LangemakGeorgy

GwaiIvan

The М–13 rocket shells and BM–13 launcher were put into mass production on June 21, 1941, just hours before the start of the German-Soviet war. And on July 14, the new weapon, called “Katyusha,” so frightened the German military that they set out to find out the secret of its destructive power at any cost. It was not an easy task. Even at the factories, the BM-13s were equipped with self-destruct systems. If saboteurs managed to get close to the installations, they were blown up by the Soviet military. But at the end of 1941, they still managed to deliver one to Germany, though without shells.

They started to learn the launcher. At first glance, an ordinary truck with eight rails welded to the chassis on which the shells move. It is easy to reproduce such a thing! They did. They fired it. The German shells flew out but exploded in the air, not reaching their target. And so on and on and on. Then it became clear that the secret was in the shells. They were obtained. They disassembled the shells. They began to study the mixture that powered their solid-fuel rocket engines...

In addition to smokeless (black) gunpowder, which the Chinese discovered in the ninth and tenth centuries, French chemist Paul Viel invented smokeless (white) gunpowder in 1884. Besides its obvious advantage, it was also three times more powerful than black. Using Viel’s mixture as a basis, chemists from various countries started experimenting and quickly invented unique mixtures. Alfred Nobel received a patent for gunpowder in 1888, Dmitri Mendeleev invented pyrocolodic gunpowder in 1891, and Ivan Grave tried to apply for a patent for his composition of the gunpowder mixture in 1916...

And in 1928, the Ukrainian military engineer Georgy Langemak began working at the Gasdynamic Laboratory. Together with others, he was engaged and led the development of solid-fuel unguided “air-to-air” and “air-to-ground” rockets for bombers. These shells were supposed to reach targets without trajectory correction during flight. It was decided to use Ivan Grave’s ashes as a solid fuel. The result was shells of two calibers: 82 and 132 millimeters in diameter — RS–82 and RS–132.

Multiple rocket launcher system “Katyusha”

By the way, at first, both RS–82 and RS–132 hit the target, like most unguided shells, so-so. The first tests showed that when fired at a tank from 500 meters, only 2 of 186 shells of the RS–82 hit the target. Accuracy of the RS–132 was even lower — out of 134 shells fired, not a single one hit the target. Near the beginning of the war, the RS–132 was modified. The new shell was indexed M–13 and became part of the legendary rocket launcher. The maximum range of the M–13 reached 8,470 meters. The 5-meter long rails gave the shells the right direction of movement. This did not ensure accuracy hitting the target but significantly increased the accuracy. According to the 1942 tests, firing from a range of 3,000 meters, the shell could deflect sideways by a maximum of 51 meters and miss or overfly the target by 257 meters. This was enough because the Katyusha was used mainly when the enemy needed to be frightened or a significant accumulation of them. The  BM–13 also had another advantage: its placement on a truck platform helped it leave the position quickly and avoid being hit by oncoming fire. Unremarkable at first glance, the BM–13 turned out to be ingenious in its simplicity. A whole team of engineers worked on both the shells and the launcher, one of the leaders of which was Ukrainian designer Ivan Gwai.

Whether true or not, they say, when Gwai came to the Higher Attestation Commission for his Ph. D., they asked him, “Where is your thesis?” Gwai replied, “Shooting at the war front.”

During the war, about 6,800 BM–13 launchers were sent to the front.