Molch (German language: " newt " or " salamander ") was an unsuccessful series of one-man midget submarines created during World War II . Built in 1944, it was the first mini-submarine of Nazi Germany 's Kriegsmarine , but was not successful in combat operations and suffered heavy losses.
79-423: The Molch was based on torpedo technology, and carried two G7e torpedoes attached externally on either side of the craft. It was fully electrical and was created for coastal operations, with a range of 64 km (35 nmi) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph). The front section of the boat held a large battery. Behind the battery was the operator's position, which sat between two small trimming tanks. Behind
158-414: A differential gear to twin contra-rotating propellers. If one drum was rotated faster than the other, then the rudder was activated. The other ends of the wires were connected to steam-powered winding engines, which were arranged so that speeds could be varied within fine limits, giving sensitive steering control for the torpedo. The torpedo attained a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) using
237-429: A Confederate vessel by torpedo. Lieutenant Cushing employed a spar torpedo designed by John Lay . The semi-submersible 1864 Union craft USS Spuyten Duyvil employed a spar torpedo, but not with a barbed attachment to the target. Owing to an innovative directable and extensible spar, this craft could release a slightly buoyant mine underneath the target, which would be exploded by the means described above. (This craft
316-431: A batch of 50 as torpedo production at home and Rijeka could not meet demand. By World War I, Whitehead's torpedo remained a worldwide success, and his company was able to maintain a monopoly on torpedo production. By that point, his torpedo had grown to a diameter of 18 inches with a maximum speed of 30.5 knots (56.5 km/h; 35.1 mph) with a warhead weighing 170 pounds (77 kg). Whitehead faced competition from
395-624: A demonstration in late 1869, and in 1870 a batch of torpedoes was ordered. In 1871, the British Admiralty paid Whitehead £ 15,000 for certain of his developments and production started at the Royal Laboratories in Woolwich the following year. In the 1880s, a British committee, informed by hydrodynamicist Dr. R. E. Froude , conducted comparative tests and determined that a blunt nose, contrary to prior assumptions, did not hinder speed: in fact,
474-604: A depth just beneath the ship, relying on a magnetic exploder to activate at the appropriate time. Germany, Britain, and the U.S. independently devised ways to do this; German and American torpedoes, however, suffered problems with their depth-keeping mechanisms, coupled with faults in magnetic pistols shared by all designs. Inadequate testing had failed to reveal the effect of the Earth's magnetic field on ships and exploder mechanisms, which resulted in premature detonation. The Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy promptly identified and eliminated
553-456: A device was called an automotive, automobile, locomotive, or fish torpedo; colloquially a fish . The term torpedo originally applied to a variety of devices, most of which would today be called mines . From about 1900, torpedo has been used strictly to designate a self-propelled underwater explosive device. While the 19th-century battleship had evolved primarily with a view to engagements between armored warships with large-caliber guns ,
632-524: A factory at St Tropez in 1890 that exported torpedoes to Brazil, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Greece. Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope of Ludwig Obry in 1888 but it was not sufficiently accurate, so in 1890 he purchased a better design to improve control of his designs, which came to be called the "Devil's Device". The firm of L. Schwartzkopff in Germany also produced torpedoes and exported them to Russia, Japan, and Spain. In 1885, Britain ordered
711-703: A follow-up attack in October, produced several explosions but no significant damage and the weapon was abandoned. Fulton carried out a demonstration for the US government on 20 July 1807, destroying a vessel in New York's harbor. Further development languished as Fulton focused on his "steam-boat matters". After the War of 1812 broke out, the Royal Navy established a blockade of the East Coast of
790-461: A military scientist for the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt – wrote that it might be possible to create a projectile resembling "an egg", which propelled itself through water, whilst carrying "fire". In modern language, a "torpedo" is an underwater self-propelled explosive, but historically, the term also applied to primitive naval mines and spar torpedoes . These were used on an ad hoc basis during
869-462: A night-time approach so that the target ship would be less able to defend itself. Fiske determined that the notional torpedo bomber should descend rapidly in a sharp spiral to evade enemy guns, then when about 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 m) above the water the aircraft would straighten its flight long enough to line up with the torpedo's intended path. The aircraft would release the torpedo at a distance of 1,500 to 2,000 yards (1,400 to 1,800 m) from
