How accurate was rocket artillery in the 18th and 19th centuries?
score:6
This does depend a lot on what you consider to be accurate given the times and the circumstances. For example, the smoothbore artillery of the period were not particularly accurate themselves when compared to the modern rifled artillery we now have.
In European service (and that means, essentially, British service) rockets were intended for area saturation. That is, no single rocket was aimed to hit a specified target but a volley was intended to hit a given area. Their advantages over field and siege guns of the time, were range, weight of shell and rate of fire.
All that is required to discharge the rocket is a bank to lay it against, sloped to the proper elevation, and scored down to receive and direct it - from such a trench, 30 yards long, 100 rockets may be fired in a volley.
A Treatise on the General Principles, Powers and facility of Application of the Congreve Rocket System
(W. Congreve, 1827) pg 24.
Whereas, for comparison, the same 30 yards might only accomodate a 6 gun battery (and, on the battlefield, probably fewer than that). Congreve goes on to explain how the rockets can be used in the field.
I now propose to devote a few lines to the use and advantages which I conceive may be made of rockets in the field. In the first place, therefore, field carriages may be constructed of the lightest kind, (for they have only the weight of the ammunition to carry, no ordnance, no any re-action to support,) to be attached to every park of artillery, for the purpose either of using the rocket carcass in such regular sieges as may occur during a campaign, or for the occasional business of destroying magazines, of disposting an enemy by the burning of villages, or for the annoyance of camps, all of which might thus be accomplished with the lightest description of artillery, yet at such ranges as at present unknown in the field, even by the heaviest field ordnance.
A Treatise on the General Principles, Powers and facility of Application of the Congreve Rocket System
(W. Congreve, 1827) pg 25.
Upvote:5
Rockets were developed not long after the invention of gunpowder. The Mysore Kingdom in Tamil Nadu (India) was the first to invent a formidable rocket, around the 1760's. Their use of iron tubes allowed for a substantial increase in velocity. Previously, rockets had been made of an organic material. Rockets tend to "squirrel" around when they are shot. To counter this, they added a stick to the rear of it. Most of us used bottle rockets when we were kids. Some veer of in one direction or another. Others go pretty straight. Mysore rockets were the same way. They were fired in quantities to target a specific area, or to increase the chance of hitting something. They weren't accurate, but neither was European artillery.
The Mysore were the first to adopt rockets as a major part of their strategy. They used them with effect against the British East India Company in the 1780's and 90's. A sword was fitted to the end of them, and they were volleyed into the opposing infantry. This was similar to the way that the Europeans would use muskets. The main benefit, though, was that they would continue to throw flames after they had landed. They had no detonation. The Mysore were able to blow up the Brits' munitions stockpile, swiftly ending the Second Mysore War. Targeting munitions would be one of their main uses when they were introduced in the West.
When the British defeated Mysore, they captured these strange weapons and reverse engineered them. They were introduced by the British in the Napoleonic Wars. The advantage that they gained was critical. Their main effect was psychological, so they eventually came to be used sporadically. They were, however, pretty good at starting fires. They were used by navies at short and medium ranges. Both the English and the Americans used them in the war of 1812: "... and the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there".
Eventually, the stick on the end was centered instead of attached to the side. This gave a nominal increase in accuracy when the rocket lifted off. The advantages of using rockets in addition artillery were probably negated by the introduction of steel cannon in the later half of the century. William Hale invented a spinning rocket in 1844 that was much more accurate, eliminated the stick, and increased the range. Still you don't hear much about them in the later part of the 19th century.
The next major step wasn't made until 1914, when Robert Goddard proposed the use of a De Laval Nozzle for supersonic propulsion. The De Laval Nozzle was invented for the steam engine in 1888. "Modern" rockets are still are not very accurate. They are fired in volleys, not unlike Mysore's rocket swords. The effectiveness of handheld devices, like the RPG 7, greatly decreases with distance. For this reason, rockets have become largely obsolete in modern arsenals.
Fore more information, see: Mysorean Rockets, Congreve Rocket
More post
- 📝 During World War II, were there any parts of the Japanese overseas empire that was capable of local re-supply?
- 📝 Did President Kennedy really cut 100,000 government jobs during his presidency?
- 📝 Were the Huns and Mongols at one point rivals?
