<P> Rockets were again used on several occasions during the Fourth Anglo - Mysore War . One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later famous as the First Duke of Wellington . Wellesley was almost defeated by Tipu's Diwan Purnaiya at the Battle of Sultanpet Tope . </P> <P> Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force the following day, and took the whole position without losing a single man . Rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment on 22 April 1799, 12 days before the main battle, and fired a great number of rockets at the same moment to signal the beginning of an assault by 6,000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen, all directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Mirans . The rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards . Some burst in the air like shells, while others (called ground rockets) would rise again on striking the ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent . A young English officer named Bayly observed: "So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles". He continued: </P> <P> The rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant . No hail could be thicker . Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are invariably attached to them . </P> <P> A British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan's fort during the conclusive British attack on Srirangapattana on 2 May 1799, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements . Baird led the final attack on the fort on the afternoon of 4 May and was again met by "furious musket and rocket fire", but this did not help much; the fort was taken in about an hour's time . Perhaps within another hour Tipu had been shot (the precise time of his death is not known), and the war was effectively over . </P>

Who is pioneer in using rocket technology in india