Congreve rocket

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The Congreve Rocket was a British military weapon designed by Sir William Congreve in 1804.

The British were greatly impressed by the Mysorean Rocket artillery made from iron tubes used by the armies of Tipu Sultan and his father, Haidar Ali. Tipu Sultan championed the use of mass attacks with rocket brigades in the army. The effect of these weapons on the British during the Second, Third and Fourth Mysore Wars was sufficiently impressive to inspire William Congreve to develop his own rocket designs. Several Mysore rockets were sent to England, and after thoroughly examining the Indian specimens, from 1801, William Congreve, son of the Comptroller of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, London, set on a vigorous research and development programme at the Arsenal's laboratory. Congreve prepared a new propellant mixture, and developed a rocket motor with a strong iron tube with conical nose, weighing about 32 pounds (14.5 kilograms). The Royal Arsenal's first demonstration of solid fuel rockets was in 1805. The rockets were effectively used during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Congreve published three books on rocketry.

Congreve rockets from Congreve's original work

Early Indian rockets

A military tactic developed by Tippu Sultan and his father, Haidar Ali was the use of mass attacks with Rocket artillery brigades on infantry formations. Tippu Sultan wrote a military manual called Fathul Mujahidin in which 200 rocket men were prescribed to each Mysorean "cushoon" (brigade). Mysore had 16 to 24 cushoons of infantry. The areas of town where rockets and fireworks were manufactured were known as Taramandal Pet ("Galaxy Market").

The rocket men were trained to launch their rockets at an angle calculated from the diameter of the cylinder and the distance of the target. In addition, wheeled rocket launchers capable of launching five to ten rockets almost simultaneously were used in war, similar to the Korean hwacha. Rockets could be of various sizes, but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron about 8 inches long and 1.5 to 3 inches diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about 4 ft long. The iron tube acted as a combustion chamber and contained well packed black powder propellant. A rocket carrying about one pound of powder could travel almost 1,000 yards. In contrast, rockets in Europe not being iron cased, could not take large chamber pressures and as a consequence, were not capable of reaching distances anywhere near as great.^[1]

The Marathas' fired salvos of up to 2,000 rockets simultaneously at the Battle of Panipat (1761). Haidar Ali's father, the Naik or chief constable at Budikote, commanded 50 rocketmen for the Nawab of Arcot. There was a regular Rocket Corps in the Mysore Army, beginning with about 1200 men in Haidar Ali's time.

Second Anglo-Mysore War

At the Battle of Pollilur (1780), during the Second Anglo-Mysore War, Colonel William Braille's ammunition stores are thought to have been detonated by a hit from one of Tipu Sultan's Mysore rockets, which contributed to a British defeat.

Third Anglo-Mysore War

In the Third Anglo-Mysore War of 1792, there is mention of two rocket units fielded by Tipu Sultan, 120 men and 131 men respectively. Lt. Col. Knox was attacked by rockets near Srirangapatna on the night of 6 February 1792, while advancing towards the Kaveri river from the north. The Rocket Corps ultimately reached a strength of about 5000 in Tipu Sultan's army. Mysore rockets were also used for ceremonial purposes. When the Jacobin Club of Mysore sent a delegation to Tippu Sultan, 500 rockets were launched as part of the gun salute.

Fourth Anglo-Mysore War

During the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, rockets were again used on several occasions. One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later famous as the First Duke of Wellington and the hero of the Battle of Waterloo. Quoting Forrest,

"At this point (near the village of Sultanpet, Figure 5) there was a large tope, or grove, which gave shelter to Tipu's rocketmen and had obviously to be cleaned out before the siege could be pressed closer to Seringapatam island. The commander chosen for this operation was Col. Wellesley, but advancing towards the tope after dark on 5 April 1799, he was set upon with rockets and musket-fires, lost his way and, as Beatson politely puts it, had to "postpone the attack" until a more favourable opportunity should offer. Wellesley's failure was glossed over by Beatson and other chroniclers, but the next morning he failed to report when a force was being paraded to renew the attack.^[2]

"On 22 April [1799], twelve days before the main battle, rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment, then 'threw a great number of rockets at the same instant' to signal the beginning of an assault by 6,000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen, all directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Mirans. The rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards. Some burst in the air like shells. Others called ground rockets, on striking the ground, would rise again and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent.

According to one British observer, a young English officer named Bayly:

"So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles ...". He continued: "The rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant. No hail could be thicker. Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are invariably attached to them'."

