The First Golden Age of Rocketry: Congreve and Hale Rockets of the Nineteenth Century by Frank H. Winter, and: Rockets into Space by Frank H. Winter

Abstract

836 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE An even more serious weakness is the author’s determination to politicize history. He argues that previous interpretations have been wrong because war and defense questions have been the monopoly of the Right. This labeling of historians is invidious. Correlli Barnett, whose The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (1986) offers a very different interpretation from that of Edgerton, comes in for especially rough handling. At various times, Barnett is called a militaristic, right-wing, or declinist historian. David R. Woodward Dr. Woodward is professor of history at Marshall University. The First Golden Age of Rocketry: Congreve and Hale Rockets of the Nineteenth Century. By Frank H. Winter. Washington, D.C.: Smith­ sonian Institution Press, 1990. Pp. xviii + 321; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $29.95. Rockets into Space. By Frank H. Winter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. Pp. xii+165; illustrations, bibliography, index. $22.50. As a curator of the history of rockets and launch vehicles in the Space History Department of the National Air and Space Museum, Frank Winter is an authority on the developmental history of both solid and liquid-propelled rockets. This expertise is clearly demon­ strated in his latest two books on the history of the development and use of rockets in warfare and space exploration. Between them the volumes cover technological developments from the late 18th century to the present. The First Golden Age of Rocketry is specifically concerned with the development and use, primarily in warfare, of Congreve and Hale rockets. William Congreve, Jr., began experimenting with gunpowdered war rockets in 1804, based on examples of Indian war rockets held in the Royal Artillery’s Repository Museum at Woolwich. Con­ greve sought to increase both the power and range of the Indian instruments and experimented with the relationship of effective range to the angle of discharge. Within a year he had prepared three different calibers of rockets for use in combat. With the assistance of his father, General William Congreve, he interestedJohn and William Pitt in his inventions. John Pitt, as master general of ordnance, authorized large-scale production at the Woolwich Arsenal for use in the ongoing war against Napoleon. The success of Congreve’s rockets in several Continental campaigns led to wide adoption ofthe rocket by British military forces in the war. By the close of hostilities in 1815, two Royal Artillery Rocket Troops had been organized in the British Army, and ten basic calibers of war rockets were available for their use. Congreve developed an entire TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 837 rocket system for military use, including different calibers of rockets for varying types of missions, support equipment for carrying and firing the weapons, servicing tools, tactical instructions and range tables, the organization of rocket troops, and the standardization of rocket manufacture for mass production. Rockets were quickly adopted by the armed forces of other countries, and soon most of the major powers of Europe, along with some countries in the Western Hemisphere, had their own rocket forces and manufacturing facilities. Major innovations to the manufacture of Congreve rockets were introduced by William Hale starting in the 1840s. Hale invented a stickless, rotary rocket with much-improved accuracy through the introduction of canted exhaust holes. He also introduced machined, all-metal construction and hydraulic propellant loading. The in­ creased accuracy of Hale rockets extended their military use until the end of the century. However, by the early 1870s, improvements in cannon rifling and breech-loading had rendered rockets essentially superfluous within contemporary armies, and gunpowder rockets were assigned to use only in colonial campaigns where heavier ordnance was not practicable. Rockets into Space looks at the technological successors to Congreve and Hale rockets, concentrating on the use of rockets as vehicles for achieving space flight, with occasional digressions into their use as weapons, as in the early history of the V-2s. The theoretical writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth are reviewed, along with their impact on later rocket experimenters, such as Goddard himself, Eugen Sanger, and the members of the national rocket societies in the 1920s and 1930s. Winter pays close...