The weapon was also known as "Stalin's Organ", so named by German troops due to its resemblance to a Pipe organ. It was used on many platforms during World War II, mounted on trucks (including Studebaker US6s provided by the United States Lend Lease program), on tanks, and occasionally even on tractors. Modified versions were also mounted on airplanes.
It was a relatively simple design consisting of racks of parallel rails on which rockets were mounted, with a folding frame to raise the rails to launch position. Each truck had between 14 and 48 launchers. The rocket was 1.8 m (5.9 ft) long, 130 mm (5.1 in) in diameter and weighed 42 kg (92 lb). The explosive warhead weighed 22 kg (48 lb). The range of the rocket was about 5 km (3 miles).
The weapon lacked accuracy but was extremely effective in saturation bombardment. Katyushas were often massed in very large numbers to create a Shock effect on enemy forces.
The development of the Katyusha rocket launcher was a response to Nazi Germany's development of the six-barreled Nebelwerfer rocket mortar in 1936. The Red Army began work on rocket Artillery design in 1938, and deployment of the 82mm BM-8 was approved on June 21, 1941. On July 14, 1941 an experimental artillery battery of seven launchers was first used in battle against the German army at Orsha in Belarus, under the command of Captain I. Flerov. The first eight regiments of missile artillery (36 launchers in each unit) were then created on August 8, 1941. An improved BM-13N ("normalized") design was developed in 1943, and more than 1800 of this model were manufactured by the end of WWII.
The term is now often used to describe small artillery rockets in general, whether they are Soviet-derived or originally built. Such rockets are often used in guerilla warfare, for example by the Viet Cong, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgency, and the Taliban.