ROCKETS IN WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 22, 27 January 1944, Page 6

ROCKETS IN WAR

LONG HISTORY OF USE

Rockets have been mucn in the war news in recent months. They appeared first in wordy warnings, heralded as the latest "secret weapon and, therefore, greatly to be feared. But. so far the evidence of their performance leaves much to be told about how terrible they are. But they are not n The Chinese had them long before the first selected boulders were thrown a few yards from the first cannon, but* many centuries can be jumped in this short summary, to the early 1800 s, when Sir William Congreve worked on plans for an engineered rocket, in contrast with a haphazard affair, and made such headway with iron-cased explosive rockets, up to 24-pounders, that in 1805 Sir Sydney Smiths expedition against Boulogne included a number of boats specially fitted to fire salvos of rockets to blast fortifications to smithereens. Well, the, weather was bad, but next year they tried again. They missed the fortifications, but did a lot of damage in the town. In 1812' rockets, fired by the Field Rocket Brigade of the Royal Horse Artillery, made a considerable stir at Leipzig, for that was their first use in land1 warfare,, and, though the. school histories are silent on the point, the same rocket brigade distinguished itself at Waterloo. ' Then all the European arms kings took them up, in various weights, 3-, .6-, 12-, and, 24-gounders. Hale worked out a -big improvement on the Congreve rocket, dropping, the stick and using triple vanes for direction. He fired his rocket from a trough and got up to 1200 yards with a 9-pounder and 4000 yards with the 24-p£»under, put not Congreve, Hale, nor the German, French, Austrian, nor Russian rocketeers could match the prospectus declarations with performance. Europe gave them up after the first few years, but England persevered until 1885, when, rocket brigades officially disappeared from the British Service, to be revived here and there against less informed enemies in colonial wars,;almost to the turn of the-century. -•• ■ - • When the rocket ?was at its best horror height in those -years, England and America fell out in the "silly war of 1812-15, the war that neither side needed, nor wanted, nor won. In August, 1814, British ships sailed into Chesapeake Bay and landed 4500 men. They were a long way from bases and were down on ammunition, but they did have rockets, ship signal .rockets. They took them ashore in sheaves, pointed them in the general direction of the American militia, and let go. They' worked. The militia went away from there. A complete rout was averted only by the firm stand of a band of. Marines which had landed from American ships in the bay. MODERN ROCKETS. ■ That is not to say that modern war rockets are not far more deadly than any that Congreve and Hale worked on, but claims still far outrun results. The best known of the new rockets is the tank-busting bazooka, which the Americans first used in North Africa and now have, in all probability, wherever they have fighting in hand. The classic story of the bazooka in Africa is dated March, 1943. It is that aii American soldier had fired ; the new weapon at a column of six 'enemy tanks. He, had missed the tanks but hit a tree. To the surprise of the Americans the tanks stopped and the tank commander surrendered, explaining:, "When you start firing 155-mm guns at tanks, it's time to surrender." It was then disclosed too that the new weapon which so impressed, the enemy tank commander was a rocket gunlight and small enough to be handled by one man although usually served by two. ■The launching tube ■ itself 'is a metal tube more than 50 inches in length and less than three inches in diameter. It is. open at both ends. Attached to the tube are a shoulder stock and front and rear grips for the firer, together with sights and an electric battery which fires the propelling charge of the rocket. Somewhere about the same. time came stories and also photographs of a most extraordinary six-barrelled mortar or howitzer,; or whatever it was, captured from the Germans in North Africa. The six stumpy, lightweight barrels are mounted.to form a ring, and the whole is carried on a two-wheeled carriage. It was described as another sort of new secret weapon, but it looked all wrong for a shell-firing weapon.... Now it is established that this is the "nebelwerfer," Germany's six-barrelled bazooka. It has been used against the Russians on the eastern front and was first reported in use in the west during the recent Allied attack on the ball and rol-ler-bearing factories at Schweinfurt, in which 60 Flying Fortresses 'were lost. The German* Press claims that the ' multi-barrelled batteries of fogthrowers can project smoke, fire, and explosive shells in one action, and that the method of projection does away with heavy gun barrelling, allowing fast manipulation and easy production in the factories.