Torpedo: The Complete History of the World's Most Revolutionary Naval Weapon

In 1900 the Obry itself was further improved by the introduction of servo actuation of its control impulses, thereby preserving the energy in the spinning gyro right out to the torpedo’s maximum range, avoiding the risk of it toppling. Later models were started by air blast, running up to operating speed within a fraction of a second, which avoided the brief delay in the gyro taking over control of the torpedo’s direction, sometimes the cause of deviations when fired from broadside tubes of a vessel at speed.

The Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport holds 18in Whitehead torpedo № 1274. The body of the torpedo is in phosphor-bronze, which shows that not only Schwartzkopff torpedoes were manufactured in that materiaclass="underline" it was a slightly more expensive option in the Fiume catalogue.

^{An early spring-operated Obry gyroscope on display in Rijeka. (Photo courtesy of Erwin Sieche)}

^{An 18in sectioned Whitehead from 1905 with blunt nose, in the Vienna Military Museum. Note the eccentric filling of the warhead, to lower the centre of gravity and help keep the weapon upright. (Photo courtesy of Mr Peter Enne)}

In around 1900 Fiume completed an order from the Japanese government for a massive 27.5in torpedo, and then in 1905 they ordered a series of 24in torpedoes for coastal defence installations such as those situated at Go-Saki and Ko-Saki on Tsushima. These large Fiume torpedoes were the first of a series of 24in heavyweight torpedoes such as the naval versions of 1919, part of a development trend which would lead to the Type 93, popularly known as the ‘Long Lance’.

^{A range of Austro-Hungarian Whitehead torpedoes built at Fiume, up to a 6m model for coastal defence batteries — note the Royal Laboratories-style tail on the latter. (Drawing courtesy of Mr Peter Schupita)}

^{The Fiume factory in full production towards the end of the nineteenth century. (Photo courtesy of Erwin Sieche)}

^{Another view inside the Fiume factory about 1905. The gentleman in a frock coat, centre left, is almost certainly a Japanese client, come to view the 24in torpedoes Japan ordered from Fiume for coastal defence. The warhead on the left can be compared with the standard 18in model in the centre. The huge torpedo body itself can be seen on the bench to the right.}

The next major improvement had to wait until 1905 when the first ‘heater’ torpedo was introduced. Engineers had long known of the beneficial effects of using the surrounding seawater to avoid the compressed air freezing as it was fed to the motor. Applying this principle to burning a fuel with the injected compressed air vastly improved the motor’s efficiency, giving startling increases in torpedo range and speed. Three years later the first 21in torpedo was introduced, still a popular size today, as it allows for a large capacity warhead. The modern torpedo had arrived in time for the Great War.

Meanwhile, Robert Whitehead had passed away in 1905, at the age of eighty-two. The weapon he had perfected was about to prove its worth in dramatic ways.

SCHWARTZKOPFF

The Schwartzkopff torpedo was indubitably a copy, and a pirated one at that. It must have amused Tirpitz to have chosen a German engineer whose name in German translates as ‘Blackhead’ to copy the Whitehead. The French were playing the same game at the same time, refusing to pay royalties to Mr Snider in England for copying his breech-loading conversion of a muzzle-loading rifle, claiming that their own almost identical version had been designed at the very same time by a ‘Monsieur Schneider’.

However, at the time when the set of plans of one of the latest Whitehead models disappeared from the Fiume draughting office — when by coincidence a respected Berlin industrialist named Herr Louis Schwartzkopff just happened to be staying as a guest at the Whitehead family home — Robert Whitehead had still not patented any of his inventions.

^{Schwartzkopff torpedo on display at Explosion. (Photo by the author, courtesy of Explosion, the Museum of Naval Firepower)}

A year after his visit Schwartzkopff began to manufacture his own torpedoes which, in the opinion of one contemporary British observer, were a very close copy of the Whitehead. To be fair, anyone who wanted to produce a workable torpedo at that time would have been obliged to build one which closely resembled the extremely successful Whitehead. There was one obvious difference: the body of the Schwartzkopff was made from phosphor-bronze, and whereas a Whitehead made of steel required careful cleaning after each test run to avoid rusting, the phosphor-bronze body of the Schwartzkopff did not rust. This advantage did not last long, because very soon the enterprising Mr Whitehead was offering in his sales catalogue versions of his popular models in steel or phosphor-bronze. On the other hand a Schwartzkopff cost significantly more than a Whitehead. They were listed at £450 when the current Whitehead model retailed at £320. It was no wonder that Tirpitz did not allow the German navy to be tied to just one private supplier, but decided to set up a state torpedo factory.

In the annual report of the torpedo school for 1884 there was an interesting article on the Schwartzkopff. Lieutenant Egerton of HMS Vernon and Mr Marston, chief engineer at the torpedo school, had paid a visit to the works in Berlin and seen tests of new torpedoes. The brand new torpedoes were first charged to an air pressure of 50 atmospheres (735psi), and were run for 200m (218yds) at a depth of 3m (10ft). They were recovered, recharged to 50 atmospheres and their rudders realigned for a second run under the same conditions. For the third run they were charged to 80 atmospheres (1175psi) and set to run at a target at 400m (436yds) range, following which their rudders were once more adjusted. For the fourth run, the air vessels were taken to their normal pressure of 90 atmospheres (1323psi), and once again the torpedo was aimed at the 400m target.

^{General section and plan view of the US Navy’s Schwartzkopff model of 1898. (From the maintenance manual issued in 1903)}

Before delivery to the customer, each Schwartzkopff torpedo would have been test run between fourteen and eighteen times. In the tests observed by the visitors, the Schwartzkopff torpedoes kept to a uniform depth, scarcely varying more than a decimetre (4in) above or below the set depth.

Even the Royal Navy purchased a batch of Schwartzkopffs when the Fiume and British factories were temporarily unable to meet their requirements. It is likely the fine example on display in the torpedo gallery at Explosion came from this batch.

In 1898 the US Navy purchased twelve Schwartzkopff torpedoes to compare them with the contemporary Whitehead models being produced under licence by Bliss. A manual was issued in 1903 but, significantly, no further orders were forthcoming.

From the sectioned drawing of the US Navy Schwartzkopff, it is clear that the torpedo has all the items one would expect to find in a Whitehead of the period, but arranged differently. The nose whiskers of the exploder, for example, do not unscrew as the torpedo passes through the water in order to arm the exploder; they are merely contact horns, and the safety device is an internal shear pin. Furthermore, Schwartzkopff had not yet copied Whitehead’s revised layout with the depth-keeping mechanism behind the air flask, avoiding the need to run the control connections through the flask. The gyro used on the Schwartzkopff was a model invented by Kaselowski, but it worked in a similar way to Obry’s gyro.