During the conclusive British attack on Seringapatam on 2 May 1799, a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within the Tipu Sultan's fort causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke, with cascades of exploding white light, rising up from the battlements. On the afternoon of 4 May when the final attack on the fort was led by Baird, he was again met by "furious musket and rocket fire", but this did not help much; in about an hour's time the Fort was taken; perhaps in another hour Tipu had been shot (the precise time of his death is not known), and the war was effectively over.^[3]

After the fall of Seringapatam, 600 launchers, 700 serviceable rockets and 9,000 empty rockets were found. Some of the rockets had pierced cylinders, to allow them to act like incendiaries, while some had iron points or steel blades bound to the bamboo. By attaching these blades to rockets they became very unstable towards the end of their flight causing the blades to spin around like flying scythes, cutting down all in their path.

William Congreve

These Indian rocket experiences, including Munro's book of 1789 ^[4], eventually led to the Royal Arsenal beginning a military rocket R&D program in 1801. Several rocket cases were collected and returned to Britain for analysis. The development was chiefly the work of Col. (later Sir) William Congreve, who was told that "the British at Seringapatam had suffered more from the rockets than from the shells or any other weapon used by the enemy".^[5] "In at least one instance", an eye-witness told Congreve, "a single rocket had killed three men and badly wounded others".^[6]

Design

The rocket was made up of an iron case of black powder for propulsion and a "cylindro-conoidal" warhead. The warheads were attached to wooden guide poles and were launched in pairs from half troughs on simple metal A-frames. The original rocket design had the guide pole side-mounted on the warhead, this was improved in 1815 with a base plate with a threaded hole. They could be fired up to two miles, the range being set by the degree of elevation of the launching frame, although at any range they were fairly inaccurate and had a tendency for premature explosion. They were as much a psychological weapon as a physical one, and they were rarely or never used except alongside other types of artillery. Congreve designed several different warhead sizes from 3 to 24 pounds. The 24 pound type with a fifteen foot guide pole was the most widely used variant. Different warheads were used, including explosive, shrapnel and incendiary.

Use of Congreve rockets

The weapon remained in use until the 1850s, when it was superseded by the improved spinning design of William Hale. In the 1870s the rockets were adopted to carry rescue lines to vessels in distress superseding the mortar of Captain Manby and rockets that had been in use since the 1830s.

Napoleonic Wars

Congreve rockets were soon systematically used by the British during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1806 Boulogne, France was bombarded by British rockets and suffered a devastating fire. In 1807 Copenhagen, Denmark was burnt by a British attack with more than 14,000 various missiles in the form of grenades, bombs and rockets of which about 300 were Congreve rockets.^[7] In 1813 Danzig, Prussia, was similarly attacked, setting the city's food stores on fire and resulting in surrender.

War of 1812

During their confrontation with the US during the War of 1812 the British use of rockets in the Battle of Bladensburg, led to the burning and surrender of Washington, D.C..

It was the use of Congreve rockets by the British in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the U.S. in 1814 which inspired the fifth line of the first verse of the United States National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner: "And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air".

New Zealand Wars

During the period of the New Zealand Wars the British army used Congreve rockets to attack Māori fortifications—along with cannon-fire—and found that simple trench-warfare practices were sufficient to blunt their effectiveness so much that, like cannon, they were virtually useless^[8].

Surviving rockets

A wide variety of Congreve rockets, ranging in size from 3 pounds to 300 pounds, are displayed at Firepower - The Royal Artillery Museum in South-East London.^[9] The Science Museum has two 18th century Indian war rockets in its collection.

Congreve Rockets in popular culture

• The Congreve System was, fictionally, trialled by Richard Sharpe using a Rocket Troop under Lieutenant Gilliland in Sharpe's Enemy and also appearing briefly in Sharpe's Waterloo.
• Harry Flashman, with Tajik and Uzbek warriors led by Yaqub Beg, uses the rockets to destroy invading Russian warships at the climax of Flashman at the Charge.
• Congreve rockets have been popularised in various computer games such as Age of Empires III and Imperial Glory.

Publications

• In 1804, Congreve published: A concise account of the origin and progress of the rocket system.
• A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System, by William Congreve, son of the arsenal's commandant, was published in 1807.^[10]
• In 1814, Congreve published: The details of the rocket system.
• In 1827, The Congreve Rocket System was published in London.
• The First Golden Age of Rocketry: Congreve and Hale Rockets of the Nineteenth Century, Frank H. WInter, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

References