Better Rockets/wider use in WW1
- Thread starter pike
- Start date
Materials technology, insufficient development of Rocket Theory at the time, lack of any sort of computer guidance, lack of Liquid Oxygen industry, Lack of Experience with liquid-fuel engines (German scientists experimented with those in a hobby-sense in the 1920s and 1930s), generally, the same reason that the British did not use the Harrier--nothing needed to produce it had been invented yet.
In that case, why bother? It would be easier just to make more conventional artillery pieces, since the parts for those and their ammunition were already in production, and the Katyusha/Nebelwerfer didn't offer very much benefit over existing field guns.
No need for signal rockets since you could just string telegraph/telephone wire along the roads as you advanced.
No need for munitions rockets since arty does the job just as well and there wouldn't be any need to retrain or retool the artillery corps.
edit: ok, I guess rocket flares might be useful for battlefield illumination, though handfired pistol style flares still make more sense to me.
No need for munitions rockets since arty does the job just as well and there wouldn't be any need to retrain or retool the artillery corps.
edit: ok, I guess rocket flares might be useful for battlefield illumination, though handfired pistol style flares still make more sense to me.
That's why they used rocket flares (or was it magnesium artillery shells?) IOTL.
WW1 illuminating rounds were fired from artillery and mortars. At first they were basically a shrapnel round that ejected burning 'pots', I'm not sure if they contained magnesium or not. They were replaced by high-intensity flares suspended beneath a heat-proof parachute, which lasted longer and produced more even illumination. Rocket flares were also in use, and had the advantage of portability - gently insert the stick in the ground, light the fuse, and watch it go. Very pistols were probably more widely used, however.
For what its worth rockets carried less in terms of HE, but could carry more gas than shells apparently. The launchers for rockets were also generally lighter than gun pieces, which meant they were more mobile. Easier to mount on vehicles as well, if anyone has the resources to spare for a plan like that.
Rocket artillery also allows a large amount of explosives to be placed in an area all at the same time. shock effect.
Rocket technology was still very much in its infancy at that time. The first glimmers of modern development can be seen circa 1912, but that isn't enough time to expect anything significant to be in production only two years later.
I think a contemporary rolling arty barrage would have much the same effect without necessitating the complication of munitions resupply and logistics for the European armies that would inevitably entail widespread usage of rockets.
You could drag out the British rocket designer from 1812 then make Americans interested in ship-to-ship rockets, perhaps as a way that the Confederacy might break the Union blockade. The technology, novel and only partially effective against wooden ships, inspires the burgeoning chemical industries of Europe to divert some of its attention elsewhere. Germany views the chance to attack England without ships as promising and invests in the research circa 1885-90. By World War I they are just barely able to cross the channel but they do have an edge in ship-to-ship combat. Not enough to win the war, and not enough to represent more than a novelty initially, but it could play a serious role in what Germany could do 20 years later if the starting technology in 1918 was equal to what they already had in, say, 1940. Britain dreams of communications satellites as a way to unite the Empire and maybe the first worldwide radio broadcasts of the Olympic Games by satellite are achieved in 1928?
Snake Featherston
Banned
One big reason was that it took enough time to learn how to use the new categories of more "mundane" tube artillery properly in a large-scale battle to the point that rocket launchers were not feasible. Too, given the problems of communication that impaired all armies in WWI, it's hard to see why one variety of saturation artillery is any more effective than another when tactically using either type requires not combat solutions but improvements in communication and co-ordination.
Using the 7.7 cm FK 16 the Germans started manufacturing in 1916, you could hit an area at 7.5 km distance with 100 guns if the guns were 100m apart. In the days when infantry was the predominant force (ie, right up into WW1), this was fine (and better than any rocket artillery produced in WW2 besides).