Evening star., 1946-03-31

the war, and shared their knowledge
and experience with us, the task
would have been even more long anc
difficult than it proved.
| One of Oldest Weapons.
Despite the frantic race to develop
rockets in this war, rockets of one
type or another are among the old
est powered weapons.
The Chinese launched rockets
against the Mongols as long ago as
1882. BY the close of the 18th CEN
tury, Europe had heard about rock
cts and began to use them. In those
days they were employed chiefly to
set fire to buildings and terrorize
the enemy.
In the War of 1872, at the Battle
of Bladensburg, the raw American
militiamen defending Washington
broke under the flanking fire of
British rockets, leaving the way open
for the invaders to capture and burn
the Capital.
When Francis Scott Key, in the
Star Spangled Banner" referred to
"the rockets red glare" it was no
figure of speech. The British fleet
attacking Baltimore was using rock
cts
Records of the United States Army
showed that a rocket battery was
created in 1846 and 10 more were
organized the next year. In 1916,
William Hale, an American, made
an important improvement by sub
stituting for a stabilizing stick, three
curved vanes in the rear of the
rockets. The propelling gasses made
the rocket rotate This was the
first spinning rocket.
Two thousand Hale rockets were
produced in 1847 and saw service in
the Mexican War. They figured in
landing near Vera Cruz and in the
storming of Chapultepec.
Yet, despite these years of prom
ising development, the rocket as
weapon dropped out of the picture
soon after 1850. 1t did not appear to
any extent in the Civil War. With
the powder then developed, the
rocket had been carried about as
far as possible.
1t was not until 1918 that the
rocket reappeared in warfare and
then it hardly got into action. In
that year, the late DR.. R. H. God
dard, often called the father of
American rocketry, resumed the de-
velopment of artillery rockets, under
the auspices of the Smithsonian In
stitution. C. N. Hickman, then a
graduate student of physics, was as
sociated in the project. They made
number of models and were at
work on a plane-to-plane rocket
when the World War ended. Off
cial interest faded, and the project
was dropped.
Germany Worked in Secret.
During the 1920s about the only
attention paid to rockets was by
those trying out liquid fuels and
dreaming of interplanetary travel.
But beneath an outward indif-
ference, secret Investigations were
going on in certain European coun-
tries, especially in Germany. Rus
sia and England were interested,
too, and the British began extern
sive experiments in 1896. Little was
known of the results until the
war broke out in 1899, and then
some of the new weapons were
held under wraps until they were
needed.
During the 193os, 1t. (now COLI
Leslie A. Skinner of United States
Army Ordnance did considerable
experimenting on his own initia-
tive. He was convinced that the
military rocket would be an i'm
portant weapon.
BY 1910, with France fallen and
England in desperate plight, the
United States was confronted with
building up its defenses in hurry.
DR.. Hickman, then a member of
the Bell Telephone Laboratories
staff, recalled the experiments of
20 years earlier and wrote DR.. Frank
B. Jewett, head of the laboratories
and president of the National
Academy of Sciences, urging new
research. This letter set in motion
the machinery through which the
National Defense Research Com
mittee began the program of rocket
development which proved so i'm