Tipu Sultan's Mysorean Rockets - The first Modern iron-tube Rockets used in Battle against British and which were taken back by Britishers and Inspired the Congreve Rockets.
Mysorean Rockets: Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan's Forgotten Military Innovation
Mysorean Rockets:
In the late 18th century, the kingdom of Mysore under Tipu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali became the birthplace of one of the most significant advancements in early rocketry: the Mysorean rockets.
Though rockets were not invented by Tipu Sultan, his army was the first in the world to successfully design, mass-produce, and deploy metal-cylinder rockets in warfare.
Unlike earlier rockets used in China and medieval India that relied on paper or bamboo casings, Mysorean rockets featured iron tubes to hold the gunpowder propellant.
This innovation allowed them to withstand higher pressure and travel longer distances—reportedly up to 2 kilometers—making them more effective as weapons of war.
Tipu Sultan recognized the strategic potential of this technology. He established a dedicated rocket corps comprising around 5,000 men, trained in launching rockets in volleys and with remarkable accuracy. These weapons were used decisively against the British East India Company during the Anglo-Mysore Wars, often causing chaos in enemy ranks.
After Tipu Sultan’s defeat in 1799, the British captured and sent several Mysorean rockets to England.
These directly inspired William Congreve, who went on to develop the Congreve rocket, later used by British forces in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.
In this way, Mysorean technology became a foundation for the next phase of military rocketry in Europe.
Though largely forgotten in mainstream histories, the Mysorean rockets stand as a testament to Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan's contribution to early military science and technology—a remarkable fusion of indigenous ingenuity and strategic foresight.
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Excerpts from Indian Express
In the early nineteenth century, when the British were caught up in the Napoleonic wars against the French, they introduced a military weapon hitherto never used before in the European continent. The Congreve rocket as it was referred to was believed to have been invented by an English army personnel by the name Sir William Congreve. Congreve is known to have invented these inflammable rockets after much experimentation in early 1800s to deploy them against French troops. The strength and effectiveness of the rockets were such that they immediately called for attention and the British were soon followed by military engineers in Denmark, Egypt, French, Russia and several other countries. However, by mid-nineteenth century itself historians, on digging into the military past of the British, had discovered that the Congreve rocket, in fact, had its roots in the Indian subcontinent- in the kingdom of Tipu Sultan.
Rockets or ‘fire-arrows’ are noted to have been in use in Europe way back in the 15th century itself. However, the rockets made during the reign of Tipu Sultan, popularly referred to as the Mysorean rockets were of a far more advanced kind. “The Mysore rockets of this period were much more advanced than what the British had seen or known, chiefly because of the use of iron tubes for holding the propellant,” writes scientist Roddam Narasimha in his article ‘Rockets in Mysore and Britain’. The invention of the Mysorean rockets was in that sense pioneering..." (source:indian express) - end of Excerpt.
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