- 📝 Probation time in marriage?
- 📝 Is there any truth to my family's story about "Cooper's Pie Wagon"?
- 📝 Were the commentaries and subcommentaries part of the Tang Code?
- 📝 Did Noah Webster ever state why he Americanized spelling?
- 📝 Are there cultures without knowledge of how babies are made?
- 📝 Did Hirohito offer to stand trial for war crimes, but was turned down by the US?
- 📝 Which sources should I believe regarding CV-8 Hornet?
- 📝 What did the smaller values from the "Percentages Agreement" actually mean?
- 📝 Why didn't pre-Gutenberg movable type systems cause a printing revolution?
- 📝 Was public transportation free in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 History of "False Flag" Coups
- 📝 What was the name of the region, Somalia, British Somalia or British Somaliland?
- 📝 Based on his service record, where was this soldier deployed in WW2?
- 📝 How did old international loans work?
- 📝 Who was the Gold Rush memoirist James G. Ward?
- 📝 How did religions interpret rainbows before science explained it?
- 📝 What is meant by "state people" in this context? (Governments of new Balkan states post-WWI)
- 📝 In the 19th century were paintings and collectibles worth, inflation adjusted, anything like today's prices?
- 📝 How effective were German SS units compared to non-SS Heer units?
- 📝 Books on development of collective identities (tribal, ethnic, national etc) and people's identification as part of the collective through time?
- 📝 Was the attack on Pearl Harbor totally unexpected?
- 📝 How did the Chinese Civil War avoid becoming another Korean War?
- 📝 How the average female body used to be before the industrial revolution?
- 📝 What are the factors that caused the new world civilizations to be less technologically advanced than the old world?
- 📝 Was there ever a single collection of the Corpus Juris Civilis and has it survived?
- 📝 Why did the north and south struggle to control the territories before the American Civil War?
- 📝 German submarine force ceasefire on May 4 1945
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How accurate was rocket artillery in the 18th and 19th centuries?
- 📝 Where and how did scientists of the 18th and 19th century learn foreign languages?
- 📝 Was the enclosure responsible for the supply of factory workers in 18th and 19th Century England?
- 📝 Was there a military practice of reloading while marching/running, in Europe or America during the 18th and 19th centuries?
- 📝 How effective were siege guns and gun boats compared to field artillery in the 19th century?
- 📝 Beliefs on the Fragility of Ruling Class Women in and Around the 18th and 19th Centuries
- 📝 How and when was the modern company ownership structure invented?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 How was the modern geographic boundary between Europe and Asia decided?
- 📝 Were bookshops 'common' in the late 19th century, and how did they differ from modern ones?
- 📝 How common was marriage between nobles and peasants in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How accurate and detailed were geographical maps created and updated by the Romans?
- 📝 How was security on the Silk Road between China and the West maintained?
- 📝 If salt was scarce and expensive, how did people "salt the earth" to ensure their enemies would stay defeated?
- 📝 How was the linen weaving trade learnt in 18th century Scotland?
- 📝 How was the current month and day disseminated to the townspeople of Medieval Europe?
- 📝 How extensive and developed was the ancient Kushite (Nubian) horse trade?
- 📝 How effective was Civil War-era artillery in the rain?
- 📝 How widespread was the consumption of rabbit meat by the poor in Medieval and Early-Modern Britain?
- 📝 How was the relation between the Ottoman Empire and Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro during the Second Balkan War?
- 📝 How common was it for Americans to visit Europe in the late 19th century?
- 📝 How common was drug abuse and related deaths in the USA during the conservative 1950s?
- 📝 How was library classification done in English-speaking libraries prior to the 19th century?
- 📝 How accurate and balanced is Paul Johnson's 'A History of the Jews'?
- 📝 How and when was the Temple of Trajan destroyed?
- 📝 How was the border between Vichy and German Occupied France decided?
- 📝 How high was the morale of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact states' armies and governments in the '80s?
- 📝 What was the typical range of travel of a Pennsylvanian resident for everyday life in the late 18th early 19th Century Pennsylvania?
- 📝 How was the administration of the liberated part of The Netherlands organised between 12 September 1944 and 5 May 1945?
- 📝 How historically accurate was the Queen's trip to Ghana portrayed in Episode 8 of The Crown?