Commander of the first independent experimental missile artillery battery in the Red Army
He participated in battles from the first days of the Great Patriotic War. He commanded a separate experimental battery of missile artillery BM-13 (Katyusha). The BM-13 was first tested in combat conditions on July 14, 1941 during the shelling of the Orsha railway station and the German pontoon bridge over the Orshica river, and the next day by firing ambush near the town of Rudnya in the Smolensk region.