WI the gunpowder revolution centred around rockets rather than firearms?

Pretty much as the title says: what if Late Mediaeval European armies adopted Chinese-style rockets instead of handguns, and these rockets came to edge out bows and arrows as handguns did IOTL? How far and in what directions would military technology advance in such a situation, and how would this affect the practice of warfare?
 
Rockets are way too difficult to make and far too inaccurate for this to happen. If rockets became common instead of guns then the bow and arrow are going to stick around probably with big advances in crossbows. Despite major advances in technology rockets just do not work very well as infantry weapons even today as demonstrated by the Gyrojet line of guns.
 
Without cannons no firearms one could assume. This would allow heavy armor troops like knights to live on, because rockets would not have that penetration power nore is it possible to use by individual soldiers?
 
Path of least resistance. Metallurgy was simply too advanced. It was easier to make firearms with the metallurgical technology on the shelf, than to develop the technology or rocketry.
 

Lateknight

Banned
Without cannons no firearms one could assume. This would allow heavy armor troops like knights to live on, because rockets would not have that penetration power nore is it possible to use by individual soldiers?

Wouldn't mass use rockets make cavalry obsolete ended knights anyways.
 
Wouldn't mass use rockets make cavalry obsolete ended knights anyways.

Nope. Rockets were very inexact. Even in Napoleonic war times, they were mainly useful for scaring people/horses that werent used to them. Aiming rockets at a solid mass of infantry? Might hit someone. Aiming at cavalry? Chances of hitting anyone are much lower. Especially since cavalry moves faster. Moreover, gunpowder is expensive, and you get a lot more bang for your buck with muskets.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
It wouldn't be a revolution any more, because rockets are an inferior weapon to firearms.
(In other words, this revolution would have the influence the hwacha had on world weapons technology. Not a great deal.)
 
You'd need gunpowder to be discovered - or, more specifically, 'weaponised gunpowder' - much earlier, so that metallurgy won't have advanced as much. Heh, look at Green Antarctica. :p
 
Rockets were very inexact. Even in Napoleonic war times, they were mainly useful for scaring people/horses that werent used to them. Aiming rockets at a solid mass of infantry? Might hit someone. Aiming at cavalry? Chances of hitting anyone are much lower. Especially since cavalry moves faster.

To be fair, you could probably say much the same thing about the first handguns.



Would it be possible to butterfly away the invention of the handgun, or at least to delay it somewhat? AFAIK it was only ever independently invented once, so what would happen if we prevented the original invention happening somehow?
 
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