Here’s an idea I doubt would have worked: a rocket powered war cat from the 1585 German manuscript “Feuer Buech,” kept in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania.
No, I don’t think that would’ve worked at all. I don’t even know what the goal was here (it’s a book on blowin’ stuff up, so I guess these were to be rocket-powered Kamikazicritters), but there’s no chance that a rocket powered cat or bird would’ve gone in anything like a straight line. If, instead, these are just *bombs* drawn kinda strangely… nope. I’m not sure what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is, but I do know that no little cheep-cheep bird is going to be able to carry a gunpowder bomb worth the effort of cobbling together.
Rocket powered cats will just have to wait.