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#1732859314774948-472: A pair of 24.5-inch torpedoes from her port-side tube and claimed one hit. According to Ludovic Kennedy , "if true, [this is] the only instance in history of one battleship torpedoing another". The Royal Navy continued the development of oxygen-enriched air torpedoes with the 21 in. Mk. VII of the 1920s designed for the County-class cruisers although once again these were converted to run on normal air at
1027-580: A production facility at the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory, Greenock , in 1910. These are now closed. Whitehead opened a new factory adjacent to Portland Harbour , England, in 1890, which continued making torpedoes until the end of World War II . Because orders from the RN were not as large as expected, torpedoes were mostly exported. A series of devices was produced at Rijeka, with diameters from 14 in (36 cm) upward. The largest Whitehead torpedo
1106-627: A radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, it intended to use frequency-hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers . As radio guidance had been abandoned some years earlier, it was not pursued. Although the US Navy never adopted the technology, it did, in the 1960s, investigate various spread-spectrum techniques. Spread-spectrum techniques are incorporated into Bluetooth technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of Wi-Fi . This work led to their induction into
1185-537: A success against an Austrian-Hungarian squadron , sinking the battleship SMS Szent István with two torpedoes. The Royal Navy had been experimenting with ways to further increase the range of torpedoes during World War 1 using pure oxygen instead of compressed air, this work ultimately leading to the development of the oxygen-enriched air 24.5 in. Mk. I intended originally for the G3-class battlecruisers and N3 class battleships of 1921, both being cancelled due to
1264-595: A torpedo against the Ottoman cruiser "Medjidieh". The end of the Russo-Japanese War fuelled new theories, and the idea of dropping lightweight torpedoes from aircraft was conceived in the early 1910s by Bradley A. Fiske , an officer in the United States Navy . Awarded a patent in 1912, Fiske worked out the mechanics of carrying and releasing the aerial torpedo from a bomber , and defined tactics that included
1343-584: A tubular device, designed to run underwater on its own, and powered by compressed air. The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff (mine ship), the first modern self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on 21 December 1866. The first trials were not successful as the weapon was unable to maintain a course at a steady depth. After much work, Whitehead introduced his "secret" in 1868 which overcame this. It
1422-509: A variety of platforms. In modern warfare, a submarine-launched torpedo is almost certain to hit its target; the best defense is a counterattack using another torpedo. The word torpedo was first used as a name for electric rays (in the order Torpediniformes ), which in turn comes from the Latin word torpēdō ("lethargy" or "sluggishness"). In naval usage, the American inventor David Bushnell
1501-501: A wire 1.0 millimetre (0.04 in) in diameter but later this was changed to 1.8 mm (0.07 in) to increase the speed to 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph). The torpedo was fitted with elevators controlled by a depth-keeping mechanism, and the fore and aft rudders operated by the differential between the drums. Brennan traveled to Britain, where the Admiralty examined the torpedo and found it unsuitable for shipboard use. However,
1580-529: Is a weapon consisting of a bomb placed at the end of a long pole, or spar, and attached to a boat . The weapon is used by running the end of the spar into the enemy ship. Spar torpedoes were often equipped with a barbed spear at the end, so it would stick to wooden hulls . A fuse could then be used to detonate it. Robert Fulton had written about submarine (i.e., subsurface) marine torpedoes in 1810, and experiments were conducted using spar torpedoes that year. Boats carrying spar torpedoes were used during
1659-512: Is still in limited service in the 21st century. The improved Mark VIII** was used in two particularly notable incidents; on 6 February 1945 the only intentional wartime sinking of one submarine by another while both were submerged took place when HMS Venturer sank the German submarine U-864 with four Mark VIII** torpedoes and on 2 May 1982 when the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror sank
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#17328593147741738-474: Is today called a contact mine , floating on or below the water surface using an air-filled demijohn or similar flotation device. These devices were very primitive and apt to prematurely explode. They would be detonated on contact with the ship or after a set time, although electrical detonators were also occasionally used. USS Cairo was the first warship to be sunk in 1862 by an electrically-detonated mine. Spar torpedoes were also used; an explosive device
