Famous combat vehicle Katyusha celebrated its birthday on July 14. The world has known it 71 years already. On July 14, 1941, the sound of this wonder canon thundered for the first time in the battle of Orsha in Belarus. There were only two volleys, but they produced an effect comparable to an explosion of an A-bomb on the Nazis. They destroyed the enemy’s will to resist, though in ten days after the war the German war machine seemed unstoppable. In those days dozens of Soviet military trains with armaments, ammunition and fuel got stuck at Orsha. To re-conquer them, it was decided to feed the Soviet wonder weapon into battle.
The newest and then experimental multiple-launch rocket system had not yet been given the iconic name Katyusha. Firing two volleys during 15-20 seconds, it released 16 shells. No sooner had Nazis realized what was happening, than the railway station turned into a fire hell. As can be seen from the historical archives, three more months until the enemy captured a damaged rocket launcher the German reconnaissance reported on the Russian Army applying either “a multi-barrel fire-throwing canon” or “a launcher throwing rocket-shaped shells.” But when in October 1941 the battery of captain Flyorov was surrounded, Nazis captured one Katyusha as a trophy or rather the commander blew himself up with the “Guards Mortar.”
The enemy seized only several parts of the “trophy.” Meanwhile the rumor of the Guards Mortar, as they were first dubbed in the USSR or “Stalin’s organ” as it was christened by Nazis, spread at a space speed. A single salvo of one battery of the future Katyusha launchers caused such an air blast wave that surviving Germans lost the power to resist and were like sleepwalkers.
The irony of history is that it is Hitler’s troops which were the first to apply multiple-launch rocket systems in WWII. They seemed to figure out the pernicious effect of such weapons quite accurately: it is on the first day of war, June 22, 1941, that 9 batteries of the fourth artillery regiment of special-purpose mortar launchers or mine throwers were used against the Brest Fortress. These were Nebelwerfer mortar launchers. Soviet soldiers retreating in panic feared them awfully, though their adjustment and accuracy of fire were not the very best.
Red Army soldiers came up with different nicknames for the new weapons: “dude”, “squeaker”, “drudge”. The latter two were given because of the characteristically roaring sound of launched mines. However, the most enigmatic nickname of the terrifying weapons, “Vanyusha”, perplexed Hitler’s scouts. It was unclear why the murderous mortar, on which Germans staked so much, was so tenderly called, especially since Nebelwerfer produced a thick smoke curtain demoralizing the retreating Red Army soldiers. Yet the retreating Russians were quick to crack the main con of “handicapped” Vanyusha – this was no self-propelled artillery. It was tugged behind a truck and at the very beginning of the war – even behind harnessed horses. Perhaps the secret of the tender nickname Vanyusha should be sought in this clumsiness?
Katyusha was originally a self-propelled weapon: it could deliver a large blow all at once, and then be redeployed before being located and attacked with counter-battery fire. Moreover its rocket-powered shells were more perfect. Incidentally, when SS troops ordered the German industry to copy Katyusha’s rocket shell, the latter failed. Emulating the trophy Soviet samples, German industry captains did everything they could but could not copy stabilizers, Katyusha’s main secret. Nazis failed to install them in such a way that shells would spin in the flight.
It was then that numerous rumors about Katyusha were launched. One of them was that the USSR, in circumvention of international conventions, stuffed Katyusha’s shells with some poisoning substance or with extremely flammable and poisonous white phosphorus. In reality regular explosives were applied in Katyusha’s warheads, though. An exceptional effect was reached thanks to stabilizers spinning in the flight and due to the law of integration of pulses.
This weapon was technologically superior to all that the enemy possessed. It is for this reason, in the opinion of many historians, that Katyusha launchers, as an advanced and the most mobile type of armaments, played a decisive role in many battles of the Great Patriotic war, foreclosing the victory of the USSR over Nazism. As a matter of fact, it was then believed that serving in the regiments of guard’s mortars was a prestigious and relatively safe calling. The command treasured the expensive Katyusha launchers and never sent them to the frontline in vain. The “guards” did not linger in the combat operational zone either: unless the combat vehicles were redeployed after a volley, German artillery could bring down fire upon the battery a few minutes later.
Nobody still knows for sure the origin of this name. There are several versions with none of them being absolutely credible. Here is the most popular legend: the name was borrowed from the famous song of Matvey Blanter composed shortly before the war to the lyrics of Mikhail Isakovsky: Katyusha. The lines about Katyusha who “came down to gather berries on the cliff top rising steep and high, where she started singing” were not only associated in the conscientiousness of the warring nation with a girl waiting for her beloved, but also with a lady intercessor capable of doing miracles. And new wonder artillery also “started singing” peculiar tunes which were more like the howling sound, though. For all that, Katyusha could easily launch direct point fire from a “high and steep cliff”.
At least this popular version appears to be most plausible and hence most tenacious of all like Katyusha launchers themselves which were progenitors of contemporary powerful multiple launch rocket systems Grad (“Hail”), Uragan (“Hurricane”) and Smerch (“Tornado”) used by half of the world nowadays, where they are incorrectly called “katyusha missiles” instead of Grad or Uragan.
Vladimir Emelyanenko
