning of 1942, when factories transferred from west to east began to pick up the required production rates. For all the time of the Great Patriotic War Soviet industry produced more than ten thousand rocket artillery combat vehicles.

Origin of the name Katyusha

It is known why BM-13 installations at one time began to be called “ guards mortars" The BM-13 installations were not actually mortars, but the command sought to keep their design secret for as long as possible. When, at range shooting, soldiers and commanders asked a GAU representative to name the “true” name of the combat installation, he advised: “Name the installation as usual artillery piece. This is important for maintaining secrecy."

There is no single version of why the BM-13 began to be called “Katyusha”. There are several assumptions:
1. Based on the name of Blanter’s song, which became popular before the war, based on the words of Isakovsky “Katyusha”. The version is convincing, since the battery first fired on July 14, 1941 (on the 23rd day of the war) at a concentration of fascists on Bazarnaya Square in the city of Rudnya, Smolensk region. Shot from high steep mountain- the association with the high steep bank in the song immediately arose among the fighters. Finally, the former sergeant of the headquarters company of the 217th separate communications battalion of the 144th Infantry Division of the 20th Army, Andrei Sapronov, is alive, now a military historian, who gave it this name. Red Army soldier Kashirin, having arrived with him at the battery after the shelling of Rudnya, exclaimed in surprise: “What a song!” “Katyusha,” answered Andrei Sapronov (from the memoirs of A. Sapronov in the Rossiya newspaper No. 23 of June 21-27, 2001 and in the Parliamentary Gazette No. 80 of May 5, 2005). Through the communications center of the headquarters company, the news about a miracle weapon called “Katyusha” within 24 hours became the property of the entire 20th Army, and through its command - the entire country. On July 13, 2011, the veteran and “godfather” of Katyusha turned 90 years old.

2. There is also a version that the name is associated with the “K” index on the mortar body - the installations were produced by the Kalinin plant (according to another source - by the Comintern plant). And front-line soldiers loved to give nicknames to their weapons. For example, the M-30 howitzer was nicknamed “Mother”, the ML-20 howitzer gun was nicknamed “Emelka”. Yes, and the BM-13 was at first sometimes called “Raisa Sergeevna,” thus deciphering the abbreviation RS (missile).

3. The third version suggests that this is how the girls from the Moscow Kompressor plant who worked on the assembly dubbed these cars.
Another, exotic version. The guides on which the projectiles were mounted were called ramps. The forty-two-kilogram projectile was lifted by two fighters harnessed to the straps, and the third usually helped them, pushing the projectile so that it lay exactly on the guides, and he also informed those holding that the projectile stood up, rolled, and rolled onto the guides. It was allegedly called “Katyusha” (the role of those holding the projectile and the one rolling it was constantly changing, since the crew of the BM-13, unlike cannon artillery, was not explicitly divided into loader, aimer, etc.)

4. It should also be noted that the installations were so secret that it was even forbidden to use the commands “fire”, “fire”, “volley”, instead they sounded “sing” or “play” (to start it was necessary to turn the handle of the electric coil very quickly) , which may also have been related to the song “Katyusha”. And for our infantry, a salvo of Katyusha rockets was the most pleasant music.

5. There is an assumption that initially the nickname “Katyusha” was a front-line bomber equipped with rockets - an analogue of the M-13. And the nickname jumped from an airplane to a rocket launcher through shells.

In the German troops, these machines were called “Stalin’s organs” due to the external resemblance of the rocket launcher to the pipe system of this musical instrument and the powerful, stunning roar that was produced when the missiles were launched.

During the battles for Poznan and Berlin, the M-30 and M-31 single-launch installations received the nickname “Russian Faustpatron” from the Germans, although these shells were not used as an anti-tank weapon. With “dagger” (from a distance of 100-200 meters) launches of these shells, the guards broke through any walls.

