Rockets 101. The basics of rockets and how to use them. (2024)

After someone posted a guide last week about bombs I figured I might do something similar about rockets. How hard can it be? This is not rocket science, is it? Well...

What is a rocket?

A rocket is a weapon that utilizes a rocket motor to propel itself. Like a gun, it uses the combustion of a chemical propellant, but unlike a gun the weapon itself is propelled forward by the energy produced and the acceleration typically lasts longer, usually a few seconds until the propellant burns out, which accelerates it at a high speed. Once the fuel runs out the weapon continues on its momentum alone on a ballistic trajectory.

An image of a M8 HE rocket showing its internal components. (Image from the WT Wiki's M8 article)

The rocket normally uses a cylindrical body, with the rocket motor in the back and an opening on its rear end (the nozzle) to direct the gases produced by the combustion backwards to produce thrust. A charge of propellant powers the combustion and a set of fins at the rear of the rocket's body are used for aerodynamic stabilization. These fins might be fixed or extended only when the rocket is launched and are often placed in a way that will spin the rocket in flight for additional stabilization. A warhead is placed usually at the forward end of the rocket. A fuzing mechanism to detonate the explosives in the warhead is usually present as well, which can be triggered by impact or by time. Rockets can have a variety of warheads depending on their purpose, from regular HE and antipersonnel warheads to smoke, illumination and other purposes, with at least one example having a nuclear warhead (because Cold War era craziness). The ones in game are primarily High Explosive or High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT), with a few Armor Piercing rockets thrown in for good measure.

Rocket or missile?

There can be confusion as to what constitutes a rocket and what makes it different from a missile as the term has been used interchangeably by some and certain language refer to both with the single work. To make things worse, terms like guided and unguided are sometimes used for both rockets and missiles. To clarify we will use the following terminology, which I believe it's the most accepted one in the English language:

Rockets are unguided, they follow a ballistic trajectory from the point of launch. Missiles are guided, they feature additional components for guidance, including the electronics needed to receive commands from the launching platform and/or to locate or track their intended target, as well as additional fins/wings or thrust-vectoring mechanisms to allow the missile to maneuver to make the necessary trajectory changes.

I will only cover unguided rockets with this post.

Advantages and disadvantages of rockets

Rockets offer a weapon that can be aimed at a target with relative ease compared to bombs. Each individual rocket offers a punch comparable to the shell of a high caliber cannon and can be mounted on a plane without adding the mass of the actual gun or dealing with its recoil. This meant rockets were easy to adapt to aircraft, even smaller ones, often requiring just a simple rail or mount under its wings without radically redesigning the structure of the plane. Even better, pods allow to carry multiple rockets with a relatively minor performance penalty compared to other installations. Another advantage of rockets is the ability to fire them in quick succession, with salvos allowing to quickly saturate the target area with a large amount of explosives, dealing lethal damage to soft targets and sometimes damaging or disabling armored ones as well. Rockets can also be used as air-to-air weapons, as even the smallest rocket has enough explosives to cripple or destroy even a large aircraft. Some types of rockets like the FFAR Mighty Mouse or the R4M were designed specifically for this purpose. There were even planes built around the idea of using those rockets for aerial interception, like the F-86D, but the idea fell out of favor. One of the reasons is the biggest weakness of rockets as unguided weapons: Rockets are inaccurate weapons.

The inaccuracy of rockets can be observed by firing a large salvo of them. Even with maxed out crews the spread of rockets tends to be very large, which limits their usefulness for pinpoint attacks and their speed is always slow compared to that of shells, another factor complicating aiming. They are also affected by the motion of the launching platform itself, which can add to the lack of overall accuracy as well. Having a ballistic computer/CCIP can make up for this, but it always takes a degree of good aim and skill to use them properly. They're generally less powerful than bombs and that lack of power can limit their usefulness. That said, rockets are always a viable option against soft targets, light armor. Destroying planes, tanks and boats is also possible, but it takes some skill from the user and choosing the correct rocket load for the job. In air battles they can also be used to attack bases, but this is a pretty inefficient way of using them.

To summarize:

Advantages

• Explosive power equivalent to large shells without needing a gun to match
• No recoil to throw off your aim.
• Can be aimed like guns.
• Can theoretically be installed on practically anything, including smaller fighters.
• Can be carried in numbers, particularly when mounted in pods.
• Can be fired in rapid salvos to saturate areas with fire.
• Enough punch to destroy soft targets, with larger rockets or those with HEAT warheads being able to destroy armor as well.

Disadvantages:

• Very poor accuracy due to spread and other factors.
• Difficult to aim. Using them without CCIP can be tricky.
• Not much explosive power compared to a bomb.
• Their installation can bring hefty performance penalties to aircraft carrying them.
• Only direct hits on armored targets will deal significant damage.

