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http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/ says the following "All information on this site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested" so should be OK. Robneild 09:22, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents 1 Pounds per Square Inch? 2 picture 3 conflict of info 4 Near miss really a near miss? 5 Calibers 6 Specifications 7 Design issues 8 Launch methods 9 Clarity? 9.1 Hydrogen Peroxide 9.2 Hot run? 9.3 Clarification of Effect of Detonation Beneath the Target (as opposed to Impacting the Target) 10 Whitehead 10.1 Mark? 11 bad writing 11.1 proposed rewrite 11.2 organisational problems 11.2.1 Damn the torpedoes? 11.3 diameter german Torpedoes 11.4 arabs and their torpedoes= 11.5 adding more 11.6 The Turtle's Attack on the Eagle 11.7 Guidance 11.8 submarines 11.9 Initbah sinking

[edit] Pounds per Square Inch?

In the History section, in the 6th paragraph down, it says:

"The air was compressed to around 1,300 lb/in² (9 MPa)"

Isn't compressed air measured in pounds per cubic inch rather than square inch? If I'm wrong, lemme know, otherwise, just replace the exponent 2 with an exponent 3. Phil 09:52, 23 May 2005 (CDT)

pounds per square inch is pressure, pounders per cubic inch would be a (strange) density measurement. I'd dump the MPa and stick with Bar or Atmospheres for better understanding, only engineers and scientists think in Pascals.

[edit] picture

Shouldn't the first image on this page be a picture of a torpedo, not an explosion resulting from one? Night Gyr 06:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] conflict of info

This article conflicts in some places , (use of self propelled torpedo) with torpedo boat.

Can you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean. --Joy [shallot]

PS what happened to the etymology ? GraemeLeggett 11:43, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That was due to vandalism, I've reverted it now. --Joy [shallot] 16:43, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Near miss really a near miss?

The picture of torpedo near miss looks much more like a torpedo launch from a torpedo boat to me. The stern visible is clearly a torpedo boat, which wouldn't be a target anyway, and wouldn't play chicken with torpedoes. I suspect the picture is taken from a torpedo boat just after it has launched one of it's own torpedoes, and the picture description was either changed to make it "sexier", or someone who saw the picture with no description mistook a launch for a dodge. Should the description be changed?

Additionally, torpedoes in WWI already had depth controls, and wouldn't travel on the surface, which also wouls suggest this torpedo has only just been launched and hasn't dived to it's run depth yet.--GNiko 22:25, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Calibers

The calibers (diameters) of early Whitheads should be included; every source on early torpedo development I've ever seen does... Trekphiler 17:14, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Specifications

The article says:

"The air was compressed to around 1,300 lb/in² (approx 90 atmospheres) and drove two propellers through a three cylinder Brotherhood engine. Considerable effort was taken in trying to ensure that the torpedo self-regulated its course and depth."

Why do I care it was 90 atmospheres? What was the fuel? (I'd guess ethanol.) And what was the "considerable effort"? Depth sensor? Gyro? A variety of elevator? (Actually, all would be used eventually.) More detail is in order.

In addition, I've corrected the use of "magnetic trigger" or "detonator"; the term is exploder. Trekphiler 17:48, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Design issues

The article said:

"The strategic thinking of the US Navy was that enemy capital ships (warships) would be the primary targets of US submarines, in a classic fleet action on the high seas. The idea of targeting enemy merchant shipping was considered inappropriate, more akin to piracy. Due to the heavy armor of enemy warships, there was concern that the torpedoes of that time would be ineffective. The potential solution to this was magnetic triggers which would cause the torpedoes to detonate in the water beneath a ship, instead of striking the side of a ship on its armor. In principle, this was the correct approach, as modern torpedoes function in this manner. An explosion below a ship causes the formation of a gas bubble, and the ship then splits in two as the lightly armored bottom of the ship is not supported over the bubble and falls into it. For this approach to function, the torpedo has to be set deep enough to run below the ship, and the magnetic trigger has to activate at the correct time.