If Hitler's oracles had looked more closely at the signs of fate, then surely July 14, 1941 would have become a landmark day for them. It was then in the area of the Orsha railway junction and the crossing of the Orshitsa River Soviet troops For the first time, BM-13 combat vehicles were used, which received the affectionate name “Katyusha” among the army. The result of two salvos at the accumulation of enemy forces was stunning for the enemy. German losses fell under the “unacceptable” heading.

Here are excerpts from a directive to the troops of Hitler's high military command: “The Russians have an automatic multi-barrel flamethrower cannon... The shot is fired by electricity... During the shot, smoke is generated...” The obvious helplessness of the wording testified to the complete ignorance of the German generals regarding the device and technical characteristics new Soviet weapon - a rocket mortar.

A striking example of the effectiveness of the Guards mortar units, and their basis was “Katyushas,” can be seen in the lines from the memoirs of Marshal Zhukov: “The rockets, by their actions, caused complete devastation. I looked at the areas where shelling was carried out and saw the complete destruction of defensive structures ... "

The Germans developed a special plan to seize new Soviet weapons and ammunition. Late autumn In 1941 they managed to do this. The “captive” mortar was truly “multi-barreled” and fired 16 rocket mines. His firepower was several times more effective than the mortar used by the fascist army. Hitler's command decided to create equivalent weapons.

The Germans did not immediately realize that the Soviet mortar they had captured was truly unique phenomenon, opening a new page in the development of artillery, the era of multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS).

We must pay tribute to its creators - scientists, engineers, technicians and workers of the Moscow Jet Research Institute (RNII) and related enterprises: V. Aborenkov, V. Artemyev, V. Bessonov, V. Galkovsky, I. Gvai, I. Kleimenov, A. Kostikov, G. Langemak, V. Luzhin, A. Tikhomirov, L. Schwartz, D. Shitov.

The main difference between the BM-13 and similar German weapons was its unusually bold and unexpected concept: mortarmen could reliably hit all targets in a given square with relatively inaccurate rocket-propelled mines. This was achieved precisely due to the salvo nature of the fire, since every point of the area under fire necessarily fell into the affected area of one of the shells. German designers, realizing the brilliant “know-how” of Soviet engineers, decided to reproduce, if not in the form of a copy, then using the main technical ideas.

It was in principle possible to copy the Katyusha as a combat vehicle. Insurmountable difficulties arose when trying to design, test and establish mass production of similar missiles. It turned out that German gunpowder cannot burn in the chamber of a rocket engine as stably and steadily as Soviet ones. German-designed analogues Soviet ammunition behaved unpredictably: either sluggishly left the guides only to immediately fall to the ground, or began flying at breakneck speed and exploded in the air from an excessive increase in pressure inside the chamber. Only a few successfully reached the target.

The point turned out to be that for effective nitroglycerin powders, which were used in Katyusha shells, our chemists achieved a spread in the values of the so-called heat of explosive transformation of no more than 40 conventional units, and the smaller the spread, the more stable the gunpowder burns. Similar German gunpowder had a spread of this parameter, even in one batch, above 100 units. This led to unstable operation of the rocket engines.

The Germans did not know that ammunition for the Katyusha was the fruit of more than ten years of activity by the RNII and several large Soviet research teams, which included the best Soviet gunpowder factories, outstanding Soviet chemists A. Bakaev, D. Galperin, V. Karkina, G. Konovalova, B Pashkov, A. Sporius, B. Fomin, F. Khritinin and many others. They not only developed the most complex formulations of rocket powders, but also found simple and effective ways their mass, continuous and cheap production.

At a time when at Soviet factories, according to ready-made drawings, the production of guards rocket mortars and shells for them was expanding at an unprecedented pace and literally daily increasing, the Germans had yet to conduct research and design work by MLRS. But history has not given them time for this.

The article was written based on materials from the book Nepomnyashchiy N.N. “100 great secrets of the Second World War”, M., “Veche”, 2010, p. 152-157.

The barrelless field rocket artillery system, which received the affectionate feminine name “Katyusha” in the Red Army, without exaggeration, became probably one of the most popular types of military equipment of the Second World War. In any case, neither our enemies nor our allies had anything like this.