1817-557: The Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, " Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! " refers to a minefield laid at Mobile, Alabama . On 26 May 1877, during the Romanian War of Independence , the Romanian spar torpedo boat Rândunica attacked and sank the Ottoman river monitor Seyfi . This was the first instance in history when a torpedo boat sank its targets without also sinking. A prototype of
1896-525: The Battle of Tsushima , Admiral Rozhestvensky 's flagship , the battleship Knyaz Suvorov , had been gunned to a wreck by Admiral Tōgō 's 12-inch gunned battleline . With the Russians sunk and scattering, Tōgō prepared for pursuit, and while doing so ordered his torpedo boat destroyers (TBDs) (mostly referred to as just destroyers in most written accounts) to finish off the Russian battleship. Knyaz Suvorov
1975-609: The Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific War. Torpedo boats, such as MTBs , PT boats , or S-boats , enabled the relatively small but fast craft to carry enough firepower, in theory, to destroy a larger ship, though this rarely occurred in practice. The largest warship sunk by torpedoes from small craft in World War II was the British cruiser Manchester , sunk by Italian MAS boats on
2054-607: The Battle of the North Cape in December 1943, torpedo hits from British destroyers Savage and Saumarez slowed the German battleship Scharnhorst enough for the British battleship Duke of York to catch and sink her, and in May 1945 the British 26th Destroyer Flotilla (coincidentally led by Saumarez again) ambushed and sank Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro . During World War II , Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed
2133-569: The British Empire for more than fifteen years. The Royal Navy frigate HMS Shah was the first naval vessel to fire a self-propelled torpedo in anger during the Battle of Pacocha against rebel Peruvian ironclad Huáscar on 29 May 1877. The Peruvian ship successfully outran the device. On 16 January 1878, the Turkish steamer Intibah became the first vessel to be sunk by self-propelled torpedoes, launched from torpedo boats operating from
2212-530: The First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. At this time torpedo attacks were still very close range and very dangerous to the attackers. Several western sources reported that the Qing dynasty Imperial Chinese military, under the direction of Li Hongzhang , acquired electric torpedoes, which they deployed in numerous waterways, along with fortresses and numerous other modern military weapons acquired by China. At
2291-682: The Hunley was lost. Spar torpedoes were also used by the David -class of semi-submersible attack boats. In April 1864, Confederate torpedo boat CSS Squib employed a spar torpedo against USS Minnesota . At night on October 27–28, 1864, Lieutenant Cushing employed a spar torpedo to sink the Confederate ironclad ram CSS Albemarle . The sinking of the Albemarle was the Union navy's only successful sinking of
2370-520: The National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Because of improved submarine strength and speed, torpedoes had to be given improved warheads and better motors. During the Cold War torpedoes were an important asset with the advent of nuclear-powered submarines , which did not have to surface often, particularly those carrying strategic nuclear missiles . Spar torpedoes A spar torpedo
2449-620: The Tientsin Arsenal in 1876, the Chinese developed the capacity to manufacture these "electric torpedoes" on their own. Although a form of Chinese art, the Nianhua , depict such torpedoes being used against Russian ships during the Boxer Rebellion , whether they were actually used in battle against them is undocumented and unknown. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) was the first great war of
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2528-724: The War Office proved more amenable, and in early August 1881, a special Royal Engineer committee was instructed to inspect the torpedo at Chatham and report back directly to the Secretary of State for War, Hugh Childers . The report strongly recommended that an improved model be built at government expense. In 1883 an agreement was reached between the Brennan Torpedo Company and the government. The newly appointed Inspector-General of Fortifications in England, Sir Andrew Clarke , appreciated
2607-534: The War of 1812 . E. C. Singer , a private engineer who worked on secret projects for the benefit of the Confederate States of America , constructed a spar torpedo during the American Civil War . His torpedo was detonated by means of a trigger mechanism adapted from a rifle lock (see flintlock mechanism for a similar device). The spring-loaded trigger was detonated by means of a long cord attached to
