Was India’s Tipu Sultan The Real Pioneer Of Rockets?

It is no secret that the Tipu Sultan was a royal pain in the rear end of the East India Company. Yet in spite of being ubiquitously villainized through British art and literature, Tipu Sultan is still hailed by many as India’s first freedom fighter, the Indian tiger unafraid to stand up to the British lion.

In truth, both the British and Tipu Sultan had their own power hungry agendas. Cruelty and loss of life were the prototypical products of four Anglo-Mysorean wars, however, that was not all the power struggle availed. The words of William Jennings Bryan, “in war, science has proven itself an evil genius,” are a sentiment the Tipu Sultan eagerly proved over the many years he battled The EIC.

Even though the Siege of Srirangapatna ultimately ended his reign in 1799, the Company’s decisive victory could not blanket the advanced scientific discovery that occurred under the Southern sultanate. During the Anglo-Mysorean wars, Tipu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali leveraged a crucial technology breakthrough - Mysorean rockets.

No matter how ‘uncivilised’ and ‘barbaric’ the British tried to paint their archrival, it soon became apparent to the victors of the Carnatic South that even their own history books could not erase the sophisticated strategy and engineering with which Tipu Sultan used rockets to break their ranks and defeat them on several occasions.

These rockets would not only go on to bring Tipu Sultan success in numerous battles but would live on to shape the future of modern warfare and rocket-based discovery

The deadly 17th century rockets, which earned the name ‘flying plagues’ from their EIC targets, would even go on to find themselves depicted in a painting hung in NASA’s Wallops Flights Facility at Wallops Island, just off the coast of Virginia, USA. This is because, without Mysorean rockets, it is doubtful space exploration would be where it is today. Rockets power spacecraft, and as aerospace scientist Professor Roddam Narasimha, pointed out to The Better India, “all the rockets in the world today can be traced to those used during the wars in Mysore.”

Although the loss of Indian artefacts to the British, like the Kohinoor or Tipu Sultan’s sword, remains a sore topic, what is perhaps worse is the loss of then-advanced technology such as the Mysorean rockets. The invention of these well-engineered missiles went on to benefit many nations, just not any of the territories that eventually made up India. Even though there is no way to satiate the erasure of this progressive engineering, the amount of havoc the rockets created for the British offers some odd form of solace.

From Firecrackers To ‘Flying Plagues’

The Chinese are often credited with the creation of the rocket, which technically is true. However, the rockets they began to make in the 13th century, and the subsequent European adaptations, were essentially Deepavali fireworks. These frail creations made out of insubstantial material, like cardboard, made loud noises and functioned at best as a disorienting technique against rival armies. The only real danger they could produce was perhaps a singed beard or two.

What was made in Tipu’s rocket laboratories, or taramandalpets (which innocuously translates to ‘star-cluster bazaars’ in English), during the 17th century was much more sinister and complex. The Sultan’s army of craftsmen made the world’s first successfully deployed iron-cased rockets, taking advantage of the high quality of iron and blacksmiths present under the Sultan’s territories.

Rockets transformed from relatively harmless ‘flash-bangs’, to lethal, long-range weapons, capable of killing a soldier, as well as making him sully his pants, from as far away as two kilometres. This effect is owed to the well-crafted cylindrical tubes made out of high-grade iron ore, which provided greater compression for the gun power, thus offering greater a range and combustion.

Moreover, the rockets were attached to long bamboo shafts, which allowed for a relatively stable launch, making the Mysorean rockets surprisingly accurate. The Sultan would later discover that although the typical explosion of one of his rockets would take out three soldiers on average, the flailing bamboo shaft, still propelled by the fizzling rocket, would go on to seriously injure many more of the enemy’s troops.

According to The Navhind Times, a young English officer named Bayly wrote – “So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles…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.”

Once the Sultan realised his artillery had this ability, he had his rocket brigades release some of them almost parallel to the ground to take full advantage of this effect. This strategy was coupled with the gruesome, albeit tactically intelligent, decision to use swords as the support for the launching device. This way steel sabres, instead of bamboo, would swing about wildly amongst enemy ranks, erratically thrashing through their lines, spilling blood and fueling fear.

Major Dirom, who in 1793 was the deputy adjutant general of British forces in India, described the rockets as so: “Some of the rockets had a chamber, and burst like shells; others, called ground rockets, had a serpentine motion, and on striking the ground, rose again, and bounded along till their force be spent,” according to The Better India.