This was tested many times before the war with success, but in practice it was a failure. Merchant shipping did not have the metal mass needed to activate the magnetic trigger, variations in the earth's magnetic field caused problems, and the depth controllers on torpedoes were faulty, resulting in the torpedo running too deep to pick up the magnetic field of the ship above. Live warheads were heavier than test warheads, causing problems with the depth setting. Sometimes the magnetic trigger was too sensitive, resulting in the torpedo exploding before it reached the target. The result was a long dispute between the front-line submariners who complained of the problems, and the US Navy Bureau of Ordinance which insisted their tests showed that the torpedoes worked and the failures were due to poor aiming by the submarine commanders. Some commanders ignored orders, and disabled the magnetic triggers once they were out on patrol.

Finally the US Navy realized there was a problem, and ordered the torpedoes to use contact fuses only. This also caused problems, as the contact fuzes of US Navy torpedoes would not detonate with straight-on, but only at an angle, while those of the German navy had directly the opposite problem. The Royal Navy had problems as well. Only after some imaginative field testing in Hawaii revealed the problem with the contact triggers was the problem solved, after two years of lost opportunities."

I've rewritten it, as well as the vague note on German depth-keeping gear, which is related. Trekphiler 17:48, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Launch methods

I've rewritten this:

"Torpedoes are most commonly launched in one of four ways:

• From the deck-mounted torpedo launcher of a vessel on the surface.
• From a torpedo tube mounted either below the waterline of a vessel on the surface, or on a submarine."

Deck-mounted launchers are torpedo tubes, unless it means the shackles or drop collars used by USN PT boats (which isn't clear), or the drop collars used by (some) early submarines, which were named for their Polish inventor (& which should thus have been named). Moreover, not all torpedo tubes were below the w/l or on deck... Trekphiler 19:04, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

What about the launch methods employed by the CAPTOR mine?

ASROC, Ikara, naval fortresses etc GraemeLeggett 08:48, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarity?

I've reread my previous edit on merchatmen & rules of war, & realized, the rules only applied to unarmed merchies. W/o getting into the intricacies of the Hague Con & the London Treaty, anybody want to take on explaining? Or do we need a page, or link, or something, to elucidate? I only know, I can't do it as succinctly as the article calls for... Trekphiler 12:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hydrogen Peroxide

Under the propulsion section of this article I don’t see any mention of hydrogen peroxide being used as a propellant. I know it was used for a while and it is even mentioned on the page for hydrogen peroxide. However, I feel I don’t know enough information about it’s use to make a change to the article.

Russian_submarine_Kursk_explosion Peroxide was the assumed cause of this, platinum catalyst splits it into steam and oxygen gas to drive turbines

[edit] Hot run?

What exactly is a "hot run" on a torpedo? Should this info be included somewhere in the article?

It absolutely should be, so if anybody's got a copy of (or access to) Holmes' Undersea Victory, or perhaps Grider's War Fish or O'Kane's Wahoo, there's a good, citable explanation in one of them. From memory, it's an accidental start of a torpedo engine in a (usually dry) tube, which causes massive engine overheating & hi risk of explosion when the heat sets off the warhead; it's also known to happen in flooded tubes, which are being prepared for firing. (I may be biasing this; my recollection is, most hot runs are in dry tubes, but I haven't any stats to support it, assuming any exist.) Edward J. Richardson, Captain, USN, rtd. 23:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification of Effect of Detonation Beneath the Target (as opposed to Impacting the Target)

Just a quick poll for consensus regarding the section:

The potential solution to this was a magnetic exploder which would cause the torpedoes to detonate beneath a ship, breaking its back. This had been demonstrated by magnetic influence mines in World War One. (In principle, this was correct; modern torpedoes function in this manner. An explosion below a ship causes the formation of a gas bubble, and the unsupported hull splits and falls into it.)

From my understanding of explosives and physics, the section "..causes the formation of a gas bubble, and the unsupported hull splits and falls into it." doesn't quite sound right. My understanding is that, when the charge detonates below the target vessel, there is the initial shockwave (Brisance) which could possibly cause structural damage to the target. This is then followed by what is sometimes referred to as the "heave" (can't find references for that), which is the expansion of the gaseous byproducts of the explosion and the heated/expanded surrounding material (gas or liquid). And, from the images I have seen of torpedo tests, it is the upward force of the heave (which is focused due to the density of the water and the gases, causing it to blow almost directly upwards) which seems to have, at least the most obvious effect on the target vessel.

