22 replies to this topic

[W. Clark]

I never had any idea prior to FAI how useless submerged torpedoes were and the extreme limitations on their use. I find that few of the large ships (capital ships & cruisers) designed after 1900 had a design speed of less than 18 knots and most were considerably faster. Yet, almost all of these designs incorporated submerged torpedo tubes including the designs for the G3 battle cruisers that would have required them to slow to 10 knots or less before they could fire those torpedoes. A weapon system that requires you to half (or more) your speed to deploy does not seem like a good idea to me.

I also find (based on Friedman and others) that these torpedoes required an not insignificant amount of displacement. For example the Minotaur class armored cruisers devoted 800 plus tons of their 14,600 tons total displacement to their fore and aft 18" torpedo flats (heck, they are not even 21") and that does not take into acount the wieght of the torpedoes themselves. That's a lot of displacement that could have been devoted to more speed (their greatest need) or protection (their greatest point of complaint) or more range or more anything but a weapon system that is almost useless.

Yet, almost all navies continued design ships with submerged torpedoes right into 1920s (the Nelson and Rodney had them for instance). The question begs, why? Could it be that they never discovered that their submerged torpedoes would not fire at speeds exceeding 10 knots or not have functioned as designed at those faster speeds?

I for one can not determine when it became common knowledge that submerged torpedoes were an absolute waste of space, not to mention weight. Could someone point me towards an author or authors that will enlighten me on this point. The idea that such a commonly used weapon system could have survived for that long a period including going through a world war when it was that useless amazes me. I used to have a higher opinion of warship design during the period and would like to determine if my new low opinion is fair.

I don't doubt that the FAI limitations on submerged torpedoes is right as well researched as I find the rules to be. It just adds to my wonder when it comes to warship design and what those guys were thinking every time they added hundreds of tons of useless submerged torpedoes to every single ship class they designed.

[Adrian Dobb]

Hi W,

[Adrian Dobb]

Hi again, something went wrong there!

[Adrian Dobb]

Ah, ok my tab key is causing my premature posts! Apologies for that.

Submerged torp tubes
I agree they were not a success. DK Brown has a short section on them (largely negative) in the Grand Fleet and probably also makes small comments on them with regard to specific designs in Warrior to Dreadnought and Nelson to Vanguard too. Strictly in reference to RN though. Also found this thread though there are some annoying adverts on the forum.

http://alltheworldsb...on-battleships#

Adrian

[W. Clark]

Thank you for your resonse.

I just received Friedman's Naval Weapons of World War I in a failed attempt to shed some light on this point. Friedman does not mention any problems with submerged torpedoes at all and in fact he says that comtemporary British thinking was that most of the torpedoes fired at battleships in a fleet action would be by battleships (and all of their tubes were submerged). And, as I stated before almost every navy continued to demand submerged torpedoes in their larger ship designs right into the 1920s so obviously the Admirals were of the opinion that their submerged torpedoes were effective and needed. I'm not certain why the brass thought that. I'm not aware of any successful submerged torpedo shots by a battleship in any navy during the period. In fact the only possibly successful submerged torpedo shot that I can think of off the top of my head was by the Weisbaden at Jutland after she was dead in the water. Even then I'm not certain that shot was from a submerged tube as she also had a/w trainable tubes.

So, to anyone out there with info on this; your response will be greatly appreciated as the derth of information about the merits of submerged torpedo tubes one way or the other is driving me crazy. It appears to me that if FAI had ommitted submerged torpedo tubes all together under their current limitations in the rules who would miss them?

Thank you, going nuts in Oregon.

[Cpt M]

Basically, submerged torpedoes fell out of favor when gunnery ranges made the idea of a BB launched torpedo attack highly unlikely (not that it was ever a likely occurrance). As to why the idea hung around so long, can't really say (there just isn't any literature on the subject). One theory that was raised in an article I read years ago, was sheer inertia (the idea that 'that's the way we have always done it' without critically examing the concept). Another additional reason for their removal is the problem (actually, the impossibility) of firing an underwater torpedo at the speeds that battleines were now able to make.

As a final note: The WWII Scharnhorst carried deck mounted torpedo tubes for use against merchants. The idea was to use the torpedoes to dispatch any stopped merchantmen while operating as a raider.

[W. Clark]

Again, thank you for your response.

I guess the one point you could clear up is where FAI learned that submerged torpedo tubes won't fire at speeds in excess of 10 knots. I've yet to find anything in print about any limitations on submerged torpedoes that don't aply to a/w mounts also. The only crititsism in print that I've found recently about submerged tubes is how vunerable their flats are to flooding when damaged.

Don't get me wrong; I believe FAI has it right as far its rule for this goes. I vaguely remember hearing or reading something about it years ago that bears out with the rule. However, when I'm running a game and someone asks why a rule is the way ii is; I find because the rule says so to be a poor answer and at the moment that is as good an answer as I have.

[Cpt M]

Again, thank you for your response.

