Artillery Ammunition in the Crimea
with hollow heads, so that a variety of uses was possible. Round shot, charges that burst on impact, or a fuse, could be inserted as required by the circumstances.
Rockets were usually fired from a plain cylinder-shaped tube on a horsedrawn rocket carriage., but could also be fired directly from the ground, especially against cavalry. They were particularly useful to provide covering fire for a battery move when the guns were limbered up. They were used with effect at the Battle of the Alma - one rocket went through a Russian column killing eight men.
24 pounder rockets with an effective range of 2000 yards were used in the Siege Artillery. They were surprisingly accurate - in a typical episode, the rocket troop in the '21 Gun Battery' came into action only once during the Battle of Inkerman. It took only seven rockets to destroy an ammunition wagon - a pin point target at near maximum range.
The Russians had a Rocket Section, but I have not come across any accounts of its performance. They certainly did not use rockets on anything like the scale the British did - there was no embryo sign of the great and mighty 'katyusha' to come 90 years on.
I hope that this quick tour of the gunpits has provided a better base for imagining what it would have been like to have been there.
Sources:
Colonel J R J Jocelyn 1911 History of the Royal Artillery (Crimean Period) John Murray, London
Christopher Hibbert 1961 The Destruction of Lord Raglan Wordsworth Editions (1999)
Mark Adkin 1996 The Charge Pimlico 2000
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