Initially barrelless jets artillery systems in the Red Army they were not intended for ground battles. They literally descended from heaven to earth.

The 82 mm caliber rocket was adopted by the Red Army Air Force back in 1933. They were installed on fighters designed by Polikarpov I-15, I-16 and I-153. In 1939, they underwent baptism of fire during the fighting at Khalkhin Gol, where they performed well when shooting at groups of enemy aircraft.

In the same year, employees of the Jet Research Institute began work on a mobile ground launcher that could fire rockets at ground targets. At the same time, the caliber of the rockets was increased to 132 mm.
In March 1941, field tests were successfully carried out new system weapons, and the decision to mass produce combat vehicles with RS-132 missiles, called BM-13, was made the day before the start of the war - June 21, 1941.

How was it structured?

The BM-13 combat vehicle was a chassis of a three-axle ZIS-6 vehicle, on which a rotary truss with a package of guides and a guidance mechanism was installed. For aiming, a rotating and lifting mechanism and an artillery sight were provided. At the rear of the combat vehicle there were two jacks, which ensured its greater stability when firing.
The missiles were launched using a hand-held electric coil connected to a battery and contacts on the guides. When the handle was turned, the contacts closed in turn, and the starting squib was fired in the next projectile.
The explosive material in the warhead of the projectile was detonated from both sides (the length of the detonator was only slightly less than the length of the explosive cavity). And when two waves of detonation met, the gas pressure of the explosion at the meeting point increased sharply. As a result, the hull fragments had a significantly higher acceleration, heated up to 600-800 ° C and had a good ignition effect. In addition to the body, part of the rocket chamber, which was heated from the gunpowder burning inside, also burst, which increased fragmentation effect 1.5-2 times compared to artillery shells of a similar caliber. That is why the legend arose that Katyusha rockets were equipped with a “thermite charge.” The “thermite” charge was indeed tested in besieged Leningrad in 1942, but it turned out to be unnecessary - after the Katyusha salvo, everything around was burning. And the joint use of dozens of missiles at the same time also created interference of blast waves, which further enhanced the damaging effect.

Baptism of fire near Orsha

The first salvo of a battery of Soviet rocket-propelled mortars (this is how the new type of military equipment began to be called for greater secrecy) consisting of seven BM-13 combat installations was fired in mid-July 1941. This happened near Orsha. An experienced battery under the command of Captain Flerov launched a fire strike at the Orsha railway station, where a concentration of enemy military equipment and manpower was noticed.
At 15:15 on July 14, 1941, heavy fire was opened on enemy trains. The entire station instantly turned into a huge cloud of fire. On the same day, the Chief of the German General Staff, General Halder, wrote in his diary: “On July 14, near Orsha, the Russians used weapons unknown until that time. A fiery barrage of shells burned the Orsha railway station and all the trains with personnel and military equipment of the arriving military units. The metal was melting, the earth was burning.”

The morale effect of the use of rocket mortars was stunning. The enemy lost more than an infantry battalion and a huge amount of military equipment and weapons at the Orsha station. And Captain Flerov’s battery dealt another blow on the same day - this time at the enemy crossing over the Orshitsa River.
The Wehrmacht command, having studied the information received from eyewitnesses of the use of new Russian weapons, was forced to issue a special instruction to its troops, which stated: “ There are reports from the front about the Russians using a new type of weapon that fires rockets. A large number of shots can be fired from one installation within 3-5 seconds. Any appearance of these weapons must be reported on the same day to the general commander of the chemical forces at the high command." A real hunt began for Captain Flerov's battery. In October 1941, she found herself in the Spas-Demensky “cauldron” and was ambushed. Of the 160 people, only 46 managed to reach their own. The battery commander himself died, having first made sure that all the combat vehicles were blown up and would not fall into enemy hands intact.

On land and sea...

