Rocket powered 'torpedo' ca 1280

[Paul Nuttall]

Picked this up from the Secret Projects website, fairly old original posting.....I think its more likely to spin around a bit and blow up.....which is i suppose possibly useful.


https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/thread ... ost-902133

https://warhistory.org/article/hassan-al-rammah

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It was invented by Arab inventor named Hassan Al Rammah between 1270 and 1280, who worked in Syria after the Mongol destruction of Baghdad. He wrote a treatise on gunpowder and rockets called “The Book of Military Horsemanship and Ingenious War Devices”. This book included more than 100 recipes for gunpowder, as 22 of them could be used as rocket fuel. Experts state that at least one of these recipes is extremely close to the modern ideal mix for gunpowder. Al Rammah also designed an early torpedo, probably the first of its kind.

Hassan Al-Rammah describes various kinds of incendiary arrows and lances and describes and illustrates what has been supposed to be a torpedo. This is called ‘the egg, which moves itself and burns’ and the illustration and text suggest at least that it was intended to move on the surface of water. Two sheet iron pans were fastened together and made tight by felt; the flattened pear-shaped vessel was filled with “naphtha, metal filings, and good mixtures (probably containing saltpetre), and the apparatus was provided with two rods (as a rudder?) and propelled by a large rocket.

The torpedo was named Al-Rammah and it was a point-and-fire weapon far cheaper and more efficient than a fire ship. When activated, the torpedo’s built-in pair of rockets would push it through the water, and tail stabilizers would direct it to the target. A spear on the front would impale itself in the hull of an enemy ship, and then the whole first-of-a-kind torpedo would explode.

The published work of Professor Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill in their book, Islamic Technology (Cambridge University Press and UNESCO, 1986), and the more recent edition in paperback, 1992, further illustrates the importance of the man and his achievements.

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-o ... 9762056000

This is a model of the "self-moving and combustible egg" of the Syrian Al-Hassan er-Rammah and is believed to be the earliest known rocket propelled torpedo. Crude sketches and a description of it appear in Hassan's Arabic manuscript, The Book of Fighting on Horseback and with War Engines, completed in A.D. 1280.

It is not known if he ever built the device. The two pans connected together were filled with an incendiary mixture and the whole was propelled by two rockets. As the rockets were ignited, the device was aimed toward an enemy ship. When it struck, the enemy ship was to catch fire and be destroyed. The model was built especially for the National Air and Space Museum and donated to the Museum in 1976 by the George Marsden Design Company.

[jemhouston]

Mythbusters did this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cScKs-rrPJI

Spanish version on making it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxcOzPzqOi8

[Belushi TD]

Neat stuff. Its good to know that there have been serious intellectuals in lots of different eras.

I have serious doubts as to if it was technically possible to have built a working model of it in the late 1200s, just like it was not technically possibly for Da Vinci to have built his helicopter in the .... 1400's? I think?

Its good to be able to think and dream beyond what is possible at the time you're doing the dreaming.

Belushi TD

[warshipadmin]

https://vfs.umd.edu/assets/downloads/2020_elico.pdf quadcopter version of the aerial screw. They tested several configurations and found that a tapered scew with 1 turn was best.

[Paul Nuttall]

So wildly spin around a bit then blow up and cause confusion is a possibility.....though who you confuse is debatable

I hadn't thought about wildly flying through the air....that would really cause confusion.