A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, such a device was called an automotive, automobile, locomotive, or fish torpedo; colloquially a fish. The term torpedo originally applied to a variety of devices, most of which would today be called mines. From about 1900, torpedo has been used strictly to designate a self-propelled underwater explosive device.
While the 19th-century battleship had evolved primarily with a view to engagements between armored warships with large-caliber guns, the invention and refinement of torpedoes from the 1860s onwards allowed small torpedo boats and other lighter surface vessels, submarines/submersibles, even improvised fishing boats or frogmen, and later light aircraft, to destroy large ships without the need of large guns, though sometimes at the risk of being hit by longer-range artillery fire.
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Modern torpedoes are classified variously as lightweight or heavyweight; straight-running, autonomous homers, and wire-guided types. They can be launched from a variety of platforms. In modern warfare, a submarine-launched torpedo is almost certain to hit its target; the best defense is a counterattack using another torpedo.[1][2]
The word torpedo was first used as a name for electric rays (in the order Torpediniformes), which in turn comes from the Latin word torpd ("lethargy" or "sluggishness").[3] In naval usage, the American inventor David Bushnell was reported to have first used the term as the name of a submarine of his own design, the "American Turtle or Torpedo." This usage likely inspired Robert Fulton's use of the term to describe his stationary mines, and later Robert Whitehead's naming of the first self-propelled torpedo.[4][5][6]
In modern language, a "torpedo" is an underwater self-propelled explosive, but historically, the term also applied to primitive naval mines and spar torpedoes. These were used on an ad hoc basis during the early modern period up to the late 19th century.
In the early 17th century, the Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel, in the employ of King James I of England, invented the spar torpedo; he attached explosives to the end of a beam affixed to one of his submarines. These were used (to little effect) during the English expeditions to La Rochelle in 1626.[9] The first use of a torpedo by a submarine was in 1775, by the American Turtle, which attempted to lay a bomb with a timed fuse on the hull of HMS Eagle during the American Revolutionary War, but failed in the attempt.
In the early 1800s, the American inventor Robert Fulton, while in France, "conceived the idea of destroying ships by introducing floating mines under their bottoms in submarine boats". He employed the term "torpedo" for the explosive charges with which he outfitted his submarine Nautilus. However, both the French and the Dutch governments were uninterested in the submarine. Fulton then concentrated on developing the torpedo-like weapon independent of a submarine deployment, and in 1804 succeeded in convincing the British government to employ his 'catamaran' against the French.[10] An April 1804 torpedo attack on French ships anchored at Boulogne, and a follow-up attack in October, produced several explosions but no significant damage and the weapon was abandoned.
Fulton carried out a demonstration for the US government on 20 July 1807, destroying a vessel in New York's harbor. Further development languished as Fulton focused on his "steam-boat matters". After the War of 1812 broke out, the Royal Navy established a blockade of the East Coast of the United States. During the war, American forces unsuccessfully attempted to destroy the British ship of the line HMS Ramillies while it was lying at anchor in New London, Connecticut's harbor with torpedoes launched from small boats. This prompted the captain of Ramillies, Sir Thomas Hardy, 1st Baronet, to warn the Americans to cease using this "cruel and unheard-of warfare" or he would "order every house near the shore to be destroyed". The fact that Hardy had been previously so lenient and considerate to the Americans led them to abandon such attempts with immediate effect.[8]
Torpedoes were used by the Russian Empire during the Crimean War in 1855 against British warships in the Gulf of Finland. They used an early form of chemical detonator. During the American Civil War, the term torpedo was used for what is today called a contact mine, floating on or below the water surface using an air-filled demijohn or similar flotation device. These devices were very primitive and apt to prematurely explode. They would be detonated on contact with the ship or after a set time, although electrical detonators were also occasionally used. USS Cairo was the first warship to be sunk in 1862 by an electrically-detonated mine. Spar torpedoes were also used; an explosive device was mounted at the end of a spar up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long projecting forward underwater from the bow of the attacking vessel, which would then ram the opponent with the explosives. These were used by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley to sink USS Housatonic although the weapon was apt to cause as much harm to its user as to its target. Rear Admiral David Farragut's famous/apocryphal command during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" refers to a minefield laid at Mobile, Alabama.
