Mysorean rockets
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Mysorean rockets were an Indian military weapon, the iron-cased rockets were successfully deployed for military use. The Mysorean army, under Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan, used the rockets effectively against the British East India Company during the 1780s and 1790s. Their conflicts with the company exposed the British to this technology further, which was then used to advance European rocketry with the development of the Congreve rocket in 1805.[1][2]
Technology and deployment
There was a regular rocket corps in the Mysore Army, beginning with about 1,200 men in Hyder Ali's time. During the
By the order of Tipu Sultan, his general Mir Zain-ul-'Abidin Shushtari compiled a military manual called Fathul Mujahidin[6] in which 200 rocket men were assigned to each Mysorean cushoon (brigade). Mysore had 16 to 24 cushoons of infantry. The rocket men were trained to launch their rockets at an angle calculated from the diameter of the cylinder and the distance to the target. In addition, wheeled rocket launchers were used in war that were capable of launching five to ten rockets almost simultaneously.[citation needed]
Rockets could be of various sizes but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron about 8 inches (20 cm) long and 1.5 to 3 inches (3.8 to 7.6 centimetres) in diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about 4 ft (1 m) long. The iron tube acted as a combustion chamber and contained well-packed black powder propellant. A rocket carrying about one pound (450 g) of powder could travel almost 1,000 yards (910 m). In contrast, rockets in Europe could not take large chamber pressures, not being iron cased, and were consequently not capable of reaching such distances.[7]
The entire road alongside Jumma Masjid near City Market and Taramandalpet, Bangalore was the hub of Tipu's rocket project where he had set up a laboratory.[8]
Use in Mysorean conflicts
Two rocket units were fielded by
Rockets were again used on several occasions during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War. One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later famous as the First Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was almost defeated by Tipu's Diwan Purnaiah at the Battle of Sultanpet Tope.[11]
Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force the following day, and took the whole position without losing a single man.[12] Rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment on 22 April 1799, 12 days before the main battle, and fired a large number of rockets at the same moment 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 yd (910 m). Some burst in the air like shells, while others (called ground rockets) would rise again on striking the ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent. A young English officer named Bayly observed: "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.
A British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan's fort during the decisive British
British adoption of the technology
After the fall of Srirangapattana, 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.
These experiences eventually led the
Discovery
In 2002, a cache of metallic shells was unearthed during restoration of an old well in
In April 2017, 102 unused rockets of varying sizes were found in Shimoga district.[16]
In July 2018, another 500 rockets (or 1,000, according to one source) were found in an abandoned well in the same area, confirming it as a major repository and fort under the Tipu Sultan.[17][18]
As of November 2019[update], more than 3,000 such rockets have been recovered during debris clearances undertaken in Nagara.[15][19][20]
References
- ISBN 978-0-8018-8792-5.
- ^ a b c d Narasimha, Roddam (27 July 2011). "Rockets in Mysore and Britain, 1750–1850 A.D." (PDF). National Aeronautical Laboratory and Indian Institute of Science. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011.
- ^ "The Battle of Pollilur: Revisiting the Footnotes of History". The Wire. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
- ^ Biography, Mysore History Tipu
- ^ Frederick C. Durant III; Stephen Oliver Fought; John F. Guilmartin, Jr. "Rocket and missile system". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ Husain, Mahmud (1 January 1953). "Fath-Ul-Mujahidin: A treatise on Sultan Tipu's Army Regulations". Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society. 1 (1). Karachi. Archived from the original on 5 October 2021. Retrieved 5 October 2021 – via ProQuest.
- ^ Tipu, Biography, Mysore History
- ^ "Tiger of Mysore's strong ties with city". The Hindu. Bangalore, India. 3 May 2011. Archived from the original on 9 May 2011. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
- ^ "Missiles mainstay of Pak's N-arsenal". The Times of India. 21 April 2008. Archived from the original on 24 September 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
- ^ Mulki, Muhammad Adil (4 May 2014). "Personality: The fire-breathing tiger of Mysore". DAWN.COM. Retrieved 14 December 2020.
- ^ Forrest D (1970) Tiger of Mysore, Chatto & Windus, London
- ISBN 0-00-713750-8.
- ^ Stephens, Henry Morse (1887). Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 9. . In
- ^ Eugene Van Sickle. "The Congreve Rockets in the War of 1812" (PDF). Dalton State College. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
- ^ ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- ^ "Rockets recovered from open well are from Tipu era: Experts". The Hindu. 19 January 2018. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
- ^ "Blast from the past: Another haul of 500 Tipu-era rockets has been found on a farm in Hosanagara, the same place as the last find a few years ago". Bangalore Mirror. 25 July 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
- ^ "Indian warrior king's rocket cache found in abandoned well". The Guardian [UK]. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
- ^ Mysore Rockets: Recent progress on study of rockets of the Tipu era recovered from Nagara, Karnataka (Video). 6 November 2019.
- ^ "'The first time, the British saw a rocket was in Mysore'". Deccan Chronicle. 8 November 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2019.