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101-524: Robert Whitehead (3 January 1823 – 14 November 1905) was an English engineer who was most famous for developing the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo . He was born in Bolton , England, the son of James Whitehead, a cotton-bleacher, and his wife Ellen Whitehead née Swift. He trained as an engineer and draughtsman, and attended the Mechanics' Institute, Manchester . His first professional employment

202-414: 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

303-478: 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 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

404-886: A UK manufacturing and test site in Portland Harbour, Dorset. When Whitehead retired, the Whitehead family sold the company to two large British armaments companies, Vickers and Armstrong-Whitworth . Thus the company remained under British control until the First World War. In 1915, the Whitehead company established one of its largest enterprises, the Hungarian Submarine Building Corporation (German: Ungarische Unterseebootsbau AG , or UBAG) in Rijeka. SM U-XX , SM U-XXI , SM U-XXII and SM U-XXIII type diesel-electric submarines were produced in Rijeka. Most of

505-431: 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

606-731: 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 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

707-514: A country house he had leased from Viscount Barrington . The couple's children include: Torpedo While the 19th-century battleship had evolved primarily with a view to engagements between armored warships with large-caliber guns , 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

808-624: 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,

909-604: 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

1010-524: 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

1111-576: A formulation of nitrocellulose colloided with ether and alcohol which was used as smokeless powder for naval artillery through the two World Wars. The Army adopted the Navy formulation in 1908 and began manufacture at Picatinny Arsenal . A factory was built in 1907 to manufacture steam torpedoes for the Navy. The torpedo factory became a major employer in the Newport area, as Rhode Island congressmen protected it from competition. The Torpedo Station designed

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1212-462: 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

1313-472: 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

1414-653: A part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. In 1992 Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Station (NUWES) at Keyport, Washington, became Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), Division Keyport. The station originated with realization that the only torpedo facility was on the Atlantic coast as the Navy increasingly began operating in the Pacific following the Spanish–American War . The Pacific Coast Torpedo Station

1515-580: 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

1616-627: 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

1717-537: 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

1818-595: 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

1919-584: 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

2020-501: 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,

2121-712: Is buried at the Parish Church of St Nicholas , Worth in Crawley , West Sussex. His epitaph reads "His fame was in all nations round about". Kozala Cemetery in Rijeka is home to the Whitehead Family Mausoleum. The Torpedo Research Vessel RMAS Whitehead (built by Scotts , launched 1970, sold 1993) was named in his honour. Whitehead married Frances Maria Johnson (1821–1883), daughter of James Johnson and Ann Boville He died in 1905 at Beckett Hall , Shrivenham , Berkshire,

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2222-420: Is now Division Newport. Those laboratories were themselves made up of consolidated older laboratories and facilities dating from World War I. In 1869, the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station was founded in Newport, Rhode Island on Goat Island , the site of Fort Wolcott which was built in 1702 and served as an Army fort from 1794 to 1835. During the 1890s, Charles Munroe and John Bernadou worked at Newport, patenting

2323-512: 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

2424-723: Is the United States Navy's full-spectrum research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and offensive and defensive weapons systems associated with undersea warfare. It is one of the corporate laboratories of the Naval Sea Systems Command . NUWC is headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island and has two major subordinate activities: Division Newport and Division Keyport in Keyport, Washington . NUWC also controls

2525-495: Is transmit and receive. The principle studies are in acoustic propagation, reverberations and ambient noise. Much of the work involved sonar suites for both submarines and surface vessels; however, other work ranged from improved periscopes, computing, combat control systems, and communications. Illustrating the wide variety of work are some examples: On 2 January 1992 a major consolidation of Navy laboratories resulted in NUSC becoming

2626-466: The American Civil War , the term torpedo was used for what 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

2727-573: 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

2828-558: 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

2929-607: 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

3030-569: 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

3131-530: 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

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3232-470: The Fox Island facility and Gould Island . It employs more than 4,400 civilian and military personnel, with budgets over $ 1 billion. The current entity is composed of many elements of Navy undersea research, particularly acoustics and acoustic systems with weapons research and development history dating to the 19th century. Two major laboratories, in Newport and New London composed the largest elements of what

3333-564: 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 . Naval Undersea Warfare Center The Naval Undersea Warfare Center ( NUWC )

3434-749: The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) directed reorganization of the Underwater Sound Laboratory at New London for peacetime operation consolidating the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory, which had focused on physics of underwater sound, surface ship sonar and weapons systems, in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the New London laboratory. After recruiting scientists from both efforts the new Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory

3535-805: The Pacific War . In July 1945 the Harvard facility's equipment and many of its personnel were moved to the new Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory, New London. NRL oversaw NUSL until turning over direction to the Bureau of Ships. Navy laboratories were reorganized in 1966 under Director of Naval Laboratories, Naval Material Command , to consolidate expertise and decrease competition among laboratories. The Bermuda Research Detachment , Tudor Hill Laboratory after formation of Naval Underwater Systems Center in 1970, and its Argus Island offshore tower and support/research vessel Erline were field detachments of NUSL. The laboratory

