The turn of the nineteenth century marked a profound shift in global military technology, driven primarily by the clash between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore. During the Anglo-Mysore Wars, British troops encountered a terrifyingly effective weapon: the Mysorean rocket, masterfully deployed by Hyder Ali and his son, Tipu Sultan. The strategic devastation caused by these weapons forced the British army into a struggle for survival, ultimately inspiring the creation of the British Congreve rocket. The intense heat of the rockets, speed and direction made the British troops run for their lives and finally contributed to a British defeat. On the walls of Dariya Daulat, Srirangapatna one could see a scene depicting the Mysore army's victory over the British.
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| Tipu Sultan of Mysore indianpanorama.in |
Above image: Tipu’s rocket Division had more than 5,000 men who were technically well-trained to handle the weapon in the battlefield. They had mastered the skill of adjusting the elevation of rockets based on their size and distance of the targets and launched them accurately.
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| Tipu Sultan;s Mysorean iron cased heat- resistant rockets indiatoday.in |
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| Tipu Rocket gallery Shivamogga,KA newindianexpress.com |
Above image: A gallery housing metal cased rockets used during the Anglo-Mysore wars by Tipu Sultan (18th century)was opened in Shivamogga city on November 21,2019. While the Royal Artillery Museum, Woolwich Arsenal in London, is home to a collection of two such rockets, three pieces are at the government museum in Bengaluru.The museum boasts a large cache of 1,700 such rockets that were recovered from an old well at Nagara village in Hosanagara taluk in 2018. Because of paucity of space only 15 rockets are on display. The length of the rockets now housed at Shivappa Nayaka Museum ranges from 190 mm to 260 mm and the diameter ranges from 33 mm to 65 mm. While the lightest specimen weighs 372 g, the highest one weighs 1.75 kg."Mysore was the first state in the world to have moved to the next stage of rocket development from wooden firework rockets to metal cased war rockets successfully. (newindianexpress.com)...........
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| Location Srirangapatna, KA google.com |
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| Unexploded Mysorean rockets allthatsinteresting.com |
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| youtube.com |
Above images: More than 1,000 unexploded 18th-century rockets were recovered from an abandoned well located at Nagara Fort in the Karnataka state. The corroded rockets measuring between 12 and 14 inches long were also found filled with potassium nitrate, charcoal, and magnesium powder, which allowed them to be fired.The rockets had metallic cylinders filled with some powder, "possibly saltpeter or some form of explosive propellant,” (allthatsinteresting.com).................
Surviving the Mysorean Rockets
Surviving the rocket barrages fired by Tipu Sultan’s army was a brutal, chaotic ordeal for British soldiers. Prior to these encounters, European rockets relied on flimsy paper or cardboard casings, which limited internal pressure and offered poor range. Mysore, however, revolutionized warfare by utilizing high-quality iron tubes to encase the gunpowder propellant. This advanced, heat-resistant combustion chamber allowed for significantly higher internal pressure, translating to vastly increased speed, power, and a striking distance of up to two kilometers.
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| Mysorean rockets. bangalore.citizenmatters.in |
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| The British British retreat..jimokane.blogspot.com |
To endure these attacks, British troops had to navigate a psychological and physical gauntlet. The weapons were not merely explosive; they were attached to long bamboo poles, or sometimes sharp swords, which caused erratic, destabilizing flight paths. As the missiles rushed toward enemy lines, they flew over columns, causing dreadful lacerations and striking with immense heat.
At the Battle of Pollilur in 1780, the British army suffered a catastrophic defeat when a Mysorean rocket directly struck and detonated Colonel William Baillie’s exposed ammunition stores. British survival relied heavily on desperate retreats, maintaining disciplined formations under fire, and seeking whatever natural cover was available against the relentless, thick hail of missiles.
The Decision to Model the Congreve Rocket
The sheer physical and psychological toll inflicted by these weapons convinced the British military that they could no longer ignore Indian rocketry. Eye-witness accounts gathered after the fall of Srirangapatna in 1799 confirmed that the British forces had suffered more from these menacing rockets than from conventional artillery shells. Recognizing this tactical supremacy, the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, London, decided to reverse-engineer the captured technology.
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| Congreve rocket launching wgs.org.ok |
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| Sir William Congreve en.wikipedia.org |
Above images: Their first demonstration of solid-fuel rockets came in 1805 and was followed by publication of 'A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System in 1807' by William Congreve, son of the arsenal's commandant. Congreve rockets were soon systematically used by the British during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. These descendants were used in the 1814 Battle of Baltimore,............
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| Congreve rocket royalartillerymuseum.com |
Above image: A soft hammered iron cylinder around 200 mm (8 inches) long and 38 mm to 76 mm (1.5 to 3 inches) in diameter, usually strapped to a bamboo shaft roughly 1,219 mm (4 feet) in length. The cylinder served as a combustion chamber, packed with compressed gunpowder as propellant and containing about half a kilogram (1 lb) of gunpowder as the explosive charge.By 1813, the British military had adopted a full range of Congreve rockets, from light 2.7 kg to 8.2 kg (6-pounder to 18-pounder) versions, to medium 11 kg and 19.5 kg (24- and 42-pounder), and heavy 45 kg and 136 kg (100- and 300-pounder) models, capable of reaching up to 2,286 m (2,500 yards). (royalartillerymuseum.com).............
In 1801, Sir William Congreve established a dedicated research and development program. The British selected the Mysorean rockets as their structural and functional blueprint for several distinct reasons:"In at least one instance", an eye-witness told Congreve, "a single rocket had killed three men and badly wounded others".
The Iron Combustion Chamber: The use of iron tubes was the single most important breakthrough. It allowed the rocket to withstand intense heat and internal pressures that would rupture European models.
Psychological Warfare Value: The British realized the immense demoralizing effect of rapid-fire, illuminating artillery and sought to replicate it against their European rivals.
Scalability: The solid-fuel design of the Mysorean models provided a clear blueprint that could be standardized and mass-produced using British industrial manufacturing techniques.
By upgrading the propellant mixtures and reinforcing the conical iron nose cones, Congreve developed his own 32-pound version. These new Congreve rockets became an essential trump card for British imperialism.
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| British army raid on Baltimore, warfarehistorynetwork.com |
Above image: In the assault on Fort McHenry (defending Baltimore 's seaside) hard on the attack at North Point, the British used the HMS Erebus as a rocket-launching warship. Stocked with Congreve rockets and their launching tubes, it provided many of the “rockets’ red glare” noted by Francis Scott Key, who witnessed the bombardment and was moved by the American resistance in the face of the new weapon.(warfarehistorynetwork.com)..............
They were deployed effectively to counter the French army during the Napoleonic Wars and were famously used in the War of 1812 during the Battle of Baltimore—immortalized as the "rockets' red glare" in the American national anthem. Ultimately, the humble but innovative Mysorean design served as the foundational spark for modern military missile technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG55eCE1uV4
https://navrangindia.blogspot.com/2014/11/congreve-rockets-modeled-aftertipu.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congreve_rocket
Roddam Narasimha (1985). "Rockets in Mysore and Britain, 1750-1850 A.D". National Aerospace Laboratories, India. Retrieved 30
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-congreve-rocket-britannias-red-glare
https://allthatsinteresting.com/nagara-india-rockets
K. N. Jayaraman (Author: navrangindia.blogspot.com)
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