"Indian Irregular Rocket men - INDUS miniatures" Topic

Here are some Irregular Rocket men for India – these are still WIP but thought I would share.

oddsandendsminis.blogspot.com

Thanks Ashok
link

Looks Great!

Remember the London War Room? Not the best figures, but a very eclectic range. They had a set of musketeers (mercenaries, I think) who had these old flintlock or perhaps firelock muskets. They used to travel about with their womenfolk who carried everything when they weren't actually firing them – for all I know, maybe the women loaded and the men just fired the things. Anyway, they had a set of the men firing and the women lugging stuff about.

It would be cool if you added that to your range. (Just saying…) Sorry I don't know any more about them – I can't think how to go about googling it. (Unless LWR is in the Wayback Machine. hmm…)

As usual, excellent sculpts! Will there be any firing poses in the rocket men set? Keep up the great work, Ashok.

Like them!

So bad to me they're 28mm…! Otherwise I'd undoubtedly plunge myself into a new layout -or even a fictional 18th century Imagi-Nation, anything just for the fun of collecting these beautiful figures and playing with them!

Lovely. I'd buy those in 15mm! Sadly not in 28…. not my scale.

I'd like to do sort of set with firing poses on bamboo stands. Just trying to figure out how to do the stands that will hold up to production and shipping. Any know if TLWR made the stands to and how they were made??

How about like a WW2 mortar – with a "tube" and base as one piece and the struts as a separate piece?

alfritz , think I have an idea . Will be running it buy the sculptor.

Indian rocketeers didn't use stands, they threw the rockets by hand.

See Armies Of The Wars In India by Paul Stevenson.

Druzhina
sites of wargaming interest

Druzhina I think you were right in ealrier times. I think later they propped them up on different impromptu stands ie camels, carts, bamboo stands , ramparts what ever. Maybe as they got more powerful …who knows.

I've never heard of them throwing them before. I'm trying to imagine how exactly this was done? Underhand toss? Overarm chuck? Was the fuse lit and the stick pointed? It's hard to imagine because I've always thought they were propped up and aimed at targets, but of course I'm very much influenced by modern methods of using them. It is an interesting idea…
Any more information?

Ashokmarine,

How late are you thinking? There weren't many indepedent Indian armies by the middle of the 19th century.

From: HAIDAR ALI AND TIPU SULTAN AND THE STRUGGLE WITH THE MUSALMAN POWERS OF THE SOUTH

In front of the British army was broken rising ground, with some deserted villages, and several topes or groves of areca-nut palms and cocoa trees, which afforded a safe cover to Tipu's skirmishers and rocket-men, and enabled them to harass the English pickets. One of these groves, called the Sultanpet Tope, was intersected by deep ditches, …

So they are deployed with skirmishers in rough ground, not as batteries.

They may have used launchers in the attack and defence of fortifications, but I haven't seen a picture or description of a launcher.

Druzhina
sites of wargaming interest

PanMark,

Probably more like letting go as the rocket pulls away.
From History of Rocketry Chapter 2, 18th and 19th Centuries

…two of the rockets fired by Indian troops in 1792 are on display at the Royal Artillery Museum in London. One of these rockets is made up of an iron case 10 inches long by 2.3 inches wide. It is bound to a metal sword that is 40 inches long.

The second rocket has an iron case 7.8 inches long by 1.5 inches wide bound by leather strips to a bamboo stick that is 6 feet, 3 inches long. Each rocket is thought to have a maximum range of 1,000 yards, and eyewitness accounts in 1792 indicated that just one rocket killed three men and injured four others.

From Space travel:
a history by Wernher Von Braun et al:

On 22 April, twelve days before the main battle, rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment, then "threw a great number of rockets at the same instant" to signal the beginning of an assault by 6000 Indian …

See The history of Hyder Shah by Maistre de la Tour for throwing them over the heads of friendly troops. & p158 for a description of rockets.

Druzhina
sites of wargaming interest

Druzhina,
Thanks. As always, your posts generate interest and enthusiasm!
Mark