3636-620: 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

3737-724: 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

3838-674: The War of 1812 broke out, the Royal Navy established a blockade of the East Coast of 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

3939-529: 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

4040-496: 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

4141-536: 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

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4242-584: 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

4343-661: The Americans to cease using this "cruel and unheard-of warfare" or he would "order every house near 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

4444-735: 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

4545-458: The British government to employ his 'catamaran' against the French. An April 1804 torpedo attack on French ships anchored at Boulogne, and 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

4646-484: The Central Test and Evaluation Activity (CTEA), Fort Lauderdale, Florida. NUSC was the lead laboratory in partnership with eight North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nations to for the instrumented Azores Fixed Acoustic Range (AFAR) in the Azores based on Santa Maria Island . The range features three bottom fixed towers 124 ft (37.8 m) high by 43 ft (13.1 m) across set approximately in an equalateral triangle. Two towers are receive only and one

4747-485: The Chief, Bureau of Ships , now Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), April 10, 1941 request to the National Defense Research Committee to establish both an East and West coast antisubmarine warfare research laboratory. On July 1, 1941 the New London laboratory's establishment got approval with management by Columbia University for a wide range of antisubmarine warfare work including, passive sonar, ocean acoustics and recording of underwater sounds for that work. In 1944

4848-456: The Mark VI magnetic influence fuze for torpedoes during the 1920s. The Naval Torpedo Station researched and tested underwater weaponry through World Wars I and II, creating additional facilities on Rose Island , Fox Island , and Gould Island . In 1951, the station on Goat Island was reorganized: For the next 15 years, it was the Underwater Ordnance Station, and then the Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station until 1970. That year,

4949-402: The Naval Experimental Station at Fort Trumbull where physicists and engineers, including scientists from nearby universities, worked under the direction of the Special Board on Antisubmarine Devices. Though that laboratory had closed with the end of that war the same criteria and some of the same people advising made New London the logical place to site the East Coast laboratory in response to

5050-457: The Naval Material Command independent laboratories, Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory at New London and the Naval Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station (NUWS) at Newport, were administratively combined to form the Naval Underwater Systems Center (NUSC) with headquarters in Newport. The Bermuda Research Detachment, formed by NUSL in 1961, became the NUSC Tudor Hill Laboratory, a major field detachment on formation of NUSC in 1970. In July

5151-425: The Submarine Signal Company, manufacturer of submarine signals as navigation aids and active in underwater acoustics since establishment in 1901, the Western Electric Company and the General Electric Company . The companies, under naval supervision had established an acoustical research station at East Point, Nahant, Massachusetts . The Navy, under one of its officers involved in the corporate effort, established

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5252-490: 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

5353-452: 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

5454-421: The Underwater Sound Laboratory from New London, Conn. was combined with the Newport facility to form the Naval Underwater Systems Center or NUSC. In 1992, the command was reorganized as the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport. New London, Connecticut had been the site of World War I sound research since the establishment of the Naval Experimental Station there as a result of meetings between Navy and

5555-408: 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

5656-497: 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 ,

5757-452: 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

5858-403: 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

5959-422: The factory, in Fiume harbour bay. Gemse ' s commander, Frigate Lieutenant Count Georg Anton von Hoyos , later married Whitehead's daughter Alice. By 1870, Whitehead had managed to increase the torpedo's speed to 7 knots (13 km/h) and it could hit a target 700 yards (640 m) away. The torpedo was driven by a small reciprocating engine run by compressed air. Whitehead added two important features to

6060-477: 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

6161-399: The first self-propelled (locomotive) torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on 21 December 1866. The commission was impressed and the Austrian gunboat Gemse was adapted for launching torpedoes at the Schiavon shipyard in Fiume. The ship was equipped with a launching barrel, which was Whitehead's invention. More than 50 launch trials were performed in front of

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6262-425: 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 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,

6363-467: The heat and to the great discomfiture of their crews, kept their portholes shut to delay sinking if the ships were struck by torpedoes or mines. During Operation Weserübung in 1940, the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, the German heavy cruiser Blücher , already crippled by fire from shore batteries, was hit by two Whitehead torpedoes launched from fixed, shore-mounted tubes in Oscarsborg Fortress in Norway, and later sank. Whitehead's invention of

6464-433: The idea of destroying ships by introducing floating mines under their bottoms in submarine boats". He employed the term "torpedo" for 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

6565-448: The land. Whitehead and Luppis formed a partnership to perfect the torpedo as an effective weapon. Whitehead's initial torpedo experiments were conducted with the help of his 12-year-old son, John, and a workman, Annibale Ploech. They discarded Luppis' concept of shore launch and control for an unguided weapon launched from a ship on a straight line at the target which became known as the Whitehead torpedo . This resulted in Minenschiff ,

