Amazing details from the history of guards mortars, hiding behind a dense veil of historical myth
The BM-13 rocket artillery combat vehicle is much better known under the legendary name “Katyusha”. And, as is the case with any legend, its history over the decades has not only been mythologized, but also reduced to a small number of well-known facts. What does everyone know? That the Katyusha was the most famous rocket artillery system of the Second World War. That the commander of the first separate experimental battery of field rocket artillery was Captain Ivan Flerov. And that the first blow of its installation was inflicted on July 14, 1941 on Orsha, although some historians of domestic artillery dispute this date, claiming that the combat log of Flerov's battery contains an error, and the shelling of Orsha was conducted on July 13.
Perhaps, the reason for the mythologization of "Katyusha" was not only the ideological tendencies inherent in the USSR. A banal lack of facts could have played a role: domestic rocket artillery has always existed in an atmosphere of strict secrecy. Here is a typical example: the famous geopolitician Vladimir Dergachev writes in his memoirs about his father, who served in the guards mortar regiment, that his “military unit was disguised as a cavalry regiment, which is reflected in the Moscow photographs of his father with colleagues. The field post, under censorship, allowed these photographs to be sent to relatives and beloved women. " The newest Soviet weapon, the decision on the mass production of which was made by the government of the USSR late in the evening of June 21, 1941, belonged to the category of "special secrecy equipment" - the same as all means of encryption and secure communication systems. For the same reason, for a long time, each BM-13 installation was equipped with an individual detonation device to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy.
However, not a single sample of the famous Soviet weapons of the Great Patriotic War escaped the transformation into a myth, which today needs to be very carefully and respectfully returned to its real features: neither the T-34 tank and the Shpagin submachine gun, nor the ZiS-3 divisional gun … Meanwhile in their real story, which is much less known, as in the story of "Katyusha", there are enough truly legendary events and facts. The “Historian” tells about some of them today.
Guards mortar units appeared before the entire Soviet guard
The formal date of the appearance of the guards units in the Red Army was September 18, 1941, when, by order of the USSR People's Commissar of Defense, four rifle divisions "for military exploits, organization, discipline and approximate order" received the title of guards. But by this time, for more than a month, all rocket artillery units, without exception, were called guards, and they received this title not as a result of battles, but during formation!
For the first time the word "guards" appears in official Soviet documents on August 4, 1941 - in the decree of the USSR State Defense Committee No. GKO-383ss "On the formation of one guards mortar regiment M-13". This is how this document begins: “The State Defense Committee decides: 1. To agree with the proposal of the People's Commissar of General Engineering of the USSR, Comrade Parshin, to form one Guards mortar regiment armed with M-13 installations. 2. Assign the name of the People's Commissariat of General Machine Building to the newly formed Guards Regiment (Peter Parshina. - Author's note)."
Four days later, on August 8, by order of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (SVGK) No. 04, the formation of eight more guards mortar regiments began in the Alabinsk camps near Moscow. Half of them - from the first to the fourth - received the BM-13 installation, and the rest - the BM-8, equipped with 82 mm rockets.
And one more interesting point. By the end of the autumn of 1941, 14 guards mortar regiments were already operating on the Soviet-German front, but only at the end of January 1942 their fighters and commanders were equalized in monetary allowance with the personnel of "ordinary" guards units. The order of the Supreme Command Headquarters No. 066 "On the monetary allowance of the personnel of the guards mortar units" was adopted only on January 25 and read: double salary of maintenance, as it is established for the guards units."
The most massive chassis for "Katyushas" were American trucks
Most of the BM-13 installations that have survived to this day, standing on pedestals or becoming museum exhibits, are Katyushas based on a three-axle ZIS-6 truck. One involuntarily thinks that it is precisely such combat vehicles that have passed the glorious military path from Orsha to Berlin. Although, as much as we would like to believe it, history suggests that most BM-13s were equipped on the basis of Lend-Lease Studebakers.
The reason is simple: the Moscow Stalin automobile plant simply did not have time to produce a sufficient number of cars until October 1941, when it was evacuated to four cities at once: Miass, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk and Shadrinsk. In the new places, at first, it was not possible to organize the production of a three-axle model, which was unusual for the plant, and then they completely abandoned it in favor of more advanced ones. As a result, from June to October 1941, only a few hundred installations based on the ZIS-6 were produced, with which the first guards mortar units were armed. In open sources, a different number is given: from 372 combat vehicles (which looks like an obviously underestimated figure) to 456 and even 593 installations. Perhaps such a discrepancy in the data is explained by the fact that the ZIS-6 were used to build not only the BM-13, but also the BM-8, as well as the fact that for these purposes the trucks were seized from wherever they were found, and they are either taken into account in the number of new ones, or not.
However, the front needed more and more Katyushas, and they had to be installed on something. The designers tried everything - from ZIS-5 trucks to tanks and railway platforms, but three-axle vehicles remained the most effective. And then in the spring of 1942, they decided to place the launchers on the chassis of trucks supplied under Lend-Lease. Best suited American "Studebaker" US6 - the same three-axle, like the ZIS-6, but more powerful and passable. As a result, they accounted for more than half of all Katyushas - 54.7%!
