2194days

Weapons · Soviet Union · 1941-present

Katyusha rocket launcher

multiple rocket launcher

Truck-mounted rail launchers that fired volleys of unguided rockets, nicknamed Katyusha by Soviet troops and 'Stalin's organ' by the Germans for the howl of the rockets in flight. A battery of four BM-13 launchers could saturate a target area with 1.4 tonnes of high explosive in under ten seconds, though reloading the full salvo took the better part of an hour, so the weapon was used for shock rather than sustained fire.

Wikipedia

crew6 per launcher
caliber132mm (M-13 rocket)
range~8.5km
produced~10,000 launchers by 1945

Eastern Front

Katyusha Rocket Launcher - Artillery Museum - St. Petersburg - Russia.jpg
Katyusha Rocket Launcher - Artillery Museum - St. Petersburg - Russia.jpgAdam Jones, Ph.D. · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source
BM-13-16 on a ZiS-151 chassis in a military museum in Belarus.
BM-13-16 on a ZiS-151 chassis in a military museum in Belarus.Guðmundur D. Haraldsson · CC BY 2.0 · source
Polish Army soldiers loading rockets onto a BM-13 (post-WWII).
Polish Army soldiers loading rockets onto a BM-13 (post-WWII).St. Iwan · Public domain · source

Used in