52nd Rocket Division

The 52nd Rocket Division (Russian: 52-я ракетная дивизия) was a division of the Soviet and Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, active from 1961 to 2002.

The division traced its lineage to the formation of the Red Army's 23rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division during World War II in January 1943. In the spring of that year it served on the Northwestern Front with the 27th Army, then was transferred to the Steppe Front with the army in May. The 23rd provided air defense for the army in the Belgorod–Kharkov Offensive, the Battle of the Dnieper, and the Battle of Kiev. In December it transferred to the 60th Army, with which it spent most of the rest of the war. The division fought in the Proskurov–Chernovitsy Offensive, the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive, the Sandomierz–Silesian Offensive, and the Battle of Berlin. For helping to capture Ternopol and Berlin, the division received the cities' names as honorifics, and was awarded the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky and the Order of the Red Star for fighting in Silesia. At the end of the war in May 1945 the division fought in the capture of Dresden with the 3rd Guards Tank Army.

Postwar, the 23rd was stationed near Vienna, and after the Soviet withdrawal from Austria in 1955 was stationed in western Ukraine and renumbered as the 97th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division before being disbanded in 1960. Two of its regiments were used to form the 206th Rocket Brigade of the new Strategic Rocket Forces at Bershet, Perm Oblast. In 1961, the 206th was expanded into the 52nd Rocket Division, which inherited the honors of the 97th Division. Until 2002, as part of the 31st Rocket Army, the division successively operated R-16, UR-100, and RT-23 intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was disbanded in 2002 and its lineage inherited by a base for storage and transshipment which was tasked with dismantling the division's missile facilities. The base was disbanded in 2007 after the completion of its task.