The Stalin Organ
An almost forgotten piece of armament that brought terror to combatants in WWII and other 20th century wars.
The next sentence in my father’s diary, a child soldier in World War II read:” …an old platoon leader turned ash white as there was a strange, hacked bellowing …we both lay pressed to the ground as a terrible, nearby detonation happened like an avalanche, resulting in a large crater caused by a Stalinorgel”.
My research yielded that the above-mentioned device was the first self-propelled, multiple shot rocket launcher, mass-produced by the Soviet Union. My father like all Germans had referred to it as Stalin’s organ because it resembled a pipe organ. The first time the Wehrmacht had encountered about 3000 of them, was at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942.
Its production was inexpensive and the launch rails were mounted longitudinally on trucks. No equipment for building conventional artillery gun barrels was needed. But it took longer to load and it fired less accurately, which was more than compensated for by the high pitched howling sounds of the weapons’ motor that added a terrifying psychological warfare effect, frightening the enemy.
Russian soldiers called it Katyusha- little Katie after a popular song where a girl misses her lover who has gone away on military service.
By the time my father’s school class was sent into combat on the Eastern Front in April 1945, the Russian Army used 10 000 Stalin organs. But it was only the beginning. The inglorious role they were to play in the wars around the world that would follow had just begun.
