There was a regular rocket corps in the Mysore Army, beginning with about 1,200 men in Hyder Ali's time. Hyder Ali's father was the naik or chief constable at Budikote, and he commanded 50 rocketmen for the Nawab of Arcot.
In contrast, rockets in Europe were not iron cased and could not take large chamber pressures, and as a consequence they were not capable of reaching distances anywhere near as great.
A rocket carrying about one pound of powder could travel almost 1,000 yards (910 m). The iron tube acted as a combustion chamber and contained well-packed black powder propellant. Rockets could be of various sizes, but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron about 8 inches (200 mm) long and 1.5 to 3 inches (38 to 76 mm) diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about 4 ft long. In addition, wheeled rocket launchers were used in war that were capable of launching five to ten rockets almost simultaneously. The rocket men were trained to launch their rockets at an angle calculated from the diameter of the cylinder and the distance of the target. Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan organized rocket artillery brigades, or " cushoons", against the East India Company during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. He was told that "the British at Seringapatam had suffered more from the rockets than from the shells or any other weapon used by the enemy." "In at least one instance", an eyewitness told Congreve, "a single rocket had killed three men and badly wounded others." The rockets were used by the British, the Russians and Paraguay during the nineteenth century. After development work was complete the rockets were manufactured in quantity further north, near Waltham Abbey, Essex. The project was continued chiefly with William Congreve, who set up a research and development programme at the Woolwich Arsenal's laboratory.
Several captured Mysorean rockets were sent to England following the annexation of the Mysorean kingdom into British India following the death of Tipu Sultan in the siege of Seringapatam. Lieutenant general Thomas Desaguliers, colonel commandant of the Royal Artillery at Woolwich, was impressed by reports of their effectiveness, and undertook several unsuccessful experiments to produce his own rocket weapons. The design was based upon rockets deployed by the Kingdom of Mysore against the East India Company during the Second, Third, and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars. The Congreve rocket was a type of rocket artillery designed by British inventor Sir William Congreve in 1804. A Russian soldier depicted using the Congreve rocket
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