In addition to the BM-13, in the SKB of the Voronezh plant. Comintern, which produced these combat installations, new options for placing missiles have been developed. For example, taking into account the extremely low cross-country ability of the ZIS-6 vehicle, an option was developed for installing guides for missiles on the chassis of the STZ-5 NATI tracked tractor. In addition, an 82 mm caliber rocket has also found use. Guides were developed and manufactured for it, which were later installed on the chassis of the ZIS-6 vehicle (36 guides) and on the chassis of the T-40 and T-60 light tanks (24 guides).

A 16-charging installation for RS-132 shells and a 48-charging installation for RS-82 shells for armored trains were developed. In the fall of 1942, during the fighting in the Caucasus, 8-round mining pack launchers for RS-82 shells were manufactured for use in mountain conditions.

Later they were installed on American Willys all-terrain vehicles, which came to the USSR under Lend-Lease.
Special launchers for 82 mm and 132 mm caliber missiles were manufactured for their subsequent installation on warships - torpedo boats and armored boats.

The launchers themselves received the popular nickname “Katyusha”, under which they entered the history of the Great Patriotic War. Why Katyusha? There are many versions on this matter. The most reliable - due to the fact that the first BM-13 had the letter “K” - as information that the product was produced at the plant named after. Comintern in Voronezh. By the way, the cruising boats of the Soviet Union received the same nickname. navy, which had the letter index “K”. In total, 36 launcher designs were developed and produced during the war.

And the Wehrmacht soldiers nicknamed the BM-13 “Stalin's organs.” Apparently, the roar of the rockets reminded the Germans of the sounds of a church organ. This “music” clearly made them feel uncomfortable.
And from the spring of 1942, guides with missiles began to be installed on British and American all-wheel drive chassis imported into the USSR under Lend-Lease. Still, the ZIS-6 turned out to be a vehicle with low cross-country ability and carrying capacity. The three-axle all-wheel drive American truck Studebakker US6 turned out to be most suitable for installing rocket launchers. Combat vehicles began to be produced on its chassis. At the same time, they received the name BM-13N (“normalized”).

During the entire Great Patriotic War, Soviet industry produced more than ten thousand rocket artillery combat vehicles.

Relatives of the Katyusha

For all their advantages, high-explosive fragmentation rockets RS-82 and RS-132 had one drawback - large dispersion and low efficiency when affecting enemy personnel located in field shelters and trenches. To correct this shortcoming, special 300 mm caliber rockets were manufactured.
They received the nickname “Andryusha” among the people. They were launched from a launching machine (“frame”) made of wood. The launch was carried out using a sapper blasting machine.
“Andryushas” were first used in Stalingrad. The new weapons were easy to manufacture, but installing them in position and aiming at the target required a lot of time. In addition, the short range of the M-30 rockets made them dangerous for their own crews.

Therefore, in 1943, the troops began to receive an improved missile, which, with the same power, had a greater firing range. An M-31 shell could hit manpower over an area of 2 thousand square meters or create a crater 2-2.5 m deep and 7-8 m in diameter. But the time to prepare a salvo with new shells was significant - one and a half to two hours.
Such shells were used in 1944-1945 during the assault on enemy fortifications and during street battles. One hit from an M-31 missile was enough to destroy an enemy bunker or a firing point located in a residential building.

Fire sword of the "god of war"

By May 1945, rocket artillery units had about three thousand combat vehicles of the most different types and many “frames” with M-31 shells. Not a single Soviet offensive, since the Battle of Stalingrad, began without artillery preparation using Katyusha rockets. Salvos from combat installations became the “fiery sword” with which our infantry and tanks made their way through enemy fortified positions.
During the war, BM-13 installations were sometimes used for direct fire at enemy tanks and firing points. To do this, the combat vehicle drove its rear wheels onto some hill so that its guides would accept horizontal position. Of course, the accuracy of such shooting was quite low, but a direct hit from a 132-mm rocket would blow any enemy tank to pieces, and a nearby explosion would knock over military equipment enemy, and heavy hot fragments reliably disabled it.

