The famous song about the girl Katyusha coming ashore on the steep bank, written in 1939 by the poet Mikhail Isakovsky and composer Matvey Blanter, during the Great Patriotic War they became firmly associated with one of the newest types of weapons - a combat vehicle rocket artillery BM-13.
There is still debate as to why the BM-13 received the nickname “Katyusha” in the army. Some associate this with the “K” index on the mortar body - the units were produced by the Comintern plant, others say that the sound made by the shells was similar to the drawn-out sound of a song. According to the third version, the first use of the BM-13 was from a steep mountain, which also reminded someone of the content of the hit.
By the middle of the war, a new verse even appeared in the song “Katyusha”:
Let Fritz remember the Russian Katyusha,
Let him hear her sing:
Shakes out the souls of enemies,
And it gives courage to its own!
"Eres" were originally created for aviation
The installation of the BM-13 became one of the newest types of weapons, the appearance of which in the Red Army was an extremely unpleasant surprise for the Nazi command.
Work on the creation of smokeless powder projectiles has been carried out in the USSR since the 1920s. The first samples of rockets - "eres" - were created in 1933 and were intended to arm aircraft.
It was later thought that such shells could also be effective when used by ground forces and the navy. Work on the creation of a multi-charge rocket launcher based on truck started in 1938.
In August of the same year, engineers of the Jet Research Institute (RNII), led by Ivan Gvai presented the first project of a multi-charge installation based on the ZIS-5 vehicle. Field tests showed that the project is “crude” and has many shortcomings.
In April 1939 it was created new model MU-2 (mechanized unit, 2nd model). This installation, loaded with 132 mm rockets high-explosive fragmentation shells, later called M-13, the military was generally satisfied.
In December 1939, the Artillery Directorate of the Red Army approved a program to continue work on the “Combat Machine-13” (BM-13) and the creation of a pilot batch of vehicles for all-round field testing.
First battery
There was a catastrophic lack of time - the Second World War was already raging in Europe, and there was no doubt that it would not bypass Soviet Union.
The final decision to begin mass production of the BM-13 was approved by Joseph Stalin the day before the start of World War II, June 21, 1941.
The first production BM-13, created on the basis of the ZIS-6 vehicle, rolled off the assembly line of plant No. 723 of the People's Commissariat of Mortar Weapons in Voronezh.
The command of the Red Army made a decision - to form an experimental battery from the first BM-13s, arm it with shells, the production of which was also in the launch stage, and send it to the front, testing it in truly combat conditions.
On June 28, 1941, the commander of the Moscow Military District signed an order to form an experimental battery of field rocket artillery of the Red Army.
The battery included 7 BM-13s, assembled by this time, one 152-mm howitzer, intended for shooting targets, as well as trucks for transporting shells. The command staff was formed from students of the Red Army Artillery Academy.
The battery commander was a 36-year-old captain Ivan Flerov, hero Soviet-Finnish war, who distinguished himself during the breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line.
Ivan Andreevich Flerov, captain, commander of the first Katyusha rocket artillery battery. Photo: RIA Novosti
Premiere near Orsha
On July 3, 1941, Captain Flerov’s battery, whose personnel amounted to 198 people, moved out of Moscow along the Mozhaisk Highway in compliance with secrecy measures. The target was the area of Belarusian Orsha, where the battery was to be placed at the disposal of the Western Front.
Neither the Germans nor soviet soldiers. Therefore, the first combat use of the BM-13 caused shock on both sides of the front.
At about 15:00 on July 14, 1941, Captain Flerov gave the command to strike at a concentration of fascist manpower and tanks in the Orsha area. 112 rockets fired by the installations within a few seconds caused severe destruction, destroying a concentration of German equipment. A fiery glow rose over the area. An hour and a half after the first salvo, Flerov’s battery struck the crossing on the Orshitsa River, disrupting the Nazis’ further advance in this direction.
The first experience showed that the BM-13 can be an extremely effective weapon, which not only causes material damage to the enemy, but also suppresses his psyche. True, at first the Soviet soldiers also had to get used to the characteristic howl of shells. In July 1941, particularly impressionable soldiers were no less afraid of these sounds than of German bombing.
At the end of July - beginning of August 1941, four more Katyusha batteries began operating on the Western Front.
Hunt for the secret
The German command, having received a report from the front about the use of new weapons by the Russians, gave the order to capture a sample of this equipment at any cost. The hunt began for Captain Flerov's battery.
Flerov knew this very well, and immediately after striking the German positions he changed his location. This is how tactics were developed to use rocket launchers.
The first experimental BM-13 battery operated successfully in the battles of Rudnya, Smolensk, Yelnya, Roslavl and Spas-Demensk. Ivan Flerov sent a detailed report to Moscow on the use of the installations, in which he pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of the new weapon.At the beginning of October 1941, during the repulsion of Hitler’s new offensive, Flerov’s battery used up almost its entire supply of ammunition in three days. The Nazis carried out a rapid encirclement operation Soviet troops near Vyazma. The first Katyusha battery also found itself in the enemy “ring”.
The battery commander did everything possible to remove people and equipment from the encirclement. Those cars that ran out of fuel exploded.
46 soldiers from Captain Flerov’s battery managed to escape from the Vyazma “cauldron.” The rest, including the commander, were listed as missing for a long time. Intelligence reported that there were no signs that the Germans managed to capture the installations.
A rocket from the BM-13 installation of the battery of captain Ivan Flerov, found by searchers of the Ekipazh group near the village of Kornyushkovo. Photo: RIA Novosti / Oleg Lastochkin
The last feat of Captain Flerov
Only much later, when the archives of one of the Wehrmacht army headquarters came into the hands of the Soviet command, did it become known exactly what happened to the battery.
On the night of October 6-7, 1941, near the village of Bogatyr Smolensk region The Katyusha column ran into a German ambush. The battery personnel took up the fight. During the time that the soldiers managed to hold back the onslaught of the Germans, their comrades managed to blow up all the BM-13 installations.
The battery commander himself, being seriously wounded, blew himself up along with the head launcher.
Memorial plaque on a house in Balashikha. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org/IGW
In the 1960s, commander of the Missile Forces and Artillery Ground Forces Marshal of Artillery Konstantin Kazakov signed a submission for the posthumous awarding of the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Captain Flerov. However, on November 14, 1963, by decree of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR Ivan Andreevich Flerov was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.
