Georgy Langemak



Georgy Erikhovich Langemak (Георгий Эрихович Лангемак; 8 July 1898 – 11 January 1938) was a Soviet engineer in the Soviet space program, working on rocket design applications. He is chiefly remembered for being the co-designer and directing the development of the aircraft unguided rockets, such as the RS-82 and RS-132, which were modified to be used with such success in the Katyusha rocket launchers of World War II. The crater Langemak on the Moon is named in his honor.

Life
Beginning in 1928, he worked at the Soviet Gas Dynamics Laboratory along with several other notable Soviet rocket scientists, and they developed rocket projectiles that used smokeless powder. This group was later merged with another rocketry organization to become the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII). Langemak became the deputy director of the RNII. In 1936 this group completed the technical specifications for a rocket-glider.

In 1937, during the Great Purge, he was fired and subsequently arrested by NKVD, along with RNII director Ivan Kleymyonov and engine designer Valentin Glushko, as a follow-up to a denunciation letter by the director of RNII liquid fuel engine laboratory, Andrei Kostikov (who subsequently took his position in the institute), in which he claimed Langemak was sabotaging the research and development progress of the new engine. Langemak was judged by a visiting session of Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 11 January 1938, found guilty under the article 58-7, 58-8, and 58-11, and sentenced to death by shooting with property confiscation. The execution took place the same day.

Exoneration
He was rehabilitated completely in November 1955.

Langemak and other participants in the creation of the Katyusha rocket launcher received official recognition only in 1991. By decree of President Mikhail Gorbachev, dated 21 June 1991, Kleymyonov, Langemak, Vasily Luzhin, Boris Petropavlovsky, Boris Slonimer, and Nikolai Tikhomirov were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.