Video - The Rocket Legacy of Mehmed the Conqueror

Moreover, it turned out that Urban was not a very successful foundryman. Because the cannon he fired in Edirne cracked with the first shot in front of the walls of Istanbul and became useless. Urban was also injured at this time, and according to a rumor, he died. European historians exaggerate Urban and write that Istanbul was taken with his cannons. However, while the expenses for Urban's cannon went up in smoke, the cannons cast by the Ottoman masters worked flawlessly throughout the siege and covered the walls like cotton wool. Fatih was an excellent ballistics expert and he personally made the ballistic calculations of the big guns. For the first time in world history, he had the mortars he designed, cast in mobile furnaces during the siege, placed them on the backs of Beyoğlu, and from there he made swipes and sank the Byzantine ships in the Golden Horn. After the conquest of Istanbul, Fatih continued his studies on engineering and, for the first time in history, fought in a war. used rockets and missiles. The rockets that Mehmed the Conqueror made during the siege of Shkodra Castle in 1478, appeared in the sky at night with a comet-like glide and flew with a buzzing sound. It burned wherever it fell and created tremendous heat. According to Venetian sources, even the water in the wells evaporated from the heat of these rockets. During the siege of Rhodes in 1480, Ottoman rocket technology emerged as fully developed. These new rockets exploded where they fell, destroying the environment. The people of Rhodes, even the guards on the walls, took shelter in the cellars of the churches to protect themselves from them. Unfortunately, after Fatih, these works were not continued and we lost this invention to the Europeans. Approximately 500 years after Fatih, the Germans used rockets in the Second World War.