Katyusha propellant

Speaking of rocket fuel (re: onion atricle), can anyone hazard a guess at the propellant used in katyusha rockets? The reason I ask is because it seems like it is a fairly long burning engine with "moderate"* levels of thrust - just what one would want for a rocket glider. Of course core design has something to do with performance to. These seem like awfully smokey rockets, so I don't think a nitrocellulose-based propellant is used (but of course I could be wrong).
*having only seen videos on TV, the rockets don't appear to really jump into the air the way some do that I *know* have a high thrust engine. This is all guesswork though.

Stolen from the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha_rockets
It was propelled by a solid nitrocellulose-based propellant of tubular shape, arranged in a steel-case rocket engine with a single central nozzle at the bottom end.
Granted, Wiki isn't always right, but more often than not, it is. (answers.com has the exact same text)
Spaceline has this: http://www.spaceline.org/history/5.html
These Katyusha rockets burned solid-propellant double-base powder, and were launched from ground or truck-mounted racks. The missiles could achieve a maximum range of three miles.
-Aaron
Smaug Ichorfang wrote:
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Aaron wrote:
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The rockets being fired today are clearly different than those described at Spaceline or Wikipedia. First, their range is much more than 3 miles. Second, the plume does not look like a double-base propellant. Looks more like a metalized composite of some sort, possibly a fairly standard AP/Al/HTPB mix.
-JT

I'm sorry, you are correct. The double-base powder versions were from WW-II. The newer versions (version 3? mark-3?, whatever) have a range of 25-30 miles (~45km)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajr-3
It doesn't say what the propellant consists of, but I would assume you are correct from the videos I've seen.
-Aaron
Jeff Taylor wrote:
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There was a night time air strike in downtown Bey Ruth. There was a large red fireball, quickly followed by a bright white fireball with flaming/sparking/smoking bits, which turned blue-white. I think this was definitly a strike with a secondaty explosion of AP/metal fuel. Maybe a Blue Thunder type mix (loked a lot like a cato I once saw).

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I doubt it since Blue Thunder doesn't explode.

Phil Stein wrote:
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Maybe not by strict definition, but it still does nasty things to a target.
Rocket motors, even without warheads, can do a lot of damage. Remember the British ships that were sunk or heavily damaged in the Falkland Islands war? In most of those cases, when the Exocet missiles struck the ships the warhead failed to detonate. It was the rocket motor burning up its remaining propellant inside the ship that did the damage.
-JT

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Agreed. There's no doubt that they are very effective at setting things on fire.

Jeff Taylor wrote:
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Yes indeed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_%28D80%29 says it much as I remember it