The question remains: why were BM-13 based on the ZIS-6 most often placed as monuments? Many researchers of the history of "Katyusha" tend to see this as an ideological background: they say, the Soviet government did everything to make the country forget about the important role of the American auto industry in the fate of the famous weapon. However, in reality everything is much simpler. Of the first Katyushas, only a few survived until the end of the war, and most of them ended up at production bases, where they ended up during the reorganization of units and replacement of weapons. And the BM-13 installations on the Studebakers remained in service with the Soviet army after the war - until the domestic industry created new machines. Then the launchers began to be removed from the American base and rearranged on the chassis, first the ZIS-151, and then the ZIL-157 and even the ZIL-131, and the old Studebakers were handed over for alteration or scrapped.
A separate People's Commissariat was responsible for the rocket mortars.
As already mentioned, the first guards mortar regiment began to form on July 4, 1941, at the initiative of the People's Commissar of General Engineering Pyotr Parshin. And more than four months later, the People's Commissariat, which was headed by this famous managerial engineer, was renamed and became responsible almost exclusively for providing the guards mortar units with equipment. On November 26, 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree that read: “1. Transform the People's Commissariat for General Machine Building into the People's Commissariat for Mortar Weapons. 2. Appoint Comrade Parshin Pyotr Ivanovich as People's Commissar of Mortar Armament. Thus, the Guards mortar units became the only type of armed forces in the Red Army that had their own ministry: it was no secret to anyone that the “mortar weapons” meant, first of all, “Katyushas”, although this commissariat produced mortars of all other classical systems also a lot.
By the way, it is noteworthy: the very first guards mortar regiment, the formation of which began on August 4, four days later received number 9 - simply because by the time the order was issued it had no number at all. The 9th Guards Mortar Regiment was formed and armed on the initiative and at the expense of the workers of the People's Commissariat of General Machine Building - the future People's Commissariat of Mortar Armament, and received equipment and ammunition from those produced in August in excess of the plan. And the People's Commissariat itself existed until February 17, 1946, after which it turned into the People's Commissariat of Mechanical Engineering and Instrumentation of the USSR - under the leadership of the same permanent Peter Parshin.
Lieutenant Colonel became the commander of the guards mortar units
On September 8, 1941 - a month after the order to create the first eight Guards mortar regiments - the State Defense Committee issued a decree No. GKO-642ss. With this document, signed by Joseph Stalin, the guards mortar units were separated from the artillery of the Red Army, and for their leadership the post of commander of mortar units was introduced with direct subordination to his Headquarters. By the same decree, the deputy chief of the Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army Vasily Aborenkov was appointed to this unusually responsible post - a military engineer of the 1st rank, that is, in fact, a lieutenant colonel of artillery! However, those who made this decision were not embarrassed by Aborenkov's low rank. After all, it was his surname that appeared in the copyright certificate for "a rocket launcher for a sudden, powerful artillery and chemical attack on the enemy with the help of rocket shells." And it was the military engineer Aborenkov in the post, first the head of the department, and then the deputy head of the GAU, who did everything for the Red Army to receive jet weapons.
The son of a retired gunner of the Guards Horse-Artillery Brigade, he volunteered to serve in the Red Army in 1918 and gave it 30 years of his life. At the same time, the greatest merit of Vasily Aborenkov, who forever inscribed his name in Russian military history, was the appearance of the Katyusha in service with the Red Army. Vasily Aborenkov took up active promotion of rocket artillery after May 19, 1940, when he took the post of head of the rocket armament department of the Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army. It was in this post that he showed extraordinary perseverance, even risking to "jump over the head" of his immediate superior, who had become immobilized in the artillery views of the former head of GAU, Marshal Grigory Kulik, and won attention to the new weapon from the country's top leadership. It was Aborenkov who was one of the organizers of the demonstration of rocket launchers to the leaders of the USSR on June 15 and 17, 1941, which ended with the adoption of the Katyusha into service.
As commander of the guards mortar units, Vasily Aborenkov served until April 29, 1943 - that is, until the day this post existed. On April 30, the Katyushas returned under the leadership of the commander-in-chief of artillery, while Aborenkov remained in charge of the Main Military-Chemical Directorate of the Red Army.
The first batteries of rocket artillery were armed with howitzers
In the minds of most people who are not immersed in military history, "Katyushas" themselves are such powerful weapons that the units armed with them do not need anything else. In reality, this is far from the case. For example, according to the staff of the Guards Mortar Regiment No. 08/61, approved by the People's Commissariat of Defense on August 8, 1941, this unit, in addition to BM-13 installations, was armed with six 37-mm automatic anti-aircraft guns and nine 12, 7-mm DShK anti-aircraft machine guns. But there was also small arms of the personnel, which, say, a separate guards mortar division in the state of November 11, 1941 was entitled to a lot: four DP light machine guns, 15 submachine guns, 50 rifles and 68 pistols!
Although it is especially curious that the first separate experimental battery of field rocket artillery of Captain Ivan Flerov also included a 122-mm howitzer of the 1910/1930 model, which served as a sighting gun. She relied on an ammunition load of 100 rounds - quite enough, given that the battery had six times more rockets for the BM-13. And the most surprising thing is that the list of armaments of Captain Flerov's battery also included "seven cannons of 210 mm caliber"! Under this column were missile launchers, while their chassis - ZIS-6 trucks - were recorded in the same document as "special vehicles". It is clear that this was done for the sake of the same notorious secrecy that for a long time surrounded the Katyusha and their history, and in the end turned it into a myth.