In 1995, searchers near the village of Bogatyr discovered the remains of Soviet soldiers. Among them, the remains of Captain Flerov were identified. On October 6, 1995, all the remains were reburied next to the obelisk near the village of Bogatyr, erected in memory of the feat of the first Katyusha battery.
On June 21, 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, for the courage and heroism shown in the fight against the Nazi invaders in the Great Patriotic War, Captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation.
On March 5, 1998, by order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Hero of the Russian Federation Captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov was forever included in the lists of the command faculty of the Military Academy of Missile Forces strategic purpose named after Peter the Great.
70 years ago, July 14, 1941 happened baptism of fire the legendary "Katyusha": in the battles in the Smolensk region, the first salvo of this combat vehicle thundered.
According to a number of historians, Katyushas made a decisive contribution to the victory in the Great Patriotic War. A gun without a massive barrel and carriage, mounted on a vehicle, could fire 16 shells over 8 kilometers in 15-20 seconds.
"Katyusha" BM-13-16 on the ZIS-6 chassis
BM-13N on Studebaker US6 chassis
There is still no single version of why the artillery vehicle was 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 at a gathering of fascists on Bazarnaya Square in the city of Rudnya, Smolensk region. She was shooting from a high steep mountain at direct fire - the association with the high steep bank in the song immediately arose among the fighters. The former sergeant of the 217th Headquarters Company is finally alive. separate battalion communications of the 144th Infantry Division of the 20th Army Andrei Sapronov, 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 Andrey Sapronov
(from the memoirs of A. Sapronov in the Rossiya newspaper No. 23 dated June 21-27, 2001 and in the Parliamentary newspaper No. 80 dated 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, 2010, the veteran and “godfather” of Katyusha turned 89 years old.
2) By the abbreviation “KAT” - there is a version that this is what the rangers called the BM-13 - “Kostikovsky automatic thermal” (according to another source - “Cumulative artillery thermal”), after the name of the project manager, Andrei Kostikov (though, given the secrecy of the project , the possibility of exchanging information between rangers and front-line soldiers is doubtful).
3) Another option is 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).
4) The fourth version suggests that this is what the girls from the Moscow Kompressor plant who worked on the assembly dubbed these cars.
5) 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.)
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 coil very quickly), that , may also have been related to the song “Katyusha”. And for the infantry, a salvo of Katyusha rockets was the most pleasant music.
There is a version that the initial 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.
And further Interesting Facts about the names of BM-13:
On the North-Western Front, the installation was initially called “Raisa Sergeevna”, thus deciphering the abbreviation RS (missile).
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.
(from here)
Yes, legendary weapon. And the fate of its creators was tragic: on November 2, 1937, as a result of a “war of denunciations” within the institute, the director of RNII-3 I. T. Kleimenov and chief engineer G. E. Langemak were arrested. On January 10 and 11, 1938, respectively, they were shot at the NKVD Kommunarka training ground.
Rehabilitated in 1955.
By decree of the President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev dated June 21, 1991, I. T. Kleimenov, G. E. Langemak, V. N. Luzhin, B. S. Petropavlovsky, B. M. Slonimer and N. I. Tikhomirov were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
Despite the fact that 67 years have passed since the victorious end of the Great Patriotic War, many historical facts need clarification and more careful consideration. This also applies to the episode of the initial period of the war, when the first Katyusha salvo was fired at a concentration of German troops at the Orsha railway station. Well-known historian-researchers Alexander Osokin and Alexander Kornyakov, based on archival data, suggest that the first Katyusha salvo was fired at other Katyusha installations in order to prevent their capture by the enemy.
Three sources of information about the first Katyusha salvo
71 years ago, on July 14, 1941, at 15:15, the first salvo of an unprecedented new type of weapon - rocket artillery - rang out against the enemy. Seven Soviet BM-13-16 multiple launch rocket launchers (combat vehicles with 16 132 mm rocket shells each), mounted on a ZIL-6 automobile chassis (soon called “Katyusha”), simultaneously hit the Orsha railway station, which was packed with German trains. with heavy military equipment, ammunition and fuel.
The effect of the simultaneous (7-8 sec.) strike of 112 132 mm caliber rockets was amazing in the literal and figurative sense - first the earth shook and rumbled, and then everything burst into flames. This is how the First Separate Experimental Battery of Rocket Artillery under the command of Captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov entered the Great Patriotic War... This is the interpretation of the first Katyusha salvo that is known today.
Photo.1 Captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov
Until now, the main source of information about this event remains the combat log (CAB) of the Flerov battery, where there are two entries: “14.7.1941 15 hours 15 minutes. They attacked fascist trains at the Orsha railway junction. The results are excellent. A continuous sea of fire"
And "14.7. 1941 16 hours 45 minutes. Volley at the crossing fascist troops through Orshitsa. Large enemy losses in manpower and military equipment, panic. All the Nazis who survived on the eastern bank were taken prisoner by our units...”
Let's call him Source #1 . We are inclined to believe, however, that these texts are not from the ZhBD of Flerov’s battery, but from two combat reports sent by him to the Center by radio, because no one in the battery had the right to have any documents or any papers with them at that time.
Photo.2 Katyusha salvo
The story of designer Popov. This is mentioned in the second main source of information about the fate and feat of the Flerov battery - the story of one of the participants in the development of Katyusha, NII-3 design engineer Alexei Popov, which was recorded by the famous Soviet journalist Yaroslav Golovanov in 1983. Here is its content:
Photo.3 Designer Alexey Popov
« On June 22 the war began. By June 24, we received orders to prepare three installations for sending to the front. At that time we had 7 RUs and approximately 4.5 thousand PCs for them. On June 28, I was called to the research institute. - “You and Dmitry Aleksandrovich Shitov will go with the battery to the front to teach new technology...”
So I found myself at the disposal of captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov. He managed to complete only the first year of the Academy. Dzerzhinsky, but was already a commander under fire: he participated in the Finnish campaign. The political officer of the battery, Zhuravlev, selected reliable people from the military registration and enlistment offices.
Muscovites, Gorky residents, and Chuvash served with us. Secrecy hindered us in many ways. For example, we could not use combined arms services; we had our own medical unit, our own technical unit. All this made us clumsy: for 7 rocket launchers there were 150 vehicles with attendants. On the night of July 1-2, we left Moscow.