On 26 May 1877, during the Romanian War of Independence, the Romanian spar torpedo boat Rndunica attacked and sank the Ottoman river monitor Seyfi.[11] This was the first instance in history when a torpedo boat sank its targets without also sinking.[12]
A prototype of the self-propelled torpedo was created on a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis, an Austro-Hungarian naval officer from Rijeka (modern-day Croatia), at the time a port city of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a town factory. In 1864, Luppis presented Whitehead with the plans of the Salvacoste ("Coastsaver"), a floating weapon driven by ropes from the land that had been dismissed by the naval authorities due to the impractical steering and propulsion mechanisms.
In 1866, Whitehead invented the first effective self-propelled torpedo, the eponymous Whitehead torpedo, the first modern torpedo. French and German inventions followed closely, and the term torpedo came to describe self-propelled projectiles that traveled under or on water. By 1900, the term no longer included mines and booby-traps as the navies of the world added submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers to their fleets.[14][15]
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 self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on 21 December 1866.
The first trials were not successful as the weapon was unable to maintain a course at 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 to maintain a preset depth.
Royal Navy (RN) representatives visited Rijeka for a demonstration in late 1869, and in 1870 a batch of torpedoes was ordered. In 1871, the British Admiralty paid Whitehead 15,000 for certain of his developments and production started at the Royal Laboratories in Woolwich the following year. In 1893, RN torpedo production was transferred to the Royal Gun Factory. The British later established a Torpedo Experimental Establishment at HMS Vernon and a production facility at the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory, Greenock, in 1910. These are now closed.
Whitehead opened a new factory adjacent to Portland Harbour, England, in 1890, which continued making torpedoes until the end of World War II. Because orders from the RN were not as large as expected, torpedoes were mostly exported. A series of devices was produced at Rijeka, with diameters from 14 in (36 cm) upward. The largest Whitehead torpedo was 18 in (46 cm) in diameter and 19 ft (5.8 m) long, made of polished steel or phosphor bronze, with a 200-pound (91 kg) gun-cotton warhead. It was propelled by a three-cylinder Brotherhood radial engine, using compressed air at around 1,300 psi (9.0 MPa) and driving two contra-rotating propellers, and was designed to self-regulate its course and depth as far as possible. By 1881, nearly 1,500 torpedoes had been produced. Whitehead also opened a factory at St Tropez in 1890 that exported torpedoes to Brazil, The Netherlands, Turkey, and Greece.
Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope of Ludwig Obry in 1888 but it was not sufficiently accurate, so in 1890 he purchased a better design to improve control of his designs, which came to be called the "Devil's Device". The firm of L. Schwartzkopff in Germany also produced torpedoes and exported them to Russia, Japan, and Spain. In 1885, Britain ordered a batch of 50 as torpedo production at home and Rijeka could not meet demand.
By World War I, Whitehead's torpedo remained a worldwide success, and his company was able to maintain a monopoly on torpedo production. By that point, his torpedo had grown to a diameter of 18 inches with a maximum speed of 30.5 knots (56.5 km/h; 35.1 mph) with a warhead weighing 170 pounds (77 kg).
Whitehead faced competition from the American Lieutenant Commander John A. Howell, whose design, driven by a flywheel, was simpler and cheaper. It was produced from 1885 to 1895, and it ran straight, leaving no wake. A Torpedo Test Station was set up in Rhode Island in 1870. The Howell torpedo was the only United States Navy model until an American company, Bliss and Williams secured manufacturing rights to produce Whitehead torpedoes. These were put into service for the U.S. Navy in 1892. Five varieties were produced, all 18-inch diameter.[17] 152ee80cbc
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