Torpedo boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes.
These were
The introduction of fast torpedo boats in the late 19th century was a serious concern to the era's naval strategists, introducing the concept of
Today, the old concept of a very small, fast, and cheap surface combatant with powerful offensive weapons is taken up by the "fast attack craft".
Spar torpedo boats
The
The David class of torpedo boats were steam powered with a partially enclosed hull. They were not true submarines but were semi-submersible; when ballasted, only the smokestack and few inches of the hull were above the water line. CSS Midge was a David-class torpedo boat. CSS Squib and CSS Scorpion represented another class of torpedo boats that were also low built but had open decks and lacked the ballasting tanks found on the Davids.
The Confederate torpedo boats were armed with spar torpedoes. This was a charge of powder in a waterproof case, mounted to the bow of the torpedo boat below the water line on a long spar. The torpedo boat attacked by ramming her intended target, which stuck the torpedo to the target ship by means of a barb on the front of the torpedo. The torpedo boat would back away to a safe distance and detonate the torpedo, usually by means of a long cord attached to a trigger.
In general, the Confederate torpedo boats were not very successful. Their low sides made them susceptible to swamping in high seas, and even to having their boiler fires extinguished by spray from their own torpedo explosions. Torpedo misfires (too early) and duds were common. In 1864, Union Navy Lieutenant
Self-propelled torpedo
A prototype self-propelled torpedo was created by a commission placed by
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 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
The first trials were not successful as the weapon was unable to maintain a course on a steady depth. After much work, Whitehead introduced his "secret" in 1868 which overcame this. It was a mechanism consisting of a hydrostatic valve and pendulum that caused the torpedo's hydroplanes to be adjusted so as to maintain a preset depth.
First torpedo boats
During the mid-19th century, the
At the same time, the weight of armour slowed the battleships, and the huge guns needed to penetrate enemy armour fired at very slow rates. This allowed for the possibility of a small and fast ship that could attack the battleships, at a much lower cost. The introduction of the torpedo provided a weapon that could cripple, or even sink, any battleship.
The first warship of any kind to carry self-propelled torpedoes was HMS Vesuvius of 1873. The first seagoing vessel designed to fire the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was HMS Lightning. The boat was built by John Thornycroft at Church Wharf in Chiswick for the Royal Navy. It entered service in 1876 and was armed with self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes.
As originally built, Lightning had two drop collars to launch torpedoes; these were replaced in 1879 by a single torpedo tube in the bow. She carried also two reload torpedoes amidships. She was later renamed Torpedo Boat No. 1.[1] The French Navy followed suit in 1878 with Torpilleur No 1, launched in 1878 though she had been ordered in 1875.
Another early such ship was the Norwegian warship HNoMS Rap, ordered from Thornycroft shipbuilding company, England, in either 1872 or 1873, and built at Thornycroft's shipyard at Church Wharf in Chiswick on the River Thames. Managing a speed of 14.5 knots (27 km/h), she was one of the fastest boats afloat when completed. The Norwegians initially planned to arm her with a spar torpedo, but this may never have been fitted. Rap was outfitted with launch racks for the new self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes in 1879.
Use in combat
In the late 19th century, many navies started to build torpedo boats 30 to 50 metres (98 to 164 ft) in length, armed with up to three torpedo launchers and small guns. They were powered by steam engines and had a maximum speed of 20 to 30 knots (37 to 56 km/h). They were relatively inexpensive and could be purchased in quantity, allowing mass attacks on fleets of larger ships. The loss of even a squadron of torpedo boats to enemy fire would be more than outweighed by the sinking of a capital ship.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 was the first great naval war of the 20th century.[2] It was the first practical testing of the new steel battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and torpedo boats. During the war the Imperial Russian Navy in addition to their other warships, deployed 86 torpedo boats[3] and launched 27 torpedoes (from all warships) in three major campaigns, scoring 5 hits.
The
Of the 16 torpedoes launched by the TBDs and TBs at the Russian battleship, only four hit their mark, two of those hits were from torpedo boats #72 and #75.[5] By evening, the battleship rolled over and sank to the bottom of the Tsushima Straits. By war's end, torpedoes launched from warships had sunk one battleship, two armored cruisers, and two destroyers. The remaining over 80 warships would be sunk by guns, mines, scuttling, or shipwreck.[6]
Torpedo boat destroyers
The introduction of the torpedo boat resulted in a flurry of activity in navies around the world, as smaller, quicker-firing guns were added to existing ships to ward off the new threat. In the mid-1880s there were developed torpedo gunboats, the first vessel design for the explicit purpose of hunting and destroying torpedo boats. Essentially very small cruisers, torpedo gunboats were equipped with torpedo tubes and an adequate gun armament, intended for hunting down smaller enemy boats.
The first example of this was
A number of torpedo gunboat classes followed, including the Grasshopper class, the Sharpshooter class, the Alarm class and the Dryad class – all built for the Royal Navy during the 1880s and the 1890s. In 1891, a Chilean Almirante Lynch class torpedo gunboat managed to sink the ironclad Blanco Encalada with a torpedo at the battle of Caldera Bay during the Chilean Civil War of 1891. This marked a milestone in naval history, as it was the first time an ironclad warship had been sunk by a self-propelled torpedo.
