Why did the BM-13 rocket launcher come to be called “Katyusha”? I asked this question of many people and almost always received the same answer: supposedly the song “Katyusha” was very popular in the prewar years, and its name somehow naturally became attached to the new rocket launcher.
It is difficult to agree with such an explanation. The name was born according to the laws of logic, and I happened to be at the origins of its appearance. Perhaps I was the first to pronounce this word...
In July 1941, when I was serving at an artillery testing ground, the newspaper Pravda published a sensational report: near Orsha, the division of Captain Flerov (an acquaintance of mine from the military school) struck the enemy with a new secret weapon.
As specialists who knew much about the armament of the Red Army, our officers began to speculate what kind of weapon had been used near Orsha.
We carefully read the lines of the Information Bureau report and guessed... A whole salvo... That meant the gun was automatic. The report said that everything in the affected area was burning. Clearly: the shells were incendiary — thermal. Fiery tails? That was also clear — rockets. And we knew who was then considered their creator — A. Kostikov...
After the war it became known that the creator of the rockets and launchers had been a whole team of designers. But at that time, in distant 1941, Kostikov’s name was well known in military circles and associated with the new weapon.
So why puzzle over the name of the novelty? “Why, these are KATs,” I then said to the representative of the People’s Commissariat of Ammunition, A. Slutsky. “Kostikov’s Automatic Thermal — abbreviated KAT...”
Strangely enough, the word “KAT,” applied to the new weapon, quickly took root among us. Frontline soldiers often came to the testing ground, learned this word, and carried it with them to the front.
From there it was only a small step to “Katyusha,” especially since much in the tactics of using the new weapon echoed the song “Katyusha came out to the riverbank...”. And the BM-13s also came out, fired at the enemy — and then moved to a new concealed position. Katyusha “started the song,” and the BM-13s also started their song — a series of rockets, breaking away from the launch rails, creating a roar and thunder.
V. DRUZHININ, retired artillery major