From my reading of the above quoted passage, the author is suggesting that the explosive causes a void below the vessel which it falls into causing it to split up. I think that the opposite, if anything is true. That the explosion beneath the target forces the section above the explosion upwards quite violently and, due to the structure of the vessel, and the localisation of that force, it's "back" is then broken (normally causing the catastrophic failure of the ship and it's sinking, often in two parts).

Any views, suggestions, experts to correct me?

According to my understanding of the way torpedoes function, you're exactly correct. Because water is non-compressible, the explosion most certainly does not create gas bubble underneath that the ship falls into. Rather, the water focuses the entire explosion in the most compressible direction, the tin can directly above.

Before under-keel explosions could be reliably guaranteed, and torpedoes were expected to explode near or in contact with the side of a ship, the explosion could vent both upward and sideways into the ship, but not downward or to other sides. This is why the explosion of a torpedo or near-miss bomb is so devastating compared to a nearby above-water explosion, even though it is less destructive than an under-keel explosion. TomTheHand 17:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't find the "official" site of the HMAS Torrent sinking anymore, but this page: http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1448475.htm offers essentially the same physics explanation as that one did. Essentially, the ship _does_ "fall" into a bubble created by the explosion (or more accurately, the shrinking bubble sucks the ship in), causing the keel to bend in both directions. --GNiko 12:00, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Your reference seems to say that there are 5 stages, shockwave = first stage, compressed gas wave = second stage, falling into collapsing bubble = third stage, upward lifting high speed wall of water = fourth stage, a final "ram" of a wall of water and gas doing final destruction = fifth stage. Nice link! Carlw4514 14:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Whitehead

It is a little bit nationalized-history to say: The first real torpedo was developed in the mid 1800's in Europe by Mr Robert Whitehead, who created the "Whitehead Torpedo", ... by not telling anything about Ivan Lupis-Vukić, the man with whitch Whitehead worked together. Whitehead himself always insist on the priority of Ivan Lupis-Vukić and his basic ideas.--WerWil 21:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mark?

Why are torpedoes classified as "Mark" or "MK" (such as Mark-46, Mark-48, Mark-60)? How did this nomenclature arise? Does it refer to circumference or something? Thanks, Maikel 13:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

It's like a version number. See Mark (designation), though that article isn't that great. That doesn't mean that the Mark 48 is "two versions better" than the Mark 46, but rather that it was designed later. Not all marks actually enter service; no "Mark 47" entered service. The "Mark 47" may have been a paper study, may have had a prototype built and rejected, or may have been skipped for one reason or another. TomTheHand 15:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I wonder who issues these marks. It seems to be a US-American classification, there is also a Mark 77 bomb. Maikel 16:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bad writing

This section in etymology really is high school quality and well under what we expect of a encyclopaedia: "During the American Civil War a "torpedo" was usually a "contact mine" above water using a "demijohn" or a similar container that would float, and below water tethered to the bottom using a line and a weight holding the contact mine just below the surface to sink a ship. Former USN Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Virginian who ended up as a Commander in the Confederacy when Virginia (after Fort Sumter) and three other states joined the Confederacy due to Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to march on the South was the first to use torpedoes. Maury worked with underwater electrical "torpedoes" having worked with electricity under the sea in the laying of the Atlantic Cable aiding Cyrus West Field (August 1858 1st success from USA to Europe)."

The divergence into the political background of Maury's choice of uniform is just silly. Embedding it in a historical footnote merely compounds a poor choice. Malangthon 18:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] proposed rewrite

Here is a possible rewrite for the section above using only the information in this article:

Torpedos were used in the American Civil War. There the term "torpedo" denoted a floating "contact mine" floating at or near the water surface using an air-filled "demijohn" or a similar container. They might either float freely on the surface or were tethered to the bottom using a line and a weight holding the contact mine just below the surface. The torpedo would detonate when a ship struck it. To that extent they were not unlike land mines in that they were passive and were not propelled toward a target.

Former USN Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, who served as a Commander in the Confederacy, was probably the first to use torpedoes in the USA. Maury developed an underwater electrical "torpedoe". Maury’s technical background was extensive for his time. Working on electrical components and design, he had been instrumental in the laying of the Atlantic Cable while aiding Cyrus West Field (August 1858 1st success from USA to Europe). Malangthon 19:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] organisational problems

The overall organisation of this article is pretty rough. The etymology section overruns the history section and much of the information is either redundant or should be placed in the history section. Maury should be in the History section

The abbreviated treatment mention of Robert Whitehead is laughable whilst the US Civil War is the primary focus. This is a very asymmetrical article and the gaps are serious.

