History of Solid Propellant Rockets
    The solid-propellant rocket was invented by the Chinese in the early 13th century. The earliest recorded use of rockets took place in 1232 at the military siege of Kaifeng, former capital of Henan (Honan) Province, in which rockets were employed to set fire to tents and wickerwork fortifications impervious to arrows. A few years later, rockets were being used in military operations in Europe and in North Africa, but after the early 15th century they were used mainly as a device for setting fire to the rigging of enemy ships in naval battles. In 16th-century Europe, rockets were a major component of fireworks.

    In the Far East, however, rockets were still used as weapons, for in the late 18th century, the army of the Muslim Indian prince Haidar Ali, the ruler of Mysore, had a standing corps of rocket throwers. These rockets, made of bamboo, were usually large and had a range of hundreds of meters. The rocket throwers won the first two battles at Seringapatam against the British forces in India.


First fired in 1942, the V-2 rocket was the first successful large liquid-propellant rocket. Developed by German engineer Wernher von Braun, the V-2 was used by the Germans to bombard England during World War II.

      When news of the unsuccessful campaigns reached Britain, a British ordnance officer, William Congreve, decided to investigate the suitability of the rocket as a weapon of war. Within a few years he had improved the fireworks rocket to such an extent that it had a range of about 3,279 m (3,000 yd). His rockets had a sheet-iron case carrying a 3-kg (7-lb) charge of incendiary material; the tail stick, used to stabilize its flight, was 4 m (15 ft) long, and the overall weight of the rocket was 14 kg (32 lb).

      Congreve's rocket was first used in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain attacked the port of Boulogne, France, in an attempt to destroy or scatter the fleet of barges mustered by Napoleon for his contemplated invasion of Great Britain. The rocket and the attack failed, primarily because of stormy weather, and in the following year, Congreve's rockets were used with great success in the second attack on Boulogne. In 1807 Copenhagen and a large French fleet in its harbour were almost totally destroyed by a naval attack in which many thousands of rockets were expended. In 1813 the free city of Danzig  was compelled to surrender when British rockets set fire to and destroyed the food supplies of the city. Rocket brigades were also formed in the land forces, and many of these brigades saw successful action against the United States in the War of 1812. Congreve rockets were used in the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland, by the British ship Erebus. The same rockets were used in the Battle of Waterloo when Napoleon was defeated.

     By 1825 nearly every country in Europe had copied Congreve's rockets and formed rocket brigades. In 1847 the British inventor William Hale developed a rocket that was spin-stabilized, eliminating the deadweight of the aerodynamic guidestick. The Hale rocket had a series of spin-jet holes, the later models had spin-jet vanes in the rear. Patent rights for these rockets were purchased by the United States, and rockets were made and used in the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War.

      The use of rockets in warfare began to decline after 1850, however, as lighter-weight cannons were developed, and more accurate spin-stabilized explosive shells were produced. A peaceful application of rockets in the 19th century was the development of life-saving rockets. Before the age of steam power, sailing vessels often foundered during storms on the coasts of Britain and northern Europe. By using a modified Congreve rocket, a light line could be lofted from the shore over the ship in distress. By pulling out a heavier line, lifeboats could be pulled ashore or a breeches-buoy reserve system established, by which sailors could be moved from ship to shore on a hawser.

      By 1880 whaling rockets were developed, using a rocket-propelled lance that was discharged from a small boat. An explosive charge in the nose of the rocket killed the whale and fixed a toggle attached to the trailing rope leading back to the small boat. Rockets were widely used in signaling at sea. By the end of the 19th century, rockets were little used by the military. A few scientists, however, such as the Russian physicist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, were suggesting the use of rockets to power space vehicles for interplanetary flight.

      Rockets were used in World War I primarily for signaling and were also fired from French aircraft against hydrogen-filled observation balloons. The American physicist Robert Goddard was at this time experimenting with solid-propellant rockets and developed a sounding rocket to make scientific measurements in the upper atmosphere at altitudes higher than a balloon could reach. At the time the United States entered World War I in 1917, Goddard offered his services to the US Army. Preliminary trials of high-velocity rockets took place a few days before the end of the war in November 1918. Goddard had improved rocket design by use of smokeless powder instead of black powder. Also, he had added a properly designed convergent-divergent nozzle that greatly improved efficiency of the rocket motor.

      Some 20 years later, further developments were made on this small rocket concept by one of Goddard's assistants, Clarence N. Hickman. The result was the anti-tank rocket, the bazooka. The feature of the bazooka rocket that made it very powerful was the addition of a shaped-charge warhead. Fired, without recoil, by an infantry soldier from a shoulder-held tube launcher, the bazooka had an effective range of 182 m (200 yd). A 0.22-kg (0.50-lb) explosive charge was capable of penetrating tank armor of up to 17 cm (7 in) in thickness. Later modifications and improvement of this 5.99-cm (2.36-in) diameter weapon increased the range to 640 m (700 yd). Post-War development of the so-called super bazooka yielded a weapon with double the penetration and a range of 731 m (800 yd).

      Rockets of 11.3-mm (4.5-in) caliber were developed by the United States for artillery rockets, fired from multiple launchers; for individual armament, carried by individual soldiers, and fired from the shipping tube or crate; and for aircraft rockets, fired from single or multiple launchers mounted on the wings of aircraft. They varied in length from 76 cm (30 in) for the spin-stabilized artillery rocket, with a range of 4,752 m (5,200 yd), to 1.90 m (6.25 ft) for a fin-stabilized aircraft rocket that was capable of high accuracy. The model most used in aircraft-rocket firing was the 12-cm (5-in) High Velocity Aircraft Rocket (HVAR), which carried a 21-kg (46-lb) high-explosive warhead at a velocity of 410 m (1,350 ft) per second to ranges in excess of 4,570 m (5,000 yd).

      German scientists originated two types of bombardment rockets, the 15-cm (6-in) Nebelwerfer and the 20.9-cm (8.25-in) Wurfger. In spite of its name, which means "smoke thrower", the Nebelwerfer carried a high-explosive warhead, whereas the Wurfger had incendiary warheads. The Nebelwerfer rocket was adapted subsequently as a powerful air-to-air weapon.