2686-529: The Washington Naval Treaty . Initially, the Imperial Japanese Navy purchased Whitehead or Schwartzkopf torpedoes but by 1917, like the Royal Navy, they were conducting experiments with pure oxygen instead of compressed air. Because of explosions they abandoned the experiments but resumed them in 1926 and by 1933 had a working torpedo. They also used conventional wet heater torpedoes. In
2765-451: The inter-war years , financial stringency caused nearly all navies to skimp on testing their torpedoes. Only the British and Japanese had fully tested new technologies for torpedoes (in particular the Type 93 , nicknamed Long Lance postwar by the US official historian Samuel E. Morison ) at the start of World War II. Unreliable torpedoes caused many problems for the American submarine force in
2844-536: The 20th century. During the war the Imperial Russian and Imperial Japanese navies launched nearly 300 torpedoes at each other, all of them of the "self-propelled automotive" type. The deployment of these new underwater weapons resulted in one battleship, two armored cruisers, and two destroyers being sunk in action, with the remainder of the roughly 80 warships being sunk by the more conventional methods of gunfire, mines, and scuttling . On 27 May 1905, during
2923-584: The American Lieutenant Commander John A. Howell , whose design , driven by a flywheel , was simpler and cheaper. It was produced from 1885 to 1895, and it ran straight, leaving no wake. A Torpedo Test Station was set up in Rhode Island in 1870. The Howell torpedo was the only United States Navy model until an American company, Bliss and Williams secured manufacturing rights to produce Whitehead torpedoes. These were put into service for
3002-735: The Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano with two Mark VIII** torpedoes during the Falklands War . This is the only sinking of a surface ship by a nuclear-powered submarine in wartime and the second (of three) sinkings of a surface ship by any submarine since the end of World War II). The other two sinkings were of the Indian frigate INS Khukri and the South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan . Many classes of surface ships, submarines, and aircraft were armed with torpedoes. Naval strategy at
3081-603: The U.S. Navy in 1892. Five varieties were produced, all 18-inch diameter. The Royal Navy introduced the Brotherhood wet heater engine in 1907 with the 18 in. Mk. VII & VII* which greatly increased the speed and/or range over compressed air engines and wet heater type engines became the standard in many major navies up to and during the Second World War. Ships of the line were superseded by ironclads , large steam-powered ships with heavy gun armament and heavy armor, in
3160-545: The USN twenty-one months into the Pacific War. British submarines used torpedoes to interdict the Axis supply shipping to North Africa , while Fleet Air Arm Swordfish sank three Italian battleships at Taranto by a torpedo and (after a mistaken, but abortive, attack on Sheffield ) scored one crucial hit in the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck . Large tonnages of merchant shipping were sunk by submarines with torpedoes in both
3239-587: The United States . During the war, American forces unsuccessfully attempted to destroy the British ship of the line HMS Ramillies while it was lying at anchor in New London, Connecticut 's harbor with torpedoes launched from small boats. This prompted the captain of Ramillies , Sir Thomas Hardy, 1st Baronet , to warn the Americans to cease using this "cruel and unheard-of warfare" or he would "order every house near
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3318-479: The attacking vessel. The attacking vessel rammed its target, embedding the barbed torpedo in its hull, then backed off. When the attacker reached the limit of the trigger cord, the torpedo was detonated. Perhaps the most famous use of spar torpedoes during the U.S. Civil War was by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley , which managed to sink the Union screw sloop USS Housatonic on February 17, 1864, although
3397-467: The blunt nose provided a speed advantage of approximately one knot compared to the traditional pointed nose design. This discovery allowed for larger explosive payloads and increased air storage for propulsion without compromising speed. In 1893, RN torpedo production was transferred to the Royal Gun Factory . The British later established a Torpedo Experimental Establishment at HMS Vernon and
3476-705: The construction of the first purpose-built operational torpedo aircraft, the Short Type 184 , built-in 1915. An order for ten aircraft was placed, and 936 aircraft were built by ten different British aircraft companies during the First World War . The two prototype aircraft were embarked upon HMS Ben-my-Chree , which sailed for the Aegean on 21 March 1915 to take part in the Gallipoli campaign . On 12 August 1915 one of these, piloted by Flight Commander Charles Edmonds ,
