The 132mm M-13 rocket launcher was mass-produced by the Soviet Union and appeared on a number of chassis throughout the war, including tanks and ships. The designation BM-13-16 breaks down to "combat vehicle for M-13 launcher with 16 rails". Only 40 units had been produced before war broke out with Germany, and they were such a closely guarded secret that the initial units equiped were under NKVD direction.

The first battery went into action near Orsha railway station on 7th July 1941 and proved an immediate success. The GAU was duly impressed, and ordered production to begin on a crash basis. The rocket launchers were still so highly classified that they received a variety of bogus names such as Kostikov guns, etc. Eventually they were officially designated Guards Mortars, but the name which stuck was the popular nickname, Katyusha, the diminutive form of the name Katerina, after the Isakovskiy tune of the same name. The scream of the rockets led the Germans to call them Stalin's Organs.

The main attraction of the Katyusha launcher was that it was cheap to manufacture and could be turned out by small factories without the elaborate machine tools needed for conventional tubed artillery. A BM-13 salvo dropped 4.35 tons of rocket and high explosive into a 10-acre area in a terrifying 7-10 second strike. Although not so accurate as conventional artillery, the Katyusha was much more feared by German soldiers than conventional artillery. By the end of the war, about 10,000 Katyusha launchers had been manufactured, mostly for the Army, but some for the Navy's river flotillas as well. The majority of launchers were self-propelled.