Schutztruppe rockets?

[Bezzo]

Whlie searching a German photo archive site I came across some askaris preparing to fire a large rocket device. It was like a Hales rocket launcher and the rockets themeselves looked about 10 feet long with sizeable "warheads".

I have read widely about the WW1 East Africa campaign and never seen any other reference to the use of rockets. But there is the photo so they did exist. Has anyone any info on this weapon?

[Plynkes]

That photo is in the Osprey on the Great War in East Africa, but there is no info on it bar the caption, which suggests that picture is possibly pre-war and that the original caption referred to the contraption as a 'bomb-thrower.' It suggests they had these things on the inventory for fighting (or frightening) native opponents and that they still had a bunch of them kicking around at the start of the war.

Sorry, that's all I got.

[traveller]

If my memory do not fail me, rockets were used in SW Africa during the war against the Hereros

[Plynkes]

Why not? I would. The book doesn't actually go so far as to say they were never used.

I've come to feel that the German units are a bit boring and samey compared to the wide choice of wacky, diverse (and often useless) units the Entente can field in East Africa - they need something like that to liven up their side of the table a tad.  

[QuietWarrior]

That's sort of one of the nice things about East Africa.....it was such a bootstrap operation and so poorly documented that you can get away with darn near anything