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In the late 1890s, torpedo boats had been made obsolete by their more successful contemporaries, the
After the Russo-Japanese War, these ships became known simply as destroyers. Destroyers became so much more useful, having better seaworthiness and greater capabilities than torpedo boats, that they eventually replaced most torpedo boats. However, the London Naval Treaty after World War I limited tonnage of warships, but placed no limits on ships of under 600 tons. The French, Italian, Japanese and German Navies developed torpedo boats around that displacement, 70 to 100 m long, armed with two or three guns of around 100 mm (4 in) and torpedo launchers. For example, the Royal Norwegian Navy Sleipner-class destroyers were in fact of a torpedo boat size, while the Italian Spica-class torpedo boats were closer in size to a destroyer escort. After World War II they were eventually subsumed into the revived corvette classification.
The
Motor torpedo craft
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Before
During the First World War, three junior officers of the
They were to be armed in a variety of ways, with torpedoes, depth charges or for laying mines. Secondary armament would have been provided by light machine guns, such as the Lewis gun. The CMBs were designed by Thornycroft, who had experience in small fast boats. Engines were not proper maritime internal combustion engines (as these were in short supply) but adapted aircraft engines from firms such as Sunbeam and Napier. A total of 39 such vessels were built.[11]
In 1917 Thornycroft produced an enlarged 60-foot (18 m) overall version. This allowed a heavier payload, and now two torpedoes could be carried. A mixed warload of a single torpedo and four depth charges could also be carried, the depth charges released from individual cradles over the sides, rather than a stern ramp.[12] Speeds from 35–41 knots (40–47 mph; 65–76 km/h) were possible, depending on the various petrol engines fitted. At least two unexplained losses due to fires in port are thought to have been caused by a build-up of petrol vapour igniting.
Italian torpedo boats sank the Austrian-Hungarian SMS Wien in 1917, and SMS Szent István in 1918. During the civil war in Russia, British torpedo boats made raids on Kronstadt harbour damaging two battleships and sinking a cruiser.
Such vessels remained useful through
(standing for Patrol Torpedo) were all of this type.A classic fast torpedo boat action was the Channel Dash in February 1942 when German E-boats and destroyers defended the flotilla of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen and several smaller ships as they passed through the Channel.
By World War II torpedo boats were seriously hampered by higher fleet speeds; although they still had a speed advantage, they could only catch the larger ships by running at very high speeds over very short distances, as demonstrated in the Channel Dash. An even greater threat was the widespread arrival of
During World War II United States naval forces employed fast wooden
The most significant military ship sunk by a torpedo boat during World War II was the cruiser HMS Manchester which was attacked by two Italian torpedo boats (M.S. 16 and M.S. 22) during Operation Pedestal on 13 August 1942. It seems that the torpedo that mortally struck Manchester was launched by M.S. 22 (commanded by Tenente di vascello Franco Mezzadra) from a distance of about 600 meters.
Fast attack craft today
Boats similar to torpedo boats are still in use, but are armed with long-range anti-ship missiles that can be used at ranges between 30 and 70 km. This reduces the need for high-speed chases and gives them much more room to operate in while approaching their targets.
Aircraft are a major threat, making the use of boats against any fleet with air cover very risky. The low height of the radar mast makes it difficult to acquire and lock onto a target while maintaining a safe distance. As a result, fast attack craft are being replaced for use in naval combat by larger corvettes, which are able to carry radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles for self-defense, and helicopters for over-the-horizon targeting.
Although torpedo boats have disappeared from the majority of the world's navies, they remained in use until the late 1990s and early 2000s in a few specialised areas, most notably in the Baltic. The close confines of the Baltic and ground clutter effectively negated the range benefits of early
See also
References
- ISBN 0-85177-133-5.)
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link - ^ Olender p. 233
- ^ Olender pp. 249–251
- ^ Olender pp. 235, 236
- ^ Olender p. 235
- ^ Olender p. 234
- ^ a b Lyon & Winfield. "10". The Sail and Steam Navy List. pp. 82–83.
- ^ Captain T.D. Manning (1961). The British Destroyer. Putnam and Co.
- ^ Lyon pp. 8–9.
- ISBN 1-84067-364-8.
- ^ "WW1 numbers and losses of MTB classes".
- ISBN 0-9504543-9-7.
Bibliography
- Campbell, Thomas, R. "Hunters of the Night: Confederate Torpedo Boats in the War Between the States" Burd Street Press, 2001.
- Jentschura, Hansgeorg. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869–1945. United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland; 1977. ISBN 0-87021-893-X.
- Lyon, David. The First Destroyers. Chatham Publishing, 1 & 2 Faulkner's Alley, ISBN 1-55750-271-4.
- Olender, Piotr. Russo-Japanese Naval War 1904–1905, Vol. 2, Battle of Tsushima. Published by Stratus s.c., 2010. Sandomierz, Poland. ISBN 9788361421023.
- Preston, Antony. "Destroyer", Bison Books (London) 1977. ISBN 0-600-32955-0.
External links
Media related to Torpedo boats at Wikimedia Commons