Nevertheless, the full capacity of the Sultan’s ‘flying plagues’ came about in the form of cushoons. These large artillery devices were built upon the foundation of wheeled carts and displayed a level of seriously adept craftsmanship and engineering. The archaic rocket systems could fire at varying ranges, shoot multiple payloads, and simultaneously deploy multiple rockets, sometimes even a dozen at a time.

These creations were so sophisticated they fundamentally can do everything contemporary MLR rocket launchers can.

Crushing ‘The Square’

The Square is probably one of the most famous British military manoeuvres, a technique adopted from ancient Roman military strategy, and often represented in paintings of the Napoleonic wars.

In 1780 a group of almost 4,000 British reinforcements, under the command of Colonel William Baille, were sent to support General Hector Munro at Canjeevaram, close to Fort Arcot, where Hyder Ali was laying siege. The Tipu Sultan decided to defend his father’s attack by spearheading British reinforcements with an explosive offence.

The Sultan first struck the British troops by hitting them from their right at 300 yards with his rockets, while his cavalry struck the left side, sandwiching the troops in between. British officers immediately instructed their soldiers to assume ‘the square’, a wartime technique for tight situations that had proved itself a worthy adversary to cavalry attacks - and would later be one of England’s many saving graces at the battle of Waterloo where the Duke of Wellington’s infantry squares withstood 11 cavalry charges by Napoleon’s forces, as asserted by Stuart Briggs.

This time, however, the British army stood no chance. The barrage of rockets easily broke through their lines, allowing allies of the Sultan, such as the French and the Nizam of Hyderabad to move in as well. It is also suspected that a rocket hit one of the nine camels carrying munitions, prompting a large explosion which further added to the toll of British loses.

Of the 3853 soldiers said to be under Baillie’s command, only around 50 officers and 200 soldiers survived, according to Revolvy, and were captured to be taken to Srirangapatna.

This fierce defeat doomed Tipu Sultan in a way. British pride could not take two sound defeats in two separate wars in South India - in addition to recently losing all 13 of their colonies in America - and after signing the treaty of Mangalore, which completely humiliated them, they implemented their notorious geo-political cunning, which had won them much of the world. The East India Company eventually pitted the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas against Tipu Sultan, two powers that had once fought alongside him against the British.

They also brought General Cornwallis along with reinforcements from America, in an attempt to suffocate the rocket fire of the Sultan with their numbers. Despite heavy defeats in the third and fourth Anglo-Mysorean wars, the spark of his rockets did not cease causing havoc amongst British ranks until a bullet finally found the Sultan defending his palace at the Siege of Srirangapatna.

A story that best represents how the rockets troubled the Brits occurred during one of the final forays of the fourth Anglo-Mysorean war.

In 1799, the Duke of Wellington was on a reconnaissance mission close to Srirangapatna when rocket fire opened up apo his troops. The Duke was so afraid of the surprise rocket attack, he fled the skirmish. Typically any officer would have been court-martialed for such cowardice, however, the Duke’s brother, who was then the Governor General of India, let the incident slide. The Duke, on the other hand, was so ashamed he vowed never to display fear on the field of battle again and became famous for his unwavering courage in times of war.

Congreves - The Colonial Copycats

Although the Mysorean missiles would never soar into battle again, 600 launchers, 700 serviceable rockets and 9,000 empty rockets seized at the fall of Srirangapatna would go to England’s Royal Artillery Museum to be studied in depth. A rocket research program began in 1801, under which the engineer William Congreve studied the Mysorean craftsmanship.

What Congreve truly envied about the Indian-made rockets was the distance they could cover. While the Tipu’s Rocket could travel over a 1,000 yards, British-engineered rockets could only travel a maximum of 600 yards in 1804, years after the Sultan’s defeat.

After spending a copious amount of his own money and time, Congreve was able to add his twist to the Tipu’s rockets by successfully deploying 32-pounder rockets at a range of 3,000 yards in 1806.

These rockets would come to the aid of the British Army in many wars to come. Strangely enough, the Duke of Wellington, who once ashamedly fled Mysorean rockets with his tail between his legs, helped bring England to victory at the battle of Waterloo with rockets based on their design.

Ironically the man the British may have despised the most, wound up giving them, perhaps, their greatest gift for war. And, of course, the cherry on top is the rocket that shaped modern warfare and rocket-based discovery is named after a Brit, and not the original Indian inventor.