The Ship Model Forum

Around the end of WWI, the Germans developed a massive 27" torpedo. I believe the last High Sea Fleet cruisers that were nearing completion in 1918 were actually equipped with them, and certainly the German capital ships that were on the drawing board in 1918 featured significant 27" torpedo batteries. However I could find no technical details and performance parameters on this monstrous torpedo. The British were also eager to put large torpedo batteries on their new capital ships, as seen in the original Hood design. The British also had developed a huge 25.5" torpedo at the end of WWI, and this weapon was installed in the bow position on the Nelson class BBs. The British torpedo uses oxygen enriched air to increase weapon range and efficiency, in a manner that strongly foreshadowed the later Japanese development of very high performance oxygen torpedoes which were also of an usually large caliber - 24".

Had there been a major new direction in the development of surface ship torpedoes that were cut short by the environment created by Washington treaty? Were Japanese 24" Long Lance torpedo in fact the only fruition of a much more wide spread effort that were aborted elsewhere by circumstances, but which had the potential to transform the concept of surface gunnery action across the board into a combined gunnery/torpedo duel?

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Nelson's torpedoes were 24.5 inch....

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the up launchers in the photo were installed on nelson on 8th dec 1939 so she must have entered ww2 with those monster torpedos, ???

Weren't those Brit Torps also Oxygen fueled, or at least partially so? IIRC, the capability was similar to the Long Lance, but the RN decided the risks associated with Oxy were to great.

Anyone know the full deal?

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Sean Hert

The British 24.5 inch torpedo used stored compressed air that's somewhat enriched in oxygen as oxidizer. But there is no other special adaptation and the torpedo is otherwise conventional. The British 24.5 inch torpedo was on board the Rodney during the Bismark engagement. There is no reason to believe a flask of somewhat enriched air would pose any particular additional hazard over a flask of normal air. The British did not think Hood's above water torpedo battery sufficiently dangerous to warrant removal.

The Japanese 24 inch torpedoes used >93% pure oxygen, and had extensive features to enable the use of pure oxygen. The Japanese torpedo were much further along on this development path. The performance of the Japanese torpedo was substantially higher as result of additional oxygen available, and the Japanese torpedo did not discharge a string of nitrogen bubbles as would the British or any other torpedo that use air as oxidizer. The notion that Japanese oxygen torpedoes were more dangerous to the launching ship than a normal torpedo is largely a myth since neither Japanese torpedoes or Japanese ships actually stored any oxygen aboard. The oxygen is generated using a small on board oxygen plant, and is used directly to charge the torpedo's oxygen flask right before launch.

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Navweaps is a good source for info:
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/index_weapons.htm
Rodney fired off her full complement of torpedoes at Bismarck, and despite a claimed hit, appears to have missed each time.

Towards the end of WW2 there were various Italian, German and British "weird" torpedoes variously described as "jet" or "rocket" powered - and of course there was the Rolls-Royce massive radio-controlled torpedo (or probably better described as submerged explosive vessel).

The British developed the "Ingolin" "jet-powered" torpedo post-war, but it was aborted (I wonder why I looked that name up on the TNA:PRO catalogue) and as a separate but related project developed various designs of "Fancy" which included within them the high-speed body form - based on the R.101 body form - that gave rise to the British designs of high speed submarines (separately from the US "Albacore" design). One of these high-speed "Fancy" propotypes bodies is (was ?) hanging in an odd position at the "Explosion" museum at Gosport (you have to be a fanatic to actually spot the label).

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Soviets actually did develop a rocket propelled "torpedo" during the 1970s. It is currently in service with Russia, China and Iran. It has a top speed of >200 knots, range of >10 nautical miles, intended to be fired from submerged submarines via standard 21" torpedo tube, and was meant to be a rapid counterattack weapon that would allow a Soviet submarine to wait until a hostile submarine breaks silence and launch a torpedo, and then sink the enemy submarine with a very rapidly delivered small nuclear warhead before the enemy's torpedo had time to close range. How these rocket torpedos are to be used with conventional warheads in Iranian and perhaps also Chinese service is not clear.

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what we need is a torpedo that can be launched, wait until the sub clears datum, and then activates, going active...

Submarines are about stealth, I cannot think of a weapon system that could use this feature more.

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I would think they would have to be carried externally. Anything launched from a tube by compressed air is going to cause a telltale acoustic signature. Doesn't the USN have a "mine" that can act in this way? Sow them off of an enemies home port and catch them on the way out. Maybe there are a few sitting in the Gulf off of the Iranian caost as we speak.

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This is going off topic, but latest submarines such as the Seawolf have "swim out" torpedo tubes. These are grossly oversized torpedo tubes that allows a normal sized wire guided torpedo to leave the tube under its power, and does not require noisy mechanical or compressed air ejection of the torpedo. If the torpedo also has a silent low speed mode that would allow it move slowly through the water without cavitation for a while after leaving the submarine, then this type of launch would be difficult to detect and not betray the launching submarine.

The mine you are thinking of is called "Captor" mine, which is essentially a 12" ASW torpedo encapsulated inside an acoustic mine, which is designed and programed to launch the torpedo at a passing submarine fitting certain acoustic properties. Presumably a silent submarine will be able to sneak through.

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I believe you are speaking of the supercavitation propulsion torpedo VA-111 Schkval. I was unaware that it carried a NUKE warhead...even more because the device haves a short range and a nuclear explosion, even small, could be a menace to the submarine firing the weapon.

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The original weapon was unguided and followed preprogrammed course. Such a weapon couldn't possibly hit anything without a nuclear warhead. Later marks allegedly had terminal guidance. How the guidance worked with the noise of the rocket engine and the 200 knot waterflow around the missile is not clear.

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