Photo.4 Preparing the Katyusha for combat work
On the Borodino field they swore: under no circumstances would they give the installation to the enemy. When there were particularly curious people who tried to find out what we were carrying, we said that under the covers were sections of pontoon bridges.
They tried to bomb us, after which we received an order: to move only at night. On July 9 we arrived in Borisov district, deployed the position: 4 installations to the left of the route, 3 RU and 1 aiming gun - to the right. They stayed there until July 13th. We were forbidden to fire from any type of personal weapon: pistols, 10-round semi-automatic rifles, Degtyarev machine gun.
Each also had two grenades. We sat idle. Time was spent studying. It was forbidden to make notes. Shitov and I conducted endless “practical classes.” Once a Messerschmidt-109 passed low over our battery, the soldiers could not stand it and fired at it with rifles. He turned around and in turn fired at us with a machine gun. After which we moved a little...
On the night of July 12-13, we were put on alert. Our gunners moved their cannon forward. An armored car pulls up: “What part?!” It turned out that we were so classified that the barrier detachments that were supposed to hold the defense left. “The bridge will be blown up in 20 minutes, leave immediately!”
We left for Orsha. On July 14, we reached the railway junction area, where many trains were concentrated: ammunition, fuel, manpower and equipment. We stopped 5-6 km from the hub: 7 vehicles with rocket launchers and 3 vehicles with shells for a second salvo. They didn’t take the gun: direct visibility.
At 15:15 Flerov gave the order to open fire. The salvo (7 vehicles with 16 shells each, 112 shells in total) lasted 7-8 seconds. The railway junction was destroyed. There were no Germans in Orsha itself for 7 days. We ran away immediately. The commander was already sitting in the cockpit, raised the jacks and off he went! They went into the forest and sat there.
The place where we fired from was later bombed by the Germans. We got the hang of it and after another hour and a half we destroyed the German crossing. After the second salvo they left along the Minsk highway towards Smolensk. We already knew that they would be looking for us...”
Let's call him Source No. 2.
Report of two marshals about Katyusha
99% of all publications about the first salvos of the Katyusha and the fate of the Flerov battery are based only on these two sources. However, there is another very authoritative source of information about the first salvos of Flerov’s battery - the daily report of the Main Command of the Western Direction (Marshals of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko and B.M. Shaposhnikov) to the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (I.V. Stalin) dated July 24, 1941 of the year. It says:
“Comrade Kurochkin’s 20th Army, holding back attacks from up to 7 enemy divisions, defeated two German divisions, especially those newly arrived at the front 5 infantry division, advancing on Rudnya and to the east. Particularly effective and successful in the defeat of the 5th Infantry Division was the RS battery, which, with three salvos at the enemy concentrated in Rudnya, inflicted such losses on him that he spent the whole day taking out the wounded and picking up the dead, stopping the offensive for the whole day. There are 3 salvos left in the battery. We ask you to send two or three more batteries with charges” (TsAMO, f. 246, op. 12928 ss, d. 2, pp. 38-41). Let's call him Source No. 3.
For some reason, it does not mention the salvoes of Flerov’s battery on July 14 in Orsha and at the crossing of Orshitsa, and the date of its three salvos in Rudna is not indicated.
Version of Colonel Andrei Petrov
Having carefully studied all the circumstances of the first Katyusha salvo, Andrei Petrov (engineer, reserve colonel) in his article “The Mystery of the First Katyusha Salvo” (NVO, June 20, 2008) made an unexpected conclusion: On July 14, 1941, the BM-13 battery of Captain Ivan Flerov fired at a concentration of not enemy, but Soviet trains with strategic cargo at the Orsha railway station!
This paradox is a brilliant guess by A. Petrov. He gives several convincing reasons in its favor (we will not repeat) and suggests whole line questions related to the mysteries of the first Katyusha salvo and the fate of Captain Flerov and his battery, including:
1) Why was the commander of the heroic battery not awarded immediately? (After all, A.G. Kostikov, the chief engineer of NII-3, who assigned to himself the authorship of “Katyusha” alone, was already accepted by Stalin on July 28, 1941, and on the same day he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. And I.A. Flerov, who died heroically only in 1963 was he posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and only in 1995 was he awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation).
2) Why did Marshals of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko and B.M. Shaposhnikov, fully informed about I.A. Flerov’s battery (they, for example, even knew that they had only three salvoes of shells left), reported to Headquarters as the first use “Katyusha” about their salvoes in Rudna, and not in Orsha?
3) Where did the Soviet command get very accurate information about the expected movements of the train that needed to be destroyed?
4) Why did Flerov’s battery fire on Orsha on July 14 at 15.15, when the Germans had not yet occupied Orsha? (A. Petrov claims that Orsha was occupied on July 14, a number of publications indicate the date July 16, and Source No. 2 says that after the salvo there were no Germans in Orsha for 7 days).
Additional questions and our version
When studying the available materials about the first salvo of the Katyusha, we had several additional questions and considerations that we want to present, considering all three of the above sources to be absolutely reliable (although Source No. 1 for some reason still lacks archival links).
1) Source No. 2 states that “On July 9, the battery arrived in the Borisov area, deployed its position and stood there until July 13... They sat idle. We spent time studying". But Borisov is located 644 km from Moscow, 84 km west of Orsha. Taking into account the return to it, this is an extra 168 km of night roads for a battery of 157 vehicles! Plus 4 extra days of incomprehensible duty, each of which could have been the last for the Flerovites.
What could be the reason for this additional “forced march” of such a heavy caravan of battery vehicles, and then its long sitting idle? In our opinion, there is only one thing - waiting for the arrival of the train, which was probably indicated to Flerov by the High Command as a priority target to be destroyed.
This means that the battery was sent not just to conduct military combat tests (with a simultaneous demonstration of the power of the new weapon), but to destroy a very specific target, which after July 9 was supposed to be in the area between Borisov and Orsha. (By the way, let’s not forget that on July 10, the German offensive began, which became the beginning of the fierce Smolensk defensive battle, and the second part of the battery raid took place in its conditions).
2). Why did the High Command indicate to Flerov as a target a specific train that found itself on the tracks of the Orsha freight station on July 14, 1941 at 15.15? How was it better, or rather worse, than hundreds of other trains on the clogged Moscow highways? Why did the installations with secret weapons sent from Moscow to meet the advancing German troops and the accompanying column literally hunt for this train?