Fuzing options:

Most rockets will keep flying until they hit something, be it their target or the ground, but a few will self-destruct at a certain distance. Those with the "Rocket activation distance" option allow you to set that self-destruction distance. This can be useful for destroying air targets, if you aim them correctly you can make them explode close to the target and damage them even without hitting directly, similar to a bursting flak shell. A very unique variation of this concept is with the F-89D premium aircraft, as it comes with FFAR rockets equipped with a proximity fuze (M439) so you don't need to calculate anything manually

Types of rockets:

This is not an official classification, but there are roughly four types of rockets currently in the game:

-Small HE rocket. These are the rockets you'll most likely find at low to medium tiers. They generally have a very tiny warhead (2-5kg TNT equivalent) and often come in low numbers as they're mounted on rails or launchers rather than pods. Those planes that carry them in high numbers tend to suffer massive performance penalties from the additional drag and weight. The small size of the warhead limits their usefulness. They are good enough to destroy AI pillboxes and medium tanks and against player vehicles are very effective against light armor (trucks, armored cars, SPGs, etc.) but generally lack the power to pen medium or heavy tanks. They can be used against aircraft as well, particularly when using fuze distance settings, as even the smallest rocket can be lethal against an aircraft, but actually hitting them is the tricky part, so unless a fuzing activation distance option is given it is not recommended to use them in air combat.

-AP rocket. They are very similar to HE rockets, except they trade explosive filler for higher armor penetration due to their solid construction. Some of them forego explosives altogether, resulting in the equivalent of a rather slow solid shot projectile, which results in limited post-pen damage. They can pen light armor but are not particularly good or useful compared to other options. As their pen depends largely on kinetic energy, launching them close to the target will result in better penetration.

-Large HE rocket. Rockets that tend to be big, heavy and have a lot of filler. They usually come in small numbers, usually two or four at most, but anything they hit will absolutely feel it. They will cripple or kill almost any tank in the game if a direct shot is achieved, but they can be difficult to aim. Furthermore, the explosion can damage your own aircraft if launched at close range, like a bomb with no fuze delay would. They work very well against AI targets as well but their limited number makes them undesirable for ground pounding missions in air battles.

-HEAT shells. These are the rockets you'll mostly find at high tiers. They are very similar to small HE rockets, but their penetration value is much higher due to their shaped charge warhead. Being essentially the equivalent to HEAT-FS shells, they can be effective against armored vehicles while retaining their effectiveness against soft targets, albeit with the limitations of HEAT such as the ineffectiveness against composite armors. These rockets usually come in pods in high numbers.

Tips when using rockets

As of update 2.9, it would appear like Gaijin altered the physics when using rockets, as the trajectory of rockets varies drastically depending on the motion of the launching aircraft. I am not 100% sure if the changes are final or a work in progress as it seems like helicopters are by far the most affected compared to fixed-wing aircraft. Everything in the game is subject to change, so keep that in mind.

• Pick the right rocket for the job. Using rockets with insufficient power to destroy the target you're aiming for (like using small HE rockets like the RS-82 to try to destroy heavy tanks) will be a waste of time. Using a very powerful rocket to kill a single soft target will be a waste of rocket.
• Upgrade your crew's Weapon Maintenance skill. Rockets' inherent poor accuracy is increased by the random spread with stock crews. The Weapon Maintenance skill reduces this random spread to a certain degree.
• Use the rocket sight as a reference only. I'm talking about the reticle formed by a vertical line with four horizontal lines. These are meant to represent the drop of the rocket at different distances (around 200 meters more for each line), from top to bottom, but to call them unreliable would be a massive understatement. They are useful to estimate roughly where the rockets are aiming for, particularly for rockets mounted at odd angles, but always use it only as a reference.
• Your aiming point depends on the position of the rockets in your aircraft. This is extremely important. Like guns, the point of impact of rockets depends on where on the aircraft they are mounted, if they are mounted under the wings they will have convergence issues like wing-mounted guns. You cannot change the convergence angle, so you have to adjust manually by aiming slightly towards the left or the right so at least one of the rockets impacts the target directly. Similarly, if the rockets are mounted at odd angles in relation to the the vertical axis you'll have to adjust by aiming upwards or downwards accordingly.
• Minimize movements in the lateral axis when aiming. This seems to be the biggest factor to alter the accuracy of rocket launches. The ideal trajectory seems to be a very shallow dive. Avoid sudden drastic movements while aiming them or this might throw off your aim.
• Practice. Using rockets effectively takes some skill. Go to test flight or custom battles and practice and learn the intricacies of the rockets you will be using. That practice will pay off later when you need it the most.
• Rockets will weigh you down. I sometimes see fighters with a full rocket load trying to dogfight. Always remember the performance penalty for carrying the rockets. The game currently doesn't offer a way of jettisoning ordnance like rocket pods, so remember what you're committed to when choosing to load rockets.

Rocket stats

A table for quick comparison of the rockets we have in game.