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

GERMAN DESIGNS

Bayern was still undergoing trials when the Battle of Jutland occurred in May — June 1916, but she was available for the next major event, Operation Albion. During this operation she struck a mine that flooded the forward beam torpedo room and she withdrew to a local port, where she was given a poorly constructed cofferdam which failed during her transit back to Germany. Based on inaccurate evaluations of the damage in a brief to the Kaiser, he made the decision to have the forward beam torpedo tubes removed from Bayern and her sister.

The early German dreadnought SMS Ostfriesland was ceded to the USA at the end of the Great War. Before she was expended in Billy Mitchell’s controversial aerial bombing experiments, she was dry-docked in the New York Navy Yard in October 1921 for study of her underwater hull features. At the same time the opportunity was taken to record various features on film, as shown in the following sequence of photos, all kindly provided by Tom Tanner of Lothian, Maryland.

During the Second World War, the underwater torpedo tube once more came into fashion, this time for concealment, on the disguised German auxiliary cruisers. HSK Kormoran, sunk in the mutually fatal battle with HMAS Sydney, was fitted with a torpedo tube at deck level on each beam, concealed behind a falling flap, but she also had two underwater broadside tubes, one of which was discovered and photographed when her wreck was found.

^{The first torpedo battleship design, dated 24 May 1912. This was to have displaced 30,000 tons, with a top speed of 27 knots, to be armed with six 14in guns in two triple turrets, plus sixteen 6in anti-TB armament, and eight 21in underwater torpedo tubes. With 71/2in (190mm) belt armour, they were protected on the scale of the early RN battlecruisers, and would have proved equally vulnerable in the coming conflict.}

^{The second torpedo battleship design study dated 31 May 1915. This kept the displacement at 30,000 tons, the speed at 27 knots, and the secondary armament at sixteen 6in guns, but shed one main armament triple turret in exchange for thicker armour up to 10in (254mm) on the belt, and an increased torpedo armament of twelve 21in underwater torpedo tubes.}

^{The third torpedo battleship study dated 31 May 1912. Again with a displacement of 30,000 tons, 27 knots and sixteen 6in anti-TB guns, but this one dispensed with the big guns completely, in exchange for belt armour up to 13in (330mm) thick and two underwater torpedo batteries with a total of eighteen 21in tubes.}

^{Fourth torpedo battleship design dated 15 August 1912. The final design study went to different extremes, at 35,000 tons and 30 knots, mounting a single quadruple 14in turret forward, no less than forty 3in anti-TB guns and sixteen 21in torpedo tubes, protected by a belt with a maximum thickness of 14in (356mm).}

^{The substantial reinforcement around the bow torpedo tube, and a close-up view of the mouthpiece from the front. The clumsy fitting cannot have helped hydrodynamic flow. The narrowness of the bow structure would not have permitted any training, so angled launching would have relied on setting the torpedo gyro just as for a broadside launch.}

^{Forward starboard torpedo tube mouthpiece, clapper closed.}

^{The stern torpedo tube door, outlined in white paint for the photographic sequence. The photo hints at another serious disadvantage of these tubes. This one, with its reload torpedoes, is situated between the operating gear for the twin rudders, and any malfunction here could have had disastrous consequences.}

^{Two views of the forward starboard torpedo tube with clapper open and spoon extended, showing the top rack.}

^{Aft starboard mouthpiece, clapper closed.}

^{One of the underwater torpedo tubes inside the Ostfriesland’s broadside torpedo flats.}

^{HSK Kormoran’s starboard submerged torpedo tube. (Photo held by the Australian War Memorial)}

CHAPTER 13 Submarine Torpedo Launching Gear

From early in the twentieth century, submarines have laid mines; by their very secretive nature they are the perfect minelayers, even though submariners would also suffer cruelly at the hands of enemy mines and, all too often, the mines they themselves were laying. In more modern times, submarines have been converted and built to fire missiles, and today the ‘boomers’ have taken on the role of the modern capital ship. But for submarines, their most successful weapon is, of course, the torpedo. In fact, it is safe to say that the development of the reliable torpedo made viable the development of the workable submarine, which up till then had lacked a practical weapon. The lethal combination of the torpedo and the submarine came close to winning two world wars for Germany, they made a major contribution to the defeat of Japan, and still today they form a potent combination.

AUSTRIAN SUBMARINE TUBES

During the Great War, Austrian submarines carried three calibres of torpedo, the 53.3cm (21in) Whitehead, the 50cm (19.7in) German Schwartzlose, and the 45cm (17.7in) Whitehead. One Austro-Hungarian submarine was also fitted with trainable torpedo drop collars, but that was because she was the former French submarine Curie, lost on 20 December 1914 when she became entangled in the anti-submarine net defending Pola harbour. Raised on 31 January 1915 she was repaired and entered service with the Austro-Hungarian fleet as U 14.

RUSSIAN SUBMARINE DROP COLLARS

Early Russian submarines launched their torpedoes from external drop collars invented by Stefan Drzewiecki, a Polish engineer working for the Russian navy (at the time, of course, Poland was still part of the Russian empire). For submarines, the drop collar offered certain advantages. It was much lighter than the bronze torpedo tube, but also, being completely external to the boat, it had no watertight doors front and rear. Therefore there was no hazard of door failure caused by depth-charge attack or diving deep, or of accidental flooding due to faults with, or lack of, door interlocks. Most importantly, when launching submerged it gave away no tell-tale compressed air bubbles, the launch procedure being limited to setting the desired gyro angle, pivoting the collars into the release position, starting the torpedo motor and at the same time releasing the grip of the collars. Finally, as there was no tube to flood and empty, the submarine’s trim was affected only by the loss of weight of the launched torpedo itself.

These advantages led the Russians to make extensive use of the drop collar. There were, however, some serious drawbacks: as the torpedo was carried externally, virtually no maintenance could be carried out on it at sea. This question would seem to have been mainly theoretical, since the Royal Navy increased the salvo firepower of its ‘T’-class boats during the Second World War by adding external torpedo tubes fore and aft. The US Navy also upped the torpedo salvoes of its submarine cruisers Narwhal and Nautilus by adding external tubes under the gun deck.