Who owns the achievements of a talented person? Of course, to his country, but also to the whole world, for which, first of all, the result is important, and not his nationality. For example, the father of Russian cosmonautics, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky … came from the Polish noble family of the Tsiolkovsky family, but did his Polish roots have any special meaning for him? However, Poland also had "its own Tsiolkovsky", and this is the most interesting thing, long before our time …
And it so happened that during the turbulent reign of the Polish king Vladislav IV (1595-1648), artillery in Poland developed at a rapid pace, so that the guns in the royal arsenals were cast one after another. The technology of their manufacture - casting from cannon copper or cast iron, was a complicated matter and required good training and great knowledge. Therefore, the cannon masters were highly valued and received a good salary, and sometimes their education was not inferior to the then university professors.
One of these specialists was Kazimierz Semenovich - a career soldier sent by the king to study cannon business in Holland. And Holland at that time was famous for its engineering, artillerymen and military specialists in many areas of military affairs. No wonder our Tsar Peter the First also went there and it was there that he learned the basics of science. And it was there in Holland in 1650 that Semenovich published a book of his work, which had the Latin name “Artis magnae artilleriae paris prima”, which can be translated as: “The great art of artillery, part one”. And this work glorified the name of this Pole in all countries of the then Europe. In 1651 this book was translated into French, in 1676 - into German, in 1729 - English and again into Dutch. Then, in the twentieth century, in 1963, it was translated into Polish, and in 1971 it appeared in Russian. Moreover, in the third book, which was called De rochetis ("About missiles"), his prophetic discourses about the future of rocket technology were made. He began by analyzing the works of about 25 authors who wrote about missiles, describing a missile battery, missiles from several components (now we call such missiles multistage), with several types of stabilizers. He also described the technological methods of manufacturing and equipping missiles, their nozzles and the compositions of some propellants for the manufacture of solid-propellant rocket engines - that is, his work is simply striking in its versatility.
But the most amazing thing is that he wrote about the future of rocketry at a time when artillery rumbled everywhere on the battlefields in Europe, called the "last argument of kings" - big, small, all kinds of cannons. What, it would seem, there are still missiles? But no - Semenovich's ideas were born one more modern than the other! So, for example, then it was customary to equip combat missiles with so-called "tails", which looked like a long and smooth wooden pole fixed along the axis of the projectile. The pole was inserted into a launch tube mounted on a tripod, and the nozzles on the rocket were made in such a way that they were directed away from this pole. The "tailed" rocket launched from such an installation in flight had the appearance of a "fiery spear", but in fact it was just such a "spear", and even from the time of Ancient China! But with Semenovich, everything was completely different. His missiles had a nozzle axially at the rear of the hull, and the stabilizers were attached to the hull, that is, they were actually quite modern rocket projectiles, like, for example, the same Katyusha! And, by the way, they were invented by a Polish officer - who lived at the same time as the royal musketeers from the novel by Dumas the father!
He also proposed the world's first warhead with multiple warheads, which were to explode over the target at a given height, and, finally, a long-range missile, which was supposed to consist of three stages. Since the accuracy of the then missiles was small and decreased along with the range of their flight, he also came up with the idea of equipping this missile with several warheads at once, and at the same time suggested equipping each of them with its own rocket engine. Rightly judging that it was impossible to create a large lift force with just one jet thrust, he proposed attaching wings to it, which was at that time an innovative idea, implemented only in our time on cruise missiles with a long flight range!
However, this is not all. Since the dispersion of missiles during firing was still greater than that of artillery shells, Semenovich proposed using rocket batteries - the prototypes of the Soviet Katyushas. He also invented boats with rocket motors, which were several sequentially flammable missiles combined into one package. He also proposed several formulations of powder and combustible mixtures for his missiles. Interestingly, in the drawings in his books, the rockets look surprisingly modern. For example, his three-stage rocket has a telescopic design: the body of the first stage enters the body of the second, and, accordingly, the first and the second enter the third. Expelling charges are placed between them and … that's it! Such a device is not used now, and the steps themselves are attached to one another. But from the point of view of the then technology, it was the most correct and technically competent decision!
So, it was not the Pole Tsiolkovsky who presented the amazing development in the field of rocketry to the world, but … Kazimierz Semyonovich, a Pole of Lithuanian origin! But, although there is no evidence that he tested his developments in practice, it is still impossible not to admire them, especially if you remember when they appeared!
However, Semenovich's ideas did not remain on paper, and missiles, albeit very slowly, nevertheless entered practice. For example, in 1807, during the Napoleonic wars, the British fleet attacked Copenhagen with the help of rocket weapons, and, firing several thousand missiles (!) Around the city, burned it to the ground! In 1823, a missile corps was created in Poland, which consisted of a half-battery of cavalry and half a company of infantry. The missiles, which were in service with the Russian army, received their "baptism of fire" in 1828 during the siege of the fortress of Varna, in which the Turkish garrison was located. The missile hits caused numerous fires in the fortress, which demoralized the Turks and led to its fall. At dawn on April 17, 1829, ferries armed with cannons and rocket launchers opened fire on Turkish river vessels off Silistria. An eyewitness described this rocket attack as follows: “first one flew like a fiery serpent over the dark surface of the Danube, another behind it, and this one straight into the gunboat. Sparks as if from a fireworks "blizzard" flashed from a rocket and grabbed the entire side of the enemy boat; then smoke appeared, and behind it the flame, like fiery lava, soared with a crash above the deck. " An important role in improving the missiles of that time was played by Lieutenant General K. I. Konstantinov (1818 - 1871), whose missiles were actively used by the Russian army during the war with Turkey, and then during the Eastern War during the defense of Sevastopol. Moreover, along with the Russian troops, both the British and the French used incendiary rockets to shell the city.
By 1830, Poland also had its own missile units, which, during the Polish uprising, sided with the rebels and actively fought against the tsarist troops using their missile weapons. In 1819, a book by the Polish general Józef Bem, "Remarks on incendiary rockets," was published in French, which also dealt with the improvement of this type of weapon. By the way, why were incendiary rockets at that time more popular than, say, those with an explosive charge? The reason is that the traditional explosive shell of an artillery gun was a grenade - a hollow cast iron core filled with gunpowder and with an ignition tube that entered it through a special hole. The tube ignited when fired, and the grenade inflicted defeat on the enemy, first of all with its mass, and only after that with the fact that it also exploded. Incendiary grenades and special projectiles - brandkugels, also existed and were used, but more combustible mixture was placed in incendiary rockets, and in this at that time they had an undeniable advantage over artillery. Signal and lighting flares were also very widely used, since it was not very convenient to use artillery for this.
And it should be noted that Kazimierz Semyonovich understood all this even then, which speaks of his undoubted talent as an engineer and great perspicacity, although, of course, he could not foresee everything that rockets will give to mankind in our time, and what level technology will be required in order for all ideas, one way or another, to come true!