There is only one answer to the above questions - most likely, Flerov was really looking for a train with Soviet military equipment, which in no case should have fallen into the hands of the Germans. Having gone through the best types of it from that period, we came to the conclusion that these were not tanks (they then fell to the Germans in huge quantities, so there was no point in liquidating one or more trains with them).
And not airplanes (which at that time were often transported with dismantled wings on trains), because in 1939-1941, German aviation commissions, not even delegations, were shown everything.
Oddly enough, it turned out that, most likely, the first salvo of Flerov’s Katyushas was fired at the composition (or compositions) of other Katyushas, which moved to the western border even before the start of the war, so that, according to the secret agreement of Stalin and Hitler on the Great transport anti-British operation through Germany to transfer to the shores of the English Channel (one of the authors of this publication first published such a hypothesis of the beginning of the war in 2004.) But where could the Katyushas come from before the war?
Photo.5 One of the first variants of the Katyusha MU-1, also known as the 24-round M-13-24 (1938)
"Katyushas" appeared before the war
Almost every publication about the birth of the Katyusha claims that the Soviet high military command first saw it a few days before, and the government decided to adopt it a few hours before the start of the war.
In fact, even two and a half years before the start of the war - from December 8, 1938 to February 4, 1939 - testing and state tests mechanized multiple rocket launchers on the ZIS-5 vehicle: 24-round MU-1 and 16-round MU-2 for firing RS-132 missile shells.
The MU-1 had a number of shortcomings, and the MU-2 (drawing No. 199910) on the three-axle ZIS-6 vehicle was planned to be put into service in 1939. The State Commission was headed by the deputy head of the GAU and the head of the Artkom, corps commander (since May 1940, Colonel General of Artillery) V.D. Grendal.
Just before the start Finnish war From October 26 to November 9, 1940, demonstration firing tests were carried out at the Rzhev training ground near Leningrad. rocket technology, including the BM-13-16 mechanized launcher on the ZIS-6 chassis.
The commission was headed by the chief of artillery of the Red Army, corps commander (since May 1940, colonel general of artillery) N.N. Voronov. Based positive results testing NII-3 was obliged to introduce in 1940 in industry the serial production of mechanized installations BM-13-16, called “object 233” (interestingly, the production of RS-132 was not assigned to NII-3, so all this year it was carried out by serial factories of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition ).
It is known that several types of rocket launchers on tanks were used to break through the Mannerheim Line. A number of other facts indicate that it was the Katyushas that were mass-produced even before the start of the war:
- of the 7 launchers of the Flerov battery, only 3 were manufactured by NII-3, and the remaining 4 were manufactured somewhere else
- already on July 3, the first Katyusha division was formed (43 installations, including 7 Flerov ones)
- by mid-August 1941, 9 four-divisional Katyusha regiments (12 units in each), 45 divisions were formed, and in September another 6 three-divisional regiments
A total of 1228 installations for July - September. They were later called "Guards Mortar Units". Such a pace would be unrealistic if drawings for installations began to be transferred to serial factories from June 22, 1941.
So a train with Katyushas and several trains with RSs could easily be transported to the border in last days before the war. After June 22, 1941, moving only at night, these secret trains were especially secretly taken to the rear so that in no case would they fall into the hands of the Germans. But why?
Levitan announced the clue in the evening report of the Sovinformburo
It can hardly be considered a mere coincidence that on July 22, 1941, in the evening report of the Sovinformburo, announcer Levitan said: “On July 15, in battles west of Sitnya, which is east of Pskov, during the retreat of German units, our troops captured secret documents and chemical property of the 2nd battalion of the 52nd chemical mortar regiment of the enemy. One of the captured packages contained: secret instruction ND No. 199 “Firing with chemical shells and mines,” edition of 1940, and secret additions to the instructions sent to the troops on June 11 of this year... German fascism is secretly preparing a new monstrous crime - wide application toxic substances..."
Photo 6. Six-barreled mortar "Nebelwerfer" - "Vanyusha" (1940)
This is an amazing coincidence - the very next day after the first salvo of Soviet Katyushas, samples of German rocket technology, possibly six-barreled Vanyushas (aka Nebelwerfers, aka Donkeys), fell into the hands of the Soviet troops.
The fact is that “Katyushas”, or more precisely, their prototypes - a number of rocket launchers, starting with MU-1 and ending with BM-13-16, were developed in the USSR in the mid-1930s by order of the Red Army Chemical Administration, first of all, to carry out a surprise chemical attack.
It was only later that high-explosive fragmentation and high-explosive incendiary charges were developed for their missile shells, after which development went through the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU).
It is also possible that the financing of the first developments was carried out by the chemical department on orders from the German Reichswehr. Therefore, the Germans could have a good knowledge of many of their aspects. (In 1945, a Central Committee commission discovered that one of the Skoda factories produced shells for the SS troops - analogues of the Soviet M-8 and launchers for them).
Photo 7. Alexander Nikolaevich Osokin, writer-historian
Therefore, Stalin decided to play it safe. He understood that the Germans would definitely film the trains destroyed by the first salvo of Flerov’s Katyushas, and would be able to determine that they depicted the wreckage of Soviet missile launchers, which means they would be able to use their film and photographic footage for propaganda purposes: here, they say, the Soviet Union is preparing use toxic substances thrown with the help of the latest rocket technology in chemical attacks against German (and therefore against British!) troops.
This could not be allowed to happen. And where did our intelligence manage to so quickly find similar German equipment - rocket-propelled mortars, and even documentation for them? Judging by the dates indicated in the Information Bureau report, their development was completed before the start of the war (and practice confirms this - already on June 22, six-barreled Nebelwerfers fired at the Brest Fortress). Perhaps it is no coincidence that the German rocket mortar was later nicknamed “Vanyusha”?
Maybe this is a hint at his Russian roots and kinship with Katyusha? Or maybe there was no defeat of the 52nd German Chemical Regiment, and the Vanyusha-Nebelwerfers, along with instructions, were transferred to the USSR during the years of friendly cooperation, say, in order to maintain allied parity?
There was another, also not very pleasant option - if the missile launchers and shells for them destroyed in Orsha were German or joint Soviet-German production (for example, the same Skoda ones) and had both Soviet and German markings. This threatened serious showdowns with both our own and our allies in both warring countries.