The time line is also erratic. The Arab’s use (all too brief a mention here) follows that in the US Civil War. The article should be divided into eras with subheadings for designs and concepts. As it is, it does not provide a readily coherent historical overview. Malangthon 19:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Concur. I'm inclined to breaking out all the non-SP material into separate articles w links out/back, but I'm not feeling as ambitious as I'd have to be to take on such a big project. Any takers? Trekphiler 07:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Damn the torpedoes?

I rewrote this

"A derivative of the compressed-air torpedo was the steam driven torpedo. It had to be fuelled with superheated steam from the boilers of the attacking vessel prior to launch. This was a disadvantage since it couldn't be stored ready to use."

to this

"A derivative of the compressed-air torpedo was the steam torpedo. Developed by Vickers Ltd, it mixed alcohol (first ethanol, later methanol) with compressed air in the combustion chamber, producing "steam". This increased speed, but produced a visible wake.^[1]"

and this

"Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope in 1890 to improve self-regulation of his designs. Whitehead's torpedoes came to be called the Devil's device."

to this

"Whitehead faced competition from the American Lieutenant Commander John A. Howell, whose own design, driven by flywheel, was simpler and cheaper. Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope in 1890 (ironiclly from Howell) to improve control of his designs, which came to be called the "Devil's device"."

I also deleted this

"Maury’s technical background was extensive for his time. Working on electrical components and design, he had been instrumental in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, completed in August 1858."

While interesting (and obviosly contributed by Malangthon), it's not on point. Trekphiler 07:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

rewrote

[edit] diameter german Torpedoes

The german Torpedoes had no 21 inch diameter. The construktion and fabrication was made in metrical size. They were made with 533 mm caliber (not 533,4 mm wich are 21 inch). Of course this is an adaption of the english torpedo standart, but saying it was a 21 inch torpedo is not correct.--WerWil 17:48, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] arabs and their torpedoes=

I believe it is an exageration to suppose this got much beyond the drawing board. The footnote refers to a webpage. I don't dispute they may have been the first to have the idea.

Carlw4514 18:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] adding more

this subject can definitely be expanded. I hope to add information about Confederate and WWII torpedoes. I'm a newbie and will have to figure out how much should go to a new article as opposed to here

Carlw4514 11:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Turtle's Attack on the Eagle

Contrary too popular belief, the HMS Eagle had not been fitted with a copper bottom by the time of the American revolution. The failure to penetrate the Eagle's hull is due to David Bushnell's failure to observe the third law of thermodynamics, that is each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Simply put every time, the Turtle attempted to drill into the hull of the Eagle, she pushed herself away with the same amount of force she used to push against the Eagle's hull. Danwild6 06:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guidance

We need a section on guidance. From memory:

• The Brennan Torpedo could be steered onto to its targets visually from a distance via its wires.
• In WW II the US experimented with frequency hopping radio controlled torpedoes using matching pairs of punched card rolls based on that of Player pianoes.
• Post war there was both passive and active acoustic homing torpedoes both with and without wire guidance, and this is the most common modern type of guidance.
• The Soviets made wake homing torpedos which homed in on the wake of target vessels.KTo288 00:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I got no takers on guidance so I'm being bold and had a go at it myself.KTo288 16:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] submarines

Were/are subs fitted with other weaponry exept torpedos since using them seems to have been a game of chance most times? deck guns?

 --Echosmoke 01:57, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Guns (the top ace of all time used nothing else), mines, Marines (landing raiders), midget submarines (does that count?), frogmen. Did I miss anything? Trekphiler 04:31, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Miss anything? How about last-ditch ramming attacks? Binksternet 06:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK, only Rich Richardson ever used it... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trekphiler (talk • contribs) 15:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Initbah sinking

The article says that the Initbah was sunk on the 16 Jan 1877 but elsewhere a date of 26/7 Jan 1878 is given and the Shah firing is said to be the first. Which is correct? Adresia (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 12:51, 2 February 2008 (UTC)