After the war, Soviet designers of combat vehicles continued to work on Katyushas and Andryushas. Only now they began to be called not guards mortars, but multiple launch rocket systems. In the USSR, such powerful SZOs as “Grad”, “Hurricane” and “Smerch” were designed and built. At the same time, the losses of an enemy caught in a salvo from a battery of Hurricanes or Smerchs are comparable to losses from the use of tactical nuclear weapons with a yield of up to 20 kilotons, that is, with an explosion atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima.

BM-13 combat vehicle on a three-axle vehicle chassis

The caliber of the projectile is 132 mm.
Projectile weight - 42.5 kg.
The mass of the warhead is 21.3 kg.
The maximum projectile flight speed is 355 m/s.
The number of guides is 16.
The maximum firing range is 8470 m.
Charging time of the installation is 3-5 minutes.
The duration of a full salvo is 7-10 seconds.

Guards mortar BM-13 Katyusha

1. Launcher
2. Missiles
3. The car on which the installation was mounted

Guide package
Cabin armor shields
Hiking support
Lifting frame
Launcher battery
Sight bracket
Swivel frame
Lifting handle

The launchers were mounted on the chassis of ZIS-6, Ford Marmont, International Jiemsi, Austin vehicles and on STZ-5 tracked tractors. The largest number of Katyushas were mounted on all-wheel drive three-axle Studebaker vehicles.

M-13 projectile

01. Fuse retaining ring
02. GVMZ fuze
03. Detonator checker
04. Bursting charge
05. Head part
06. Igniter
07. Bottom of the chamber
08. Guide pin
09. Powder rocket charge
10. Missile part
11. Grate
12. Critical section of the nozzle
13. Nozzle
14. Stabilizer

Few survived

The effectiveness of the combat use of Katyushas during an attack on an enemy fortified unit can be illustrated by the example of the defeat of the Tolkachev defensive unit during our counteroffensive near Kursk in July 1943.
The village of Tolkachevo was turned by the Germans into a heavily fortified resistance center with a large number of dugouts and bunkers of 5-12 roll-ups, with a developed network of trenches and communication passages. The approaches to the village were heavily mined and covered with wire fences.
Salvos of rocket artillery destroyed a significant part of the bunkers, the trenches, along with the enemy infantry in them, were filled up, and the fire system was completely suppressed. Of the entire garrison of the junction, numbering 450-500 people, only 28 survived. The Tolkachev junction was taken by our units without any resistance.

Supreme High Command Reserve

By decision of the Headquarters, in January 1945, the formation of twenty guards mortar regiments began - this is how the units armed with the BM-13 began to be called.
The Guards Mortar Regiment (Gv.MP) of the artillery of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command (RVGK) consisted of a command and three divisions of three batteries. Each battery had four combat vehicles. Thus, a salvo of only one division of 12 BM-13-16 PIP vehicles (Staff Directive No. 002490 prohibited the use of rocket artillery in quantities less than a division) could be compared in strength to a salvo of 12 heavy howitzer regiments of the RVGK (48 152 mm howitzers per regiment ) or 18 heavy howitzer brigades of the RVGK (32 152 mm howitzers per brigade).

Victor Sergeev

Katyusha is an unofficial name for barrelless field rocket artillery systems (BM-8, BM-13, BM-31 and others), which appeared during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Such installations were actively used Armed Forces USSR during World War II. The popularity of the nickname turned out to be so great that post-war MLRS on automobile chassis, in particular BM-14 and BM-21 Grad, were often referred to colloquially as “Katyushas”.

Back in 1921, employees of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory N.I. Tikhomirov and V.A. Artemyev began developing rockets for aircraft.

In 1929-1933, B. S. Petropavlovsky, with the participation of other GDL employees, conducted official tests of rockets of various calibers and purposes using multi-shot and single-shot aircraft and ground launchers.

In 1937-1938, rockets developed by the RNII (GDL together with the GIRD in October 1933 formed the newly organized RNII) under the leadership of G. E. Langemak were adopted by the RKKVF. RS-82 rockets of 82 mm caliber were installed on I-15, I-16, and I-153 fighters. In the summer of 1939, RS-82 on I-16 and I-153 were successfully used in battles with Japanese troops on the Khalkhin Gol River.