Photo 8. Alexander Fedorovich Kornyakov, designer of small arms and artillery weapons
So, the day after the defeat of the trains in Orsha, they gave a report from the Information Bureau about the defeat of the 52nd German chemical regiment. And the Germans had to silently agree with the Soviet version of the defeat of the mortar chemical regiment, and what could they do? That's why all this happened:
- the Soviet High Command was constantly reported where the train with Katyushas was located, which Flerov’s battery was supposed to secretly destroy
- The battery actually fired at the accumulation of trains in Orsha even before the Germans entered it
- Tymoshenko and Shaposhnikov did not know about the Katyusha strike on Orsha
- Flerov was not awarded in any way (how is it to be awarded for a strike on one’s own train?!), and there were no reports of the first Katyusha strike in 1941 (for the same reason).
We hope that the train with the Katyushas was driven onto a separate track, an air raid alert was announced and people were removed during the shelling, which, of course, was attributed to the Germans. We also assume that the second salvo of Flerov’s battery on the same day against the advancing German divisions in the area of the crossing on the Orshitsa River was fired, first of all, in order to dispel the possible suspicion that the main task of the battery was to eliminate a specific Soviet echelon.
We believe that after the second salvo, the Germans spotted and surrounded the combat installations of the Flerov battery, not three months later in early October 1941, but immediately after their salvo at the crossing. Probably after air raids and unequal battle, which ended with Flerov’s command “Blow up the installations!”, he himself blew up one of them along with himself.
The rest were also blown up, while part of the battery personnel died, some disappeared into the forest and got out to their own, including A. Popov. Several people, incl. the wounded crew commander, sergeant from Alma-Ata, Khudaibergen Khasenov, was captured. He was released only in 1945, never talked about anything at home, and only after Flerov was awarded the Order in 1963, he said: “I fought in his battery.”
None of those who came out to their friends ever told when Flerov died; for a long time he was considered missing (he is still listed in the Podolsk archive today, though for some reason since December 1941), despite the fact that there was allegedly the date of his death was established - October 7, 1941 and the place of burial - near the village of Bogatyr near Pskov.
Then, perhaps, at his command only the very first two volleys of Katyushas were fired, and all the rest - near Rudnya, near Yelnya, near Pskov - at the command of his comrades: Degtyarev, Cherkasov and Dyatchenko - commanders of the 2nd, 3rd , 4th batteries of a separate artillery division created on July 3, 1941 special purpose... And then the enemy was crushed by another 10 thousand Katyusha combat vehicles, firing 12 million rockets!
, 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 multiple rocket launcher 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 of M-13 missiles and a launcher for them, which received the official name BM-13 (combat machine-13).
Diagram of the BM-13 Katyusha rocket launcher
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 automobile 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 the “finest hour” of rocket weapons came on July 16, 1941. The salvo fired by the battery in broad daylight literally wiped off the face of the earth the occupied railway junction of Orsha, 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 great amount the enemy did not get weapons, fuel and ammunition. 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, psychological impact new weapons, 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 was after this that the Main Artillery Directorate 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, a “Group for the Study of Jet Propulsion” (GIRD) existed since August 1931; in October of the same year, a similar group called the “Gas Dynamic Laboratory” (GDL) was formed in Leningrad. The initiator of the merger of two initially independent teams into a 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 weight, and a significantly more powerful warhead. This was achieved by increasing the amount of rocket fuel and explosives, for which the rocket 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.
M-13 rocket shells from the BM-13 Katyusha rocket artillery combat vehicle
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 of 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. February 18, 1944 State Committee defense in connection with the “unbearable situation that has arisen with the development of jet technology in the USSR”, he decided: “... State Institute liquidate the jet technology under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and entrust the solution of this problem 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 for military testing. 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 BM-13 launchers
- 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 - rocket part, 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, but after the Katyusha mortars finished their song, the infantry entered the shelled locality or into 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, the positions of those who remained, as a rule, were hit by salvos of German artillery and bombs from instantly arriving Ju-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 special teams Wehrmacht, which 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. It got to the point that at one time the Americans produced solid rocket fuel 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 they often suffer more from this fire civilians, similar Soviet citizens, who had the imprudence to end up in their huts in 41st near the Orsha station...
"Katyusha" on the streets of Berlin.
Photo from the book "The Great Patriotic War"
The female name Katyusha entered the history of Russia and world history as the name of one of the most terrible types of weapons of the Second World War. At the same time, not a single type of weapon was surrounded by such a veil of secrecy and misinformation.
PAGES OF HISTORY
No matter how much our father-commanders kept secret the materiel of the Katyusha, it was already a few weeks after the first combat use fell into the hands of the Germans and ceased to be a secret. And here is the history of the creation of "Katyusha" long years was kept “closed sealed” both because of ideological principles and because of the ambitions of the designers.
Question one: why was rocket artillery used only in 1941? After all, gunpowder rockets were used by the Chinese a thousand years ago. In the first half of the 19th century, missiles were used quite widely in European armies (missiles by V. Kongrev, A. Zasyadko, K. Konstantinov and others). Alas, the combat use of missiles was limited by their enormous dispersion. At first, long poles made of wood or iron – “tails” – were used to stabilize them. But such missiles were effective only for hitting area targets. So, for example, in 1854, the Anglo-French fired missiles at Odessa from rowing barges, and the Russians fired missiles at Central Asian cities in the 50s–70s of the 19th century.
But with the introduction of rifled guns, gunpowder rockets became an anachronism, and between 1860–1880 they were removed from service in all European armies (in Austria in 1866, in England in 1885, in Russia in 1879). In 1914, only signal flares remained in the armies and navies of all countries. Nevertheless, Russian inventors constantly turned to the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU) with projects for military missiles. So, in September 1905, the Artillery Committee rejected the high-explosive rocket project. The warhead of this rocket was stuffed with pyroxylin, and smokeless gunpowder rather than black gunpowder was used as fuel. Moreover, the fellows from the State Agrarian University did not even try to work interesting project, and sweep it away from the threshold. It is curious that the designer was Hieromonk Kirik.
It was only during the First World War that interest in rockets was revived. There are three main reasons for this. Firstly, slow-burning gunpowder was created, which made it possible to dramatically increase flight speed and firing range. Accordingly, with an increase in flight speed, it became possible to effectively use wing stabilizers and improve the accuracy of fire.
Second reason: the need to create powerful weapons for airplanes of the First World War - “flying whatnots”.
