From: Douglas Greville (dgrev@iinet.net.au)
Date: Sun Dec 05 2004 - 01:52:05 PST
Steve
> The weapon was highly effective and early on a single barrage was likely
> to completely take the fight out of the enemy. The same was said of the
> Soviet equivalent, the Katyusha ("Stalin's Organ"), which also made its
> debut in 1941. And as a piece of trivia... the Germans like the Katyusha
> so much that the Waffen SS set up mass production of an exact copy
> because they were having difficulty getting Nebelwerfer systems from the
> Heer (Army). As with many Soviet weapons systems, the Katyusha was both
> cheap and effective compared to the typically expensive and difficult to
> produce German equivalent.
Even more so than you imagine. The Katyusha rocket warheads were
actually artillery shells that had failed their quality check (ie out of
round, undersized etc) and were "re-cycled" by having the rocket tube
and motor attached and let off in the direction of the 3rd Reich.
You have got to hand it to the Russians, they sure knew how to make the
most of what resources they had.
Regards
Doug
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M8 Ferret
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