3555-574: The country's war of independence. On May 26, 1877, the craft Rândunica sank the Ottoman river monitor Seyfi on the Danube . French admiral Courbet made good use of two spar torpedo boats at the Battle of Fuzhou on August 23, 1884, which sank the flagship of the Chinese Fujian Fleet - corvette Yangwu and a gunboat Fuxing . It showed that spar torpedoes can be effective against ships at anchor, not protected by torpedo nets and without
3634-520: The early modern period up to the late 19th century. In the early 17th century, the Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel , in the employ of King James I of England , invented the spar torpedo; he attached explosives to the end of a beam affixed to one of his submarines. These were used (to little effect) during the English expeditions to La Rochelle in 1626. The first use of a torpedo by a submarine
3713-567: The early years of the war, primarily in the Pacific Theater . One possible exception to the pre-war neglect of torpedo development was the 45-cm caliber, 1931-premiered Japanese Type 91 torpedo , the sole aerial torpedo ( Koku Gyorai ) developed and brought into service by the Japanese Empire before the war. The Type 91 had an advanced PID controller and jettisonable, wooden Kyoban aerial stabilizing surfaces which released upon entering
3792-535: The explosive charges with which he outfitted his submarine Nautilus . However, both the French and the Dutch governments were uninterested in the submarine. Fulton then concentrated on developing the torpedo-like weapon independent of a submarine deployment, and in 1804 succeeded in convincing the British government to employ his 'catamaran' against the French. An April 1804 torpedo attack on French ships anchored at Boulogne, and
3871-403: The factory was exporting torpedoes to ten other countries. The torpedo was powered by compressed air and had an explosive charge of gun-cotton . Whitehead went on to develop more efficient devices, demonstrating torpedoes capable of 18 knots (33 km/h) in 1876, 24 knots (44 km/h) in 1886, and, finally, 30 knots (56 km/h) in 1890. Royal Navy (RN) representatives visited Rijeka for
3950-477: The first practical guided missile was patented by Louis Brennan , an emigre to Australia, in 1877. It was designed to run at a consistent depth of 12 feet (3.7 m), and was fitted with an indicator mast that just broke the surface of the water. At night the mast had a small light, only visible from the rear. Two steel drums were mounted one behind the other inside the torpedo, each carrying several thousand yards of high-tensile steel wire. The drums connected via
4029-452: The ineffectiveness of the Molch in combat operations, it was later used as a training vessel for more advanced midget submarines. Torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, such
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#17328593147744108-525: The invention and refinement of torpedoes from the 1860s onwards allowed small torpedo boats and other lighter surface vessels , submarines / submersibles , even improvised fishing boats or frogmen , and later light aircraft , to destroy large ships without the need of large guns, though sometimes at the risk of being hit by longer-range artillery fire. Modern torpedoes are classified variously as lightweight or heavyweight; straight-running, autonomous homers, and wire-guided types. They can be launched from
4187-407: The land that had been dismissed by the naval authorities due to the impractical steering and propulsion mechanisms. In 1866, Whitehead invented the first effective self-propelled torpedo, the eponymous Whitehead torpedo , the first modern torpedo. French and German inventions followed closely, and the term torpedo came to describe self-propelled projectiles that traveled under or on water. By 1900,
4266-517: The loss of ten out of the twelve Molch submarines in the flotilla. Shortly after, the remaining two were sunk by Allied warship bombardment off the Sanremo coast. Other Molch flotillas were sent to the Netherlands in December 1944, but were also unsuccessful. From January to April 1945, Molch and Biber submarines went out on 102 sorties, losing seventy of their own and sank only seven small ships. Due to
4345-451: The mid 19th century. Ultimately this line of development led to the dreadnought category of all-big-gun battleships, starting with HMS Dreadnought . Although these ships were incredibly powerful, the new weight of armor slowed them down, and the huge guns needed to penetrate that armor fired at very slow rates. The development of torpedoes allowed for the possibility that small and fast vessels could credibly threaten if not sink even
4424-422: The most powerful battleships. While such attacks would carry enormous risks to the attacking boats and their crews (which would likely need to expose themselves to artillery fire which their small vessels were not designed to withstand) this was offset by the ability to construct large numbers of small vessels far more quickly and for a much lower unit cost compared to a capital ship. The first boat designed to fire
