rocketeern.

?1720 in Catal. Prints: Polit. & Personal Satires (Brit. Mus.) (1873) II. 432 Come all ye Black Infernal Powder Makers, And Rocketeers, that deal in Squibs and Crackers.

1814 ‘M. Graham’ Lett. on India xv. 329 They have besides a rocketeer or pao, who can only take one adversary when he leaps over the head of another.

1832 R. Southey Hist. Peninsular War III. 837 With this force there were..forty rocketeers, and an officer with a few artillerymen.

1865 Harper's Mag. Jan. 177/2 Every moment their cannonade and bombardment became heavier, and the rocketeers sent an incessant shower of their fiery missiles into the American lines.

1945 F. H. M. Lloyd Hurricane i. 12 Fighter, night-fighter, fighter-bomber, tank-buster, ‘rocketeer’, ship-fighter, merchant-ship protector..in thirty different forms and on thirty-seven different fronts, the Hurricane went into action.

1974 D. Seaman Bomb that could Lip-read ix. 70 The flash..won't affect the man firing the rocket-launcher... I want every rocketeer to fire his two rounds.

1993 J. Pournelle & S. M. Stirling Prince of Sparta 219 Finally, two Helot rocketeers came up.

1927 Manitoba Free Press 13 Apr. 9/3 The rocket would have every comfort of home,..[including] parachute to let the rocketers down easy if their rocket becomes marooned in space.]

1928 Waterloo (Iowa) Evening Courier 6 Mar. 2/6 Rocketeer to drop off on Venus when he torpedoes by.

1948 Pop. Sci. Monthly June 88/2 The demonstrators are amateur rocketeers of the Glendale, Calif., Reaction Research Society, whose 90 members are mostly high-school and college students.

1960 Times 28 Oct. 13/4 A leading German rocketeer claimed that no fewer than 70,000 people had been vouchsafed a sight of a saucer.

1972 Sci. Amer. Dec. 118/3 Model rocketeers fly light reflyable rockets they make themselves or from kits.

2009 Globe & Mail (Toronto) (Nexis) 19 May l6 The Google Lunar X Prize..has attracted 17 international teams of rocketeers aiming at the moon.