And finally, the most main reason– the rocket was best suited as a means of delivering chemical weapons.
CHEMICAL PROJECTILE
Back on June 15, 1936, the chief chemical management The Red Army corps engineer Y. Fishman was presented with a report from the director of the RNII, military engineer 1st rank I. Kleimenov, and the head of the 1st department, military engineer 2nd rank K. Glukharev, on preliminary tests of 132/82-mm short-range chemical rocket mines. This ammunition complemented the 250/132 mm short-range chemical mine, testing of which was completed by May 1936. Thus, “RNII has completed all preliminary development of the issue of creating a powerful short-range chemical attack weapon, and expects from you a general conclusion on the tests and instructions on the need further work in this direction. For its part, RNII considers it necessary to now issue a pilot order for the production of RKhM-250 (300 pieces) and RKhM-132 (300 pieces) for the purpose of conducting field and military tests. The five pieces of RKhM-250 remaining from the preliminary tests, of which three are at the Central Chemical Test Site (Prichernavskaya station) and three RKhM-132 can be used for additional tests according to your instructions.”
According to the RNII report on the main activities for 1936 on topic No. 1, samples of 132-mm and 250-mm chemical rockets with a warhead capacity of 6 and 30 liters of chemical agent were manufactured and tested. The tests, carried out in the presence of the head of the VOKHIMU RKKA, gave satisfactory results and received a positive assessment. But VOKHIMU did nothing to introduce these shells into the Red Army and gave RNII new assignments for shells with a longer range.
The Katyusha prototype (BM-13) was first mentioned on January 3, 1939 in a letter from the People's Commissar of Defense Industry Mikhail Kaganovich to his brother, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lazar Kaganovich: “In October 1938, a mechanized automobile rocket launcher to organize a surprise chemical attack on the enemy, it basically passed factory tests by shooting at the Sofrinsky control and testing artillery range and is currently undergoing field tests at the Central Military Chemical Test Site in Prichernavskaya.”
Please note that the customers of the future Katyusha are military chemists. The work was also financed through the Chemical Administration and, finally, the missile warheads were exclusively chemical.
132-mm chemical shells RHS-132 were tested by firing at the Pavlograd artillery range on August 1, 1938. The fire was carried out with single shells and series of 6 and 12 shells. The duration of firing in a series with full ammunition did not exceed 4 seconds. During this time, the target area reached 156 liters of explosive agent, which, in terms of an artillery caliber of 152 mm, was equivalent to 63 artillery shells when firing in a salvo from 21 three-gun batteries or 1.3 artillery regiments, provided that the fire was carried out with unstable explosive agents. The tests focused on the fact that the metal consumption per 156 liters of explosive agent when firing rocket projectiles was 550 kg, while when firing 152-mm chemical projectiles, the weight of the metal was 2370 kg, that is, 4.3 times more.
The test report stated: “The vehicle-mounted mechanized chemical attack missile launcher was tested to show significant advantages over artillery systems. The three-ton vehicle is equipped with a system capable of firing both a single fire and a series of 24 shots within 3 seconds. Travel speed is normal for a truck. Transferring from traveling to combat position takes 3–4 minutes. Firing - from the driver's cabin or from cover.
The warhead of one RCS (reactive chemical projectile - “NVO”) holds 8 liters of agent, and in artillery shells similar caliber - only 2 liters. To create a dead zone on an area of 12 hectares, one salvo from three trucks is enough, which replaces 150 howitzers or 3 artillery regiments. At a distance of 6 km, the area of contamination with chemical agents in one salvo is 6–8 hectares.”
I note that the Germans also prepared their multiple rocket launchers exclusively for chemical warfare. Thus, in the late 1930s, the German engineer Nebel designed a 15-cm rocket and a six-barrel tubular installation, which the Germans called a six-barrel mortar. Testing of the mortar began in 1937. The system was named “15-cm smoke mortar type “D”. In 1941, it was renamed 15 cm Nb.W 41 (Nebelwerfer), that is, a 15-cm smoke mortar mod. 41. Naturally, their main purpose was not to set up smoke screens, but to fire rockets filled with toxic substances. Interestingly, Soviet soldiers called the 15 cm Nb.W 41 “Vanyusha”, by analogy with the M-13, called “Katyusha”.
The first launch of the Katyusha prototype (designed by Tikhomirov and Artemyev) took place in the USSR on March 3, 1928. The flight range of the 22.7 kg rocket was 1300 m, and a Van Deren system mortar was used as a launcher.
The caliber of our missiles during the Great Patriotic War - 82 mm and 132 mm - was determined by nothing more than the diameter of the engine's powder bombs. Seven 24-mm powder bombs, tightly packed into the combustion chamber, give a diameter of 72 mm, the thickness of the chamber walls is 5 mm, hence the diameter (caliber) of the rocket is 82 mm. Seven thicker (40 mm) pieces in the same way give a caliber of 132 mm.
The most important issue in the design of rockets was the method of stabilization. Soviet designers preferred finned rockets and adhered to this principle until the end of the war.
In the 1930s, rockets with a ring stabilizer that did not exceed the dimensions of the projectile were tested. Such projectiles could be fired from tubular guides. But tests have shown that it is impossible to achieve stable flight using a ring stabilizer. Then they fired 82-mm rockets with a four-blade tail span of 200, 180, 160, 140 and 120 mm. The results were quite definite - with a decrease in the span of the tail, flight stability and accuracy decreased. The tail, with a span of more than 200 mm, shifted the center of gravity of the projectile back, which also worsened flight stability. Lightening the tail by reducing the thickness of the stabilizer blades caused strong vibrations of the blades until they were destroyed.
Grooved guides were adopted as launchers for finned missiles. Experiments have shown that the longer they are, the higher the accuracy of the projectiles. The length of 5 m for the RS-132 became the maximum due to restrictions on railway dimensions.
I note that the Germans stabilized their rockets until 1942 exclusively by rotation. The USSR also tested turbojet missiles, but they did not go into mass production. As often happens with us, the reason for failures during testing was explained not by poor execution, but by the irrationality of the concept.