In 1939-1941, RNII employees I. I. Gvai, V. N. Galkovsky, A. P. Pavlenko, A. S. Popov and others created a multi-charge launcher mounted on a truck.

In March 1941, field tests of the installations, designated BM-13 (combat vehicle with 132 mm caliber shells), were successfully carried out. The RS-132 132 mm rocket and a launcher based on the ZIS-6 BM-13 truck were put into service on June 21, 1941; It was this type of combat vehicle that first received the nickname “Katyusha”. During the Great Patriotic War, a significant number of variants of RS shells and launchers for them were created; In total, Soviet industry produced more than 10,000 rocket artillery combat vehicles during the war years
It is known why BM-13 installations began to be called “guards mortars” at one time. The BM-13 installations were not actually mortars, but the command sought to keep their design secret for as long as possible:
When, at a firing range, soldiers and commanders asked a GAU representative to name the “true” name of the combat installation, he advised: “Call the installation as an ordinary artillery piece. This is important for maintaining secrecy."
There is no single version of why the BM-13 began to be called “Katyusha”. There are several assumptions:
Based on the title of Blanter’s song “Katyusha”, which became popular before the war, based on the words of Isakovsky. The version is convincing, since for the first time Captain Flerov’s battery fired at the enemy on July 14, 1941 at 10 o’clock in the morning, firing a salvo at the Market Square of the city of Rudnya. This was the first combat use of Katyushas, confirmed in historical literature. The installations were shooting from a high, steep mountain - the association with the high, steep bank in the song immediately arose among the fighters. Finally, the former sergeant of the headquarters company of the 217th separate communications battalion of the 144th Infantry Division of the 20th Army, Andrei Sapronov, is alive, now a military historian, who gave it this name. Red Army soldier Kashirin, having arrived with him at the battery after the shelling of Rudnya, exclaimed in surprise: “What a song!” “Katyusha,” answered Andrei Sapronov (from the memoirs of A. Sapronov in the Rossiya newspaper No. 23 of June 21-27, 2001 and in the Parliamentary Gazette No. 80 of May 5, 2005).
What kind of verses they didn’t come up with at the front based on their favorite song!
There were battles at sea and on land,
Shots roared all around -
Sang songs "Katyusha"
Near Kaluga, Tula and Orel.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let the Fritz remember the Russian Katyusha,
Let him hear her sing:
Shakes out the souls of enemies,
And it gives courage to its own!
Through the communications center of the headquarters company, the news about a miracle weapon called “Katyusha” within 24 hours became the property of the entire 20th Army, and through its command - the entire country. On July 13, 2012, the veteran and “godfather” of Katyusha turned 91, and on February 26, 2013 he passed away. On the desk he left his latest work - a chapter about the first salvo of Katyusha rockets for the multi-volume history of the Great Patriotic War, which is being prepared for publication.
There is also a version that the name is associated with the “K” index on the mortar body - the installations were produced by the Kalinin plant (according to another source, by the Comintern plant). And front-line soldiers loved to give nicknames to their weapons. For example, the M-30 howitzer was nicknamed “Mother”, the ML-20 howitzer gun was nicknamed “Emelka”. Yes, and the BM-13 was at first sometimes called “Raisa Sergeevna,” thus deciphering the abbreviation RS (missile).
The third version suggests that this is how the girls from the Moscow Kompressor plant, who worked on the assembly, dubbed these cars. [source not specified 284 days]
Another, exotic version. The guides on which the projectiles were mounted were called ramps. The forty-two-kilogram projectile was lifted by two fighters harnessed to the straps, and the third usually helped them, pushing the projectile so that it lay exactly on the guides, and he also informed those holding that the projectile stood up, rolled, and rolled onto the guides. It was allegedly called “Katyusha” (the role of those holding the projectile and the one rolling it was constantly changing, since the crew of the BM-13, unlike cannon artillery, was not explicitly divided into loader, aimer, etc.) [source not 284 days indicated]
It should also be noted that the installations were so secret that it was even forbidden to use the commands “fire”, “fire”, “volley”, instead they were sounded “sing” or “play” (to start it was necessary to turn the handle of the electric generator very quickly), that , may also have been related to the song “Katyusha”. And for our infantry, a salvo of Katyusha rockets was the most pleasant music. [source not specified 284 days]
There is an assumption that initially the nickname “Katyusha” had a front-line bomber equipped with rockets - an analogue of the M-13. And the nickname jumped from an airplane to a rocket launcher via shells. [source not specified 284 days]