4503-423: The night of 12/13 August 1942 during Operation Pedestal . Destroyers of all navies were also armed with torpedoes to attack larger ships. In the Battle off Samar , destroyer torpedoes from the escorts of the American task force "Taffy 3" showed effectiveness at defeating armor. Damage and confusion caused by torpedo attacks were instrumental in beating back a superior Japanese force of battleships and cruisers. In
4582-657: The operator sat the electric motor. The complicated system of tanks made it difficult to control during combat operations. The first of 393 boats were delivered on June 12, 1944, and were built by AG Weser in Bremen . The Molch were first used in the Mediterranean against the Allied " Operation Dragoon " in 1944. The submarines were a part of the K-Verband 411 flotilla. On the night of September 25 they attacked Allied battleships, with
4661-625: The problems. In the United States Navy (USN), there was an extended wrangle over the problems plaguing the Mark 14 torpedo (and its Mark 6 exploder ). Cursory trials had allowed bad designs to enter service. Both the Navy Bureau of Ordnance and the United States Congress were too busy protecting their interests to correct the errors, and fully functioning torpedoes only became available to
4740-493: The self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was HMS Lightning , completed in 1877. The French Navy followed suit in 1878 with Torpilleur No 1 , launched in 1878 though she had been ordered in 1875. The first torpedo boats were built at the shipyards of Sir John Thornycroft and gained recognition for their effectiveness. At the same time, inventors were working on building a guided torpedo. Prototypes were built by John Ericsson , John Louis Lay , and Victor von Scheliha, but
4819-427: The self-propelled torpedo was created on a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis , an Austro-Hungarian naval officer from Rijeka (modern-day Croatia ), at the time a port city of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Robert Whitehead , an English engineer who was the manager of a town factory. In 1864, Luppis presented Whitehead with the plans of the Salvacoste ("Coastsaver"), a floating weapon driven by ropes from
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#17328593147744898-414: The shore to be destroyed". The fact that Hardy had been previously so lenient and considerate to the Americans led them to abandon such attempts with immediate effect. Torpedoes were used by the Russian Empire during the Crimean War in 1855 against British warships in the Gulf of Finland . They used an early form of chemical detonator. During the American Civil War , the term torpedo was used for what
4977-428: The start of World War II. Around this time too the Royal Navy were perfecting the Brotherhood burner cycle engine which offered a performance as good as the oxygen-enriched air engine but without the issues arising from the oxygen equipment and which was first used in the extremely successful and long-lived 21 in. Mk. VIII torpedo of 1925. This torpedo served throughout WW II (with 3,732 being fired by September 1944) and
5056-437: The target. Fiske reported in 1915 that, using this method, enemy fleets could be attacked within their harbors if there was enough room for the torpedo track. Meanwhile, the Royal Naval Air Service began actively experimenting with this possibility. The first successful aerial torpedo drop was performed by Gordon Bell in 1914 – dropping a Whitehead torpedo from a Short S.64 seaplane . The success of these experiments led to
5135-431: The tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin under the command of Stepan Osipovich Makarov during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 . In another early use of the torpedo, during the War of the Pacific , the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar commanded by captain Miguel Grau attacked the Chilean corvette Abtao on 28 August 1879 at Antofagasta with a self-propelled Lay torpedo only to have it reverse course. The ship Huascar
5214-435: The term no longer included mines and booby-traps as the navies of the world added submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers to their fleets. Whitehead was unable to improve the machine substantially, since the clockwork motor, attached ropes, and surface attack mode all contributed to a slow and cumbersome weapon. However, he kept considering the problem after the contract had finished, and eventually developed
5293-485: The time was to use torpedoes, launched from submarines or warships, against enemy warships in a fleet action on the high seas. There were concerns torpedoes would be ineffective against warships' heavy armor; an answer to this was to detonate torpedoes underneath a ship, badly damaging its keel and the other structural members in the hull, commonly called "breaking its back". This was demonstrated by magnetic influence mines in World War I. The torpedo would be set to run at
