Father of the Katyusha rocket, the engineer who perfected the RS‑82 and RS‑132 and coined the word 'cosmonautics'
During the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, mutineers arrested Langemak and sentenced him to death. He was held from 2 March to 18 April and freed only after the Red Army crushed the uprising — twenty years before he would build the rockets that became the Katyusha.
Of German descent, Langemak began developing smokeless-powder rockets at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) and, as chief engineer of the Rocket Research Institute (RNII, 1934–1938), brought the RS-82 and RS-132 solid-fuel rockets to operational readiness. These became the core munition of the BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher: one of the most iconic Soviet weapons of World War II. He introduced the term 'cosmonautics' into the Russian language and corresponded with Tsiolkovsky about the peaceful space applications of rocketry. Arrested on false charges during the Great Purge in 1937, he was shot on 11 January 1938, rehabilitated in 1955, and posthumously made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1991.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1916–18Entered Petrograd University for Japanese philology; graduated from Naval Ensign School, served in the fleet
- 1919–22Mobilized into the Red Army; battery commander and assistant division chief, Kronstadt Fortress
- 1923–28Graduated from the Red Army Military-Technical Academy
- 1928–33Led development of smokeless-powder rockets RS-82 and RS-132 at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL)
- 1934–37Deputy director and chief engineer of RNII (NII-3); Military Engineer 1st Rank
- 1937–38Arrested by NKVD; sentenced to death by Military Collegium, shot same day, 11 January 1938
- 1955/1991Posthumously rehabilitated (1955); Hero of Socialist Labor (1991)
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionKronstadt fortress battery commander
- 1921.03The Kronstadt Rebellionofficer arrested by the insurgentsThe insurgents arrested him, sentenced him to death, and held him from 2 March to 18 April.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeScientist and engineer targetedThe chief engineer whose work underlay the Katyusha rockets was executed in 1938 after a false denunciation.
Interior-ballistics theory and the written legacy of the smokeless-powder rocket
Langemak's technical contribution was not confined to his administrative posts or to test results. He is described as a founder of research into the design of smokeless-powder rocket projectiles and as the man who established the so-called similarity law. Knowing that law made it possible to determine the optimal geometry of a rocket-engine nozzle by analytical calculation, without lengthy and costly experiments. In the early 1930s, while working on smokeless-powder rockets at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory, he was already regarded as a leading specialist in interior ballistics.
His research output was collective, but his hand supplied the theoretical foundation on which projectile performance rested. He published "Feathered Shells, Tractive Rockets" (1934) and "The Design of Rocket Shells and Tractive Rockets" (vol. 1), and in 1935 co-wrote "Rockets, Their Construction and Use" with Valentin Glushko. Beginning in 1930 he filed patents and invention applications; by 1933 there were more than forty, some jointly with Artemyev, Petropavlovsky, Dudakov and Rudin.
The rockets that became the Katyusha were therefore completed not only at the proving ground but first in calculation and theory. Langemak's writings and patents show why he stood at the center of Soviet rocket engineering of his day.