Torpedo bulkhead

A torpedo bulkhead is a type of

warships, especially battleships and battlecruisers of the early 20th century. It is designed to keep the ship afloat even if the hull is struck underneath the belt armor by a shell or by a torpedo

.

History

As early torpedoes had demonstrated their effectiveness at seriously damaging ships below the

double bottom that included an armored inner hull lining that connected to the bottom edges of the belt armor. It was not adopted, as it imposed serious limitations on internal space and reduced the thickness of the belt. Subsequent, early attempts relied primarily on the coal bunkers, on the assumption that the ship's coal would absorb the blast effects, which would be contained by the interior longitudinal bulkhead. A significant problem with these early arrangements was that once the coal was depleted, the empty compartments offered little to no resistance; worse still, coal dust could explode, and given that the bunkers needed to be accessed by boiler room crews, they could not easily be made watertight.^[1]

In the 1910s, naval designers began to transition from coal to

Pugliese system, though these proved to be largely ineffective.^[4]

In multi-bulkhead systems, the innermost bulkhead is commonly referred to as the "holding bulkhead",

high-tensile steel

that could deform and absorb the pressure pulse from a torpedo hit without breaking. If the final bulkhead was at least 37 mm thick, it may also be referred to as an "armored bulkhead", as it would be capable of stopping splinters and shells with low striking velocities.