5372-505: The tug. Without the weight of the torpedo Dacre was able to take off and return to Ben-My-Chree . Torpedoes were widely used in World War I , both against shipping and against submarines. Germany disrupted the supply lines to Britain largely by use of submarine torpedoes, though submarines also extensively used guns. Britain and its allies also used torpedoes throughout the war. U-boats themselves were often targeted, twenty being sunk by torpedo. Two Royal Italian Navy torpedo boats scored
5451-402: The value of the torpedo and in spring 1883 an experimental station was established at Garrison Point Fort , Sheerness , on the River Medway , and a workshop for Brennan was set up at the Chatham Barracks , the home of the Royal Engineers. Between 1883 and 1885 the Royal Engineers held trials and in 1886 the torpedo was recommended for adoption as a harbor defense torpedo. It was used throughout
5530-421: The water, making it a formidable anti-ship weapon; Nazi Germany considered manufacturing it as the Luftorpedo LT 850 after August 1942 . The Royal Navy's 24.5-inch oxygen-enriched air torpedo saw service in the two Nelson class battleships although by World War II the use of enriched oxygen had been discontinued due to safety concerns. In the final phase of the action against Bismarck , Rodney fired
5609-493: Was 18 in (46 cm) in diameter and 19 ft (5.8 m) long, made of polished steel or phosphor bronze , with a 200-pound (91 kg) gun-cotton warhead. It was propelled by a three-cylinder Brotherhood radial engine, using compressed air at around 1,300 psi (9.0 MPa ) and driving two contra-rotating propellers, and was designed to self-regulate its course and depth as far as possible. By 1881, nearly 1,500 torpedoes had been produced. Whitehead also opened
5688-514: Was a mechanism consisting of a hydrostatic valve and pendulum that caused the torpedo's hydroplanes to be adjusted to maintain a preset depth. After the Austrian government decided to invest in the invention, Whitehead started the first torpedo factory in Rijeka. In 1870, he improved the devices to travel up to approximately 1,000 yards (910 m) at a speed of up to 6 knots (11 km/h), and by 1881
5767-590: Was in 1775, by the American Turtle , which attempted to lay a bomb with a timed fuse on the hull of HMS Eagle during the American Revolutionary War , but failed in the attempt. In the early 1800s, the American inventor Robert Fulton , while in France, "conceived the idea of destroying ships by introducing floating mines under their bottoms in submarine boats". He employed the term "torpedo" for
5846-430: Was mounted at the end of a spar up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long projecting forward underwater from the bow of the attacking vessel, which would then ram the opponent with the explosives. These were used by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley to sink USS Housatonic although the weapon was apt to cause as much harm to its user as to its target. Rear Admiral David Farragut 's famous/apocryphal command during
5925-447: Was not employed against Confederate targets, but was used to clear wreckage from rivers.) Spar torpedoes were also used on small wooden launches in the late 19th century, although they were not very useful weapons. The locomotive torpedo (the contemporary term for the modern self-propelled torpedo ) replaced the spar torpedo as a weapon for submarines and small boats in the 1870s. Spar torpedoes were also used by Romanian forces during
6004-464: Was reported to have first used the term as the name of a submarine of his own design, the "American Turtle or Torpedo." This usage likely inspired Robert Fulton 's use of the term to describe his stationary mines , and later Robert Whitehead 's naming of the first self-propelled torpedo. Torpedo-like weapons were first proposed many centuries before they were successfully developed. For example, in 1275, Arab engineer Hasan al-Rammah – who worked as
6083-541: Was saved when an officer jumped overboard to divert it. The Chilean ironclad Blanco Encalada was sunk on 23 April 1891 by a self-propelled torpedo from the Almirante Lynch , during the Chilean Civil War of 1891 , becoming the first ironclad warship sunk by this weapon. The Chinese turret ship Dingyuan was purportedly hit and disabled by a torpedo after numerous attacks by Japanese torpedo boats during
6162-484: Was set upon by 17 torpedo-firing warships, ten of which were destroyers and four torpedo boats. Twenty-one torpedoes were launched at the pre-dreadnought , and three struck home, one fired from the destroyer Murasame and two from torpedo boats No. 72 and No. 75 . The flagship slipped under the waves shortly thereafter, taking over 900 men with her to the bottom. On December 9, 1912, the Greek submarine "Dolphin" launched
6241-471: Was the first aircraft in the world to attack an enemy ship with an air-launched torpedo. On 17 August 1915 Flight Commander Edmonds torpedoed and sank an Ottoman transport ship a few miles north of the Dardanelles. His formation colleague, Flight Lieutenant G B Dacre, was forced to land on the water owing to engine trouble but, seeing an enemy tug close by, taxied up to it and released his torpedo, sinking
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