6666-451: 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

6767-480: The most modern products of that era. The Austrian Navy was a customer. In the early 1860s, Whitehead met engineer Giovanni Luppis , who had recently retired to Trieste from the Austrian Navy. Luppis had produced the first prototypes of a self-propelled torpedo in 1860, which he called the "coast saviour" ( Italian : Salvacoste ) ( Croatian : Spasilac obale ). Luppis' device was a low-profile surface boat, propelled by compressed air, and controlled by ropes from

6868-422: 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

6969-449: 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 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

7070-479: The next year the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) located in the Tongue of the ocean with the main facility on Andros Island , Bahamas, with a logistics component located at the Palm Beach International Airport became a detachment of NUSC. Among the smaller facilities and detachments were the underwater ranges at Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound , field activities at Seneca Lake Facility, New York, Dodge Pond at Niantic, Connecticut ,

7171-423: 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

7272-545: The plans of the Salvacoste ("Coastsaver"), a floating weapon driven by ropes from 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,

7373-564: 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

7474-493: 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

7575-482: 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

7676-502: 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

7777-643: 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

7878-435: 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

7979-537: 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

8080-454: The torpedo was a key development in naval history. Whitehead was a devout Christian and a supporter of the temperance movement . In the early 1880s, he gave £1000 to Agnes Weston , who was attempting to buy and repurpose two public houses in Devonport , expressing his hope that the gift "would knock a hole in one of them". He left his fortune to his granddaughter Agathe Whitehead . Whitehead

8181-501: The torpedo: Whitehead fiercely guarded his trade secrets; employees were often sworn to secrecy about the guidance mechanisms employed in his torpedoes. Though the product was promising, the torpedo did not produce profits for Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume , which went bankrupt in 1873. In 1875, Whitehead reorganised the company as Torpedo-Fabrik von Robert Whitehead – later Whitehead & Co., Societa in Azioni. In 1890 Whitehead opened

8282-556: 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

8383-572: 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

8484-476: 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

8585-536: 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 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

8686-422: The world's major navies took note of the development of this device by the late 1880s. Even the extremely reduced post- Civil War United States Navy was involved in torpedo development; and established a Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island , in 1870. The first vessel sunk by self-propelled torpedoes was the Turkish steamer Intibah , on 16 January 1878, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 . She

8787-493: 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

8888-465: 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

8989-714: Was at a shipyard in Toulon , France , for Philip Taylor & Sons , and then as a consultant engineer in Milan , Italy . He then moved to Trieste , on the Adriatic coast of Austria . Whitehead's work in Trieste was noticed by the owners of Fonderia Metalli , a metal foundry in the nearby city of Fiume (today Rijeka , Croatia ). In 1856, Whitehead became manager of the company, and changed its name to Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume (STF). STF produced marine steam boilers and engines, which were

9090-503: Was established on Puget Sound in 1914. In 1930 the name was changed to Naval Torpedo Station Keyport and in 1978 to Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Station. Keyport focused on torpedoes and other undersea weapons and in later decades undersea vehicles. Aside from the ranges at Keyport the station operated ranges in California and Hawthorne, Nevada and Hawaii. In the early 1940s a need for calibration and testing of sonar transducers

9191-416: Was established on March 1, 1945. Significant accomplishments during World War II included the development of greatly improved surface ship and submarine sonar systems, acoustic homing torpedoes , sonobuoys , and acoustic mines. This work contributed greatly to the success against U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic and the near-total destruction of the Imperial Japanese Navy and merchant fleets in

9292-527: 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 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

9393-522: Was hit by torpedoes launched from torpedo boats operating from the tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin under the command of Stepan Osipovich Makarov . Three naval actions during the late nineteenth century changed the world navies' perception of the torpedo: The risks of torpedoes to the ships that carried them were shown, however, at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba , in July 1898, when the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya

9494-866: Was met by establishing the Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory (USRL). It was headquartered in New York with two field stations. One was at Orlando, Florida and the other was at Mountain Lakes, New Jersey . All activities were transferred to Orlando after the war under the Office of Naval Research . In 1966 the organization was renamed the Underwater Sound Reference Detachment (USRD) until its closure in 1997. The functions were transferred to Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport, Underwater Sound Reference Division. The Orlando lab

9595-541: 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

9696-484: 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

9797-511: Was severely damaged by a shell hit that detonated one of her internally mounted bow torpedoes while it lay armed in its above-water tube. The USS Texas , which also fought in the battle, had its bow and stern tubes removed before the war under just such a concern. One of the major concerns of the US Navy in the Santiago campaign was Spanish torpedoes. All ships during the blockade of Santiago, despite

9898-471: 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

9999-518: Was the first instance in history when a torpedo boat sank its targets without also sinking. A prototype of 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

10100-472: Was the first warship to be sunk in 1862 by an electrically-detonated mine. Spar torpedoes were also used; an explosive device 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

10201-541: Was unique in that it was the only one in the Atlantic to be located adjacent to and have access to an operational Naval Facility of the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Research intensified during the Cold War , which was as much a technology race with the Soviets as it was an arms race. The Sound Lab's efforts were key to the further development of both submarine and anti-submarine warfare . On July 1, 1970

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