An experienced squadron of SV bombers (commander Doyar) in the battles on Khalkhin Gol was armed with RS-132 missiles. SB (fast bomber) bombers were sometimes called "Katyusha". It seems that this name appeared during civil war in Spain in the 1930s.
In the German troops, these machines were called “Stalin’s organs” because of the external resemblance of the rocket launcher to the pipe system of this musical instrument and the powerful stunning roar that was produced when launching missiles. [source not specified 284 days]
During the battles for Poznan and Berlin, the M-30 and M-31 single-launch installations received the nickname “Russian Faustpatron” from the Germans, although these shells were not used as an anti-tank weapon. With “dagger” (from a distance of 100-200 meters) launches of these shells, the guards broke through any walls.

The mystery of the first salvo

Officially, the 1st experimental Katyusha battery (5 out of 7 installations) under the command of Captain Flerov fired the first salvo at 15:15. July 14, 1941 at the railway junction in Orsha. The following description of what happened is often given: “A cloud of smoke and dust rose over the ravine overgrown with bushes where the battery was hidden. There was a rumbling grinding sound. Throwing tongues of bright flame, more than a hundred cigar-shaped projectiles quickly slid from the guide launchers. For a moment, black arrows were visible in the sky, gaining altitude with increasing speed. Elastic jets of ash-white gases burst out with a roar from their bottoms. And then everything disappeared together.” (...)

“And a few seconds later, in the very thick of the enemy troops, explosions thundered one after another, gradually shaking the ground. Where wagons with ammunition and tanks with fuel had just stood, huge geysers of fire and smoke shot up.”

But if you open any reference literature, you can see that the city of Orsha was abandoned by Soviet troops a day later. And who was the salvo fired at? Imagine that the enemy was able to change the rut in a matter of hours railway and driving trains into the station is problematic.

It is even more unlikely that the first to enter the captured city from the Germans are trains with ammunition, for the delivery of which even captured Soviet locomotives and wagons are used.

Nowadays, the hypothesis has become widespread that Captain Flerov received an order to destroy Soviet trains at the station with property that could not be left to the enemy. Maybe so, but there is no direct confirmation of this version yet. Another assumption the author of the article heard from one of the officers of the Belarusian army was that several salvos were fired, and if on July 14 the target was those approaching Orsha German troops, then the strike on the station itself occurred a day later.

But these are still hypotheses that make you think and compare facts, but are not yet established and confirmed by documents. At the moment, an unscientific debate even arises from time to time: where did Flerov’s battery first enter the battle - near Orsha or near Rudnya? The distance between these cities is quite decent - more than 50 km directly, and much further along the roads.

We read in the same Wikipedia, which does not pretend to be scientific - “On July 14, 1941 (the city of Rudnya) became the site of the first combat use of Katyushas, when a battery of rocket mortars by I. A. Flerov, with direct fire, covered a concentration of Germans on the city’s Market Square. In honor of this event, there is a monument in the city - “Katyusha” on a pedestal.”

Firstly, direct fire for Katyushas is practically impossible, and secondly, weapons operating across squares will cover not only the market square with Germans and apparently city residents, but also several blocks around. What happened there is another question. One thing can be stated quite accurately - from the very beginning, the new weapon showed its best side and lived up to the hopes placed on it. A note from the chief of artillery of the Red Army N. Voronov addressed to Malenkov on August 4, 1941 noted:

“The means are strong. Production should be increased. Continuously form units, regiments and divisions. It is better to use it massively and maintain maximum surprise.”

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