FIRST SALLOS
Whether we like it or not, the Germans used multiple launch rocket systems for the first time in the Great Patriotic War on June 22, 1941 near Brest. “And then the arrows showed 03.15, the command “Fire!” was sounded, and the devil’s dance began. The earth began to shake. Nine batteries of the 4th Special Purpose Mortar Regiment also contributed to the infernal symphony. In half an hour, 2880 shells whistled over the Bug and fell on the city and fortress on the eastern bank of the river. Heavy 600-mm mortars and 210-mm guns of the 98th artillery regiment rained down their volleys on the fortifications of the citadel and hit point targets - positions Soviet artillery. It seemed that the strength of the fortress would not leave one stone unturned.”
This is how historian Paul Karel described the first use of 15-cm rocket launchers. In addition, the Germans in 1941 used heavy 28 cm high-explosive and 32 cm incendiary turbojet shells. The projectiles were over-caliber and had one powder engine (the diameter of the engine part was 140 mm).
A 28-cm high-explosive mine, with a direct hit on a stone house, completely destroyed it. The mine successfully destroyed field-type shelters. Living targets within a radius of several tens of meters were hit by the blast wave. Mine fragments flew at a distance of up to 800 m. The warhead contained 50 kg of liquid TNT or ammatol grade 40/60. It is curious that both 28 cm and 32 cm German mines (missiles) were transported and launched from a simple wooden closure such as a box.
The first use of Katyushas took place on July 14, 1941. The battery of captain Ivan Andreevich Flerov fired two salvos from seven launchers at the Orsha railway station. The appearance of the Katyusha came as a complete surprise to the leadership of the Abwehr and the Wehrmacht. High Command ground forces On August 14, Germany notified its troops: “The Russians have an automatic multi-barrel flamethrower cannon... The shot is fired by electricity. When fired, smoke is generated... If such guns are captured, report immediately.” Two weeks later, a directive appeared entitled “Russian gun throwing rocket-like projectiles.” It said: “┘The troops are reporting that the Russians are using a new type of weapon that fires rockets. From one installation within 3–5 seconds it can be produced big number shots... Every appearance of these guns must be reported to the general commander of the chemical forces at the high command on the same day.”
Where the name “Katyusha” came from is not known for certain. Pyotr Guk’s version is interesting: “Both at the front and then, after the war, when I got acquainted with the archives, talked with veterans, read their speeches in the press, I came across a variety of explanations for how formidable weapon received a maiden name. Some believed that the beginning was made by the letter “K”, which the Voronezh Comintern members put on their products. There was a legend among the troops that the Guards mortars were named after the dashing partisan girl who destroyed many Nazis.”
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."
Soon the Katyusha showed up younger brother named "Luke". In May 1942, a group of officers from the Main Directorate of Armaments developed the M-30 projectile, in which a powerful over-caliber warhead, made in the shape of an ellipsoid, with a maximum diameter of 300 mm, was attached to the rocket engine from the M-13.
After successful field tests, on June 8, 1942, the State Defense Committee (GKO) issued a decree on the adoption of the M-30 and the start of its mass production. In Stalin's times, all important problems were resolved quickly, and by July 10, 1942, the first 20 M-30 guards mortar divisions were created. Each of them had a three-battery composition, the battery consisted of 32 four-charge single-tier launchers. The divisional salvo accordingly amounted to 384 shells.
The first combat use of the M-30 took place in the 61st Army of the Western Front near the city of Beleva. On the afternoon of June 5, two regimental salvoes fell on German positions in Annino and Upper Doltsy with a thunderous roar. Both villages were razed to the ground, after which the infantry occupied them without loss.
The power of the Luka shells (M-30 and its modification M-31) made a great impression on both the enemy and our soldiers. There were many different assumptions and fabrications about “Luka” at the front. One of the legends was that combat unit The rocket is filled with some kind of special, especially powerful explosive, capable of burning everything in the area of the explosion. In fact, the warheads used conventional explosives. The exceptional effect of the Luka shells was achieved through salvo firing. With the simultaneous or almost simultaneous explosion of an entire group of shells, the law of addition of impulses from shock waves came into force.
M-30 shells had high-explosive, chemical and incendiary warheads. However, the high-explosive warhead was mainly used. For the characteristic shape of the M-30's head section, front-line soldiers called it “Luka Mudishchev” (the hero of Barkov’s poem of the same name). Naturally, the official press preferred not to mention this nickname, unlike the widely circulated “Katyusha”. The Luka, like the German 28 cm and 30 cm shells, was launched from the wooden sealed box in which it was delivered from the factory. Four, and later eight, of these boxes were placed on a special frame, resulting in a simple launcher.
Needless to say, after the war the journalistic and literary fraternity appropriately and inappropriately remembered “Katyusha”, but chose to forget her much more formidable brother “Luka”. In the 1970s–1980s, at the first mention of “Luka,” veterans asked me in surprise: “How do you know? You didn’t fight.”
ANTI-TANK MYTH
"Katyusha" was a first-class weapon. As often happens, the father-commanders wanted it to become a universal weapon, including an anti-tank weapon.
An order is an order, and reports of victory rushed to headquarters. If you believe the secret publication “Field Rocket Artillery in the Great Patriotic War” (Moscow, 1955), then Kursk Bulge in two days in three episodes, 95 enemy tanks were destroyed by Katyushas! If this were true, it should have been disbanded anti-tank artillery and replace it with multiple rocket launchers.
In some ways, the huge numbers of destroyed tanks were influenced by the fact that for each damaged tank the crew of the combat vehicle received 2,000 rubles, of which 500 rubles. - commander, 500 rubles. - to the gunner, the rest - to the rest.
Unfortunately, due to the huge dispersion, shooting at tanks is ineffective. Here I am picking up the most boring brochure “Tables for firing M-13 rocket projectiles,” published in 1942. It follows from it that with a firing range of 3000 m, the range deviation was 257 m, and the lateral deviation was 51 m. For shorter distances, the range deviation was not given at all, since the dispersion of projectiles could not be calculated. It is not difficult to imagine the likelihood of a missile hitting a tank at such a distance. If we theoretically imagine that a combat vehicle somehow managed to shoot at a tank at point-blank range, then even here the muzzle velocity of a 132-mm projectile was only 70 m/s, which is clearly not enough to penetrate the armor of a Tiger or Panther.
It is not for nothing that the year of publication of the shooting tables is specified here. According to the TS-13 firing tables of the same M-13 missile, the average deviation in range in 1944 is 105 m, and in 1957 - 135 m, and the lateral deviation is 200 and 300 m, respectively. Obviously, the 1957 table is more correct, in which the dispersion increased by almost 1.5 times, so that in the 1944 tables there are errors in calculations or, most likely, deliberate falsification to increase the morale of personnel.
