The rise and fall of early war rockets

Abstract

Summary Some early historical references to the military use of sky rockets by the Chinese are taken from Joseph Needham's work, but mainly from Scoffern's book (1858) . Extracts from Simienowicz's The Great Art of Artillery of 1650 are also given. Rocket tests by Benjamin Robins and colleagues in the U.K., perhaps for signalling in war, are described in some detail, as recorded in his two papers published in the Phil. Trans. of 1749 and 1750 and in his Commonplace Book. Apart from a small mention of these by Charles Hutton in 1815 , this is the first exposure of Robins' work in this field. An endeavour to exploit significantly, rockets for military employment was made by William Congreve for the British army in the early 19th century; some aspects of his work are detailed. An account is also given of the efforts of William Hale to improve rocket accuracy and reliability by substituting gas jets exhausting oblique to the rocket axis or on to appropriately inclined vanes, to create axial rotation of the rocket. Finally, we refer to the original theoretical work of the forgotten William Moore of the R.M.A., Woolwich, England (published in book form in 1813 ) and described by G.K. Mikhailov as providing the first mathematical theory of rocket motion. In essence, amongst Western nations in the 19th century, the rocket was deemed to be an almost total failure and it was abandoned. In fact what had been achieved was but a first step towards the attainments of the massive rockets of the mid-20th century.