World War I Rockets were used in World War I to engage
observation balloons and
airships. Success rates were low and the rockets were dangerous to handle in the early fighters built from highly flammable materials. By the end of the war they were replaced by the incendiary
Pomeroy bullets. The Pomeroy bullet was developed to strike German
Zeppelin airships, by igniting the hydrogen in the balloon. They did not always work. One of the notable rockets from World War I was the
Le Prieur rocket which had a range of about , limited by inaccuracy. It was first used in the
Battle of Verdun.
Interwar period The first known example of a successful attack of air-to-air rockets on another plane took place on August 20, 1939, during the
Battle of Khalkhin Gol. A group of Soviet
Polikarpov I-16 fighters under command of Captain N. Zvonaryev successfully destroyed a few Japanese warplanes by launching of
RS-82 rockets. Soviet RS-82 rockets were mounted on special pylons under wings of Soviet fighters.
World War II Air-to-air rockets were utilized in World War II to engage
bombers because cannon fire proved ineffective at high closing speeds. On top of that, getting in the range to fire one's guns also meant getting in the range of the bomber's
tail gun. The German
R4M was the first practical rocket. It was highly successful, but came too late to change the outcome of the war. After experiencing the effectiveness of the German rockets, both the Soviet Union and the United States started developing their own. The invention of effective
air-to-air missiles spelled the end for their unguided counterparts in the 1950s. The capability of steering during the flight trajectory significantly increased the hit percentage over rockets. The United States built one last air-to-air rocket, the
AIR-2 Genie. It used a
nuclear warhead with a blast radius of 300m to compensate for its inaccuracy. ==List of air-to-air rockets by country==