There is no doubt that if an M-13 shell hits a medium or light tank, it will be disabled. The M-13 shell is not able to penetrate the frontal armor of the Tiger. But in order to be guaranteed to hit a single tank from a distance of the same 3 thousand m, it is necessary to fire from 300 to 900 M-13 shells due to their enormous dispersion; at shorter distances an even larger number of missiles will be required.
Here is another example told by veteran Dmitry Loza. During the Uman-Botoshan offensive operation On March 15, 1944, two Shermans from the 45th mechanized brigade of the 5th mechanized corps got stuck in the mud. The landing party from the tanks jumped off and retreated. German soldiers surrounded the stuck tanks, “covered the viewing slots with mud, covered the sighting holes in the turret with black soil, completely blinding the crew. They knocked on the hatches and tried to open them with rifle bayonets. And everyone shouted: “Rus, kaput! Give up!” But then two left combat vehicles BM-13. The Katyushas quickly descended into the ditch with their front wheels and fired a direct fire salvo. Bright fiery arrows, hissing and whistling, rushed into the ravine. A moment later, blinding flames danced around. When the smoke from the rocket explosions cleared, the tanks stood seemingly unharmed, only the hulls and turrets were covered with thick soot...
Having repaired the damage to the tracks and throwing out the burnt tarpaulins, the Emcha left for Mogilev-Podolsky.” So, thirty-two 132-mm M-13 shells were fired at two Shermans at point-blank range, and their tarpaulin was only burned.
WAR STATISTICS
The first installations for firing the M-13 had the index BM-13-16 and were mounted on the chassis of a ZIS-6 vehicle. The 82-mm BM-8-36 launcher was also mounted on the same chassis. There were only a few hundred ZIS-6 cars, and at the beginning of 1942 their production was stopped.
Launchers for M-8 and M-13 missiles in 1941–1942 were mounted on anything. Thus, six M-8 guide shells were installed on machines from the Maxim machine gun, 12 M-8 guide shells were installed on a motorcycle, sled and snowmobile (M-8 and M-13), T-40 and T-60 tanks, armored railway vehicles platforms (BM-8-48, BM-8-72, BM-13-16), river and sea boats, etc. But basically, launchers in 1942–1944 were mounted on cars received under Lend-Lease: Austin, Dodge, Ford Marmont, Bedford, etc. Over the 5 years of the war, out of 3374 chassis used for combat vehicles, the ZIS-6 accounted for 372 (11%), Studebaker - 1845 (54.7%), the remaining 17 types of chassis (except for the Willys with mountain launchers) – 1157 (34.3%). Finally, it was decided to standardize combat vehicles based on the Studebaker car. In April 1943, such a system was put into service under the designation BM-13N (normalized). In March 1944, a self-propelled launcher for the M-13 was adopted on the Studebaker BM-31-12 chassis.
But in the post-war years, Studebakers were ordered to be forgotten, although combat vehicles on its chassis were in service until the early 1960s. In secret instructions, the Studebaker was called an “all-terrain vehicle.” Mutant Katyushas on the ZIS-5 chassis or post-war types of vehicles, which are stubbornly passed off as genuine military relics, were erected on numerous pedestals, but the genuine BM-13-16 on the ZIS-6 chassis was preserved only in the Artillery Museum in St. Petersburg.
As already mentioned, the Germans captured several launchers and hundreds of 132 mm M-13 and 82 mm M-8 shells back in 1941. The Wehrmacht command believed that their turbojet shells and tubular launchers with revolver-type guides were better than Soviet wing-stabilized shells. But the SS took up the M-8 and M-13 and ordered the Skoda company to copy them.
In 1942, based on the 82-mm Soviet M-8 projectile, 8 cm R.Sprgr rockets were created in Zbroevka. In fact, it was a new projectile, and not a copy of the M-8, although externally the German projectile was very similar to the M-8.
Unlike the Soviet projectile, the stabilizer feathers were set obliquely at an angle of 1.5 degrees to the longitudinal axis. Due to this, the projectile rotated in flight. The rotation speed was many times less than that of a turbojet projectile, and did not play any role in stabilizing the projectile, but it eliminated the eccentricity of the single-nozzle thrust rocket engine. But eccentricity, that is, a displacement of the engine thrust vector due to uneven burning of gunpowder in the bombs, was the main reason for the low accuracy of Soviet missiles of the M-8 and M-13 types.
Based on the Soviet M-13, the Skoda company created a whole series of 15-cm missiles with oblique wings for the SS and Luftwaffe, but they were produced in small series. Our troops captured several samples of German 8-cm shells, and our designers made their own samples based on them. The M-13 and M-31 missiles with oblique tails were adopted by the Red Army in 1944, they were assigned special ballistic indices - TS-46 and TS-47.
The apotheosis of the combat use of “Katyusha” and “Luka” was the storming of Berlin. In total, more than 44 thousand guns and mortars, as well as 1,785 M-30 and M-31 launchers, 1,620 rocket artillery combat vehicles (219 divisions) were involved in the Berlin operation. In the battles for Berlin, rocket artillery units used the wealth of experience they acquired in the battles for Poznan, which consisted of direct fire with single M-31, M-20 and even M-13 projectiles.
At first glance, this method of firing may seem primitive, but its results turned out to be very significant. Firing single rockets during battles in such a huge city as Berlin has found the widest application.
To conduct such fire, assault groups of approximately the following composition were created in the guards mortar units: an officer - group commander, an electrical engineer, 25 sergeants and soldiers for the M-31 assault group and 8-10 for the M-13 assault group.
The intensity of the battles and the fire missions performed by rocket artillery in the battles for Berlin can be judged by the number of rockets expended in these battles. In the offensive zone of the 3rd shock army the following were expended: M-13 shells – 6270; M-31 shells – 3674; M-20 shells – 600; M-8 shells - 1878.
Of this amount, the rocket artillery assault groups expended: M-8 shells - 1638; M-13 shells – 3353; M-20 shells – 191; M-31 shells – 479.
These groups in Berlin destroyed 120 buildings that were strong centers of enemy resistance, destroyed three 75-mm guns, suppressed dozens of firing points, and killed over 1,000 enemy soldiers and officers.
So, our glorious “Katyusha” and her unjustly offended brother “Luka” became a weapon of victory in the full sense of the word!
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