Mysorean Rockets, Tipu Sultan And the Battle of Pollilur
Painting at Reception of NASA Wallops Flight Facility
The Chinese and the Europeans had created rockets using bamboo tubes. But these bamboo-tube rockets didn’t have the range and stability that was required for rockets to travel long distances.
What Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan did was replace bamboo tubes with iron tubes. The logic was that this would bring about higher bursting pressures in the combustion chamber and hence higher thrust and longer range for the missile.
Their design actually worked — their rockets travelled up to 2 kilometres. The main reasons why Mysore won the famous battle of Pollilur in 1780 against the British was because Tipu’s rockets struck the British’s ammunition tumbrils.
Source : Mission ISRO - A Spotify Original Podcast
Pic Credits : Charles H. Hubbell (1898-1971), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