I guess the one point you could clear up is where FAI learned that submerged torpedo tubes won't fire at speeds in excess of 10 knots. I've yet to find anything in print about any limitations on submerged torpedoes that don't aply to a/w mounts also. The only crititsism in print that I've found recently about submerged tubes is how vunerable their flats are to flooding when damaged.

Don't get me wrong; I believe FAI has it right as far its rule for this goes. I vaguely remember hearing or reading something about it years ago that bears out with the rule. However, when I'm running a game and someone asks why a rule is the way ii is; I find because the rule says so to be a poor answer and at the moment that is as good an answer as I have.

"Battleship Design and Development 1905-1945" and "U..S. Battleships An Illustrated Design History", both by Norman Friedman, mention the impossilibity of launching beam mounted underwater torpedoes at any kind of speed. This was from on a 1916 report from the USN Bureau of Ordnance based on Royal Navy wartime experience. Additionally, I recall reading an article in Warship (many years ago) that mentioned increasing difficulty from 10 to 15 knots, at which time it was impossible to launch.

[W. Clark]

Thank you.

It figures, I bought the wrong Friedman book(s). Warship sounds right; I have several old copies from the 80s now that you mention it. That probably acounts for my vague memory. Again, thanks and I'll take it from there.

[simanton]

What I have read indicated that the British only ran into problems with submerged torpedo launching when the truly high speed battlecruisers (Renowns) and the "large light cruisers" came out. At maximum speeds, these ships found that they were unable to launch due to the water pressure bending the "guiding bar" as it emerged from the torpedo tube. I haven't seen specifically what a "guiding bar" was, but it sounds like a sort of rail to ensure that the torpedo remained straight as it came out of the tube and wasn't subjected to a bending stress with the front end out and the tail still in the tube as it came out. So, it seems that the British could launch at up to 27 - 28 knots. Up to the very end, German battleship and battlecruiser designs were optimized toward relatively short range combat (one of the reasons Bismarck stood up to the shelling so well - by closing in the British played right into her designers' assumptions), reflecting the highly variable visibility in the North Sea. Hence, a fairly heavy torpedo battery was included for use in a sudden, short range encounter. No telling which tube in Wiesbaden did the job, but she sure put up one hell of a fight! I'm probably going to come up with some sort of a house rule allowing multiple firing from submerged tubes. There is precedent (Rodney at Bismarck, several torpedoes fired by Moltke at Jutland). As I understand, these tubes were usually well adapted for relatively rapid fire ("coffin lid" loading and chainfall rather than breechloading) with torpedo flats roomier than a submarine's torpedo room (to Luetzow's sorrow and Seydlitz' benefit at Jutland).

[simanton]

Oh, forgot to mention. The Germans seem to have been fond of the capital ship torpedo tube concept in WWII. In addition to Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Tirpitz had them added. In all 3 cases, the tubes seem to have come from light cruisers cut back from 12 tubes to 6 (or, in Leipzig's case, zero). The OPQ battlecruiser design incorporated a hull-mounted above water battery, and all of the H class variants had submerged tubes. In accordance with my perverse nature, back in my Seapower III days, in many a WWII fight Royal Oak made free use of her four above water hull-mounted tubes! LOL!

[Cpt M]

What I have read indicated that the British only ran into problems with submerged torpedo launching when the truly high speed battlecruisers (Renowns) and the "large light cruisers" came out. At maximum speeds, these ships found that they were unable to launch due to the water pressure bending the "guiding bar" as it emerged from the torpedo tube. I haven't seen specifically what a "guiding bar" was, but it sounds like a sort of rail to ensure that the torpedo remained straight as it came out of the tube and wasn't subjected to a bending stress with the front end out and the tail still in the tube as it came out. So, it seems that the British could launch at up to 27 - 28 knots. Up to the very end, German battleship and battlecruiser designs were optimized toward relatively short range combat (one of the reasons Bismarck stood up to the shelling so well - by closing in the British played right into her designers' assumptions), reflecting the highly variable visibility in the North Sea. Hence, a fairly heavy torpedo battery was included for use in a sudden, short range encounter. No telling which tube in Wiesbaden did the job, but she sure put up one hell of a fight! I'm probably going to come up with some sort of a house rule allowing multiple firing from submerged tubes. There is precedent (Rodney at Bismarck, several torpedoes fired by Moltke at Jutland). As I understand, these tubes were usually well adapted for relatively rapid fire ("coffin lid" loading and chainfall rather than breechloading) with torpedo flats roomier than a submarine's torpedo room (to Luetzow's sorrow and Seydlitz' benefit at Jutland).

According to some sources, the German experience was much the same as the British. As ship speed increased, the utility of mounting these batteries become less and less viable. That some launches performed as designed is more the random off chance; the overall performance was much less as reflected by wartime reports from the Grand Fleet. Most commented that effective launches became nearly impossible on all ships at speeds above 15 kts (in some cases, even less).

As for multiple fires from an underwater tube, I'd say that would not be possible. The torpedo salvo, as presented in the rules, represents the launching of multiple torpedoes from a mount with the torpedoes on the same bearing and hitting the water within seconds of one another. A salvo from a underwater tube would be several torpedoes launched individually over several minutes (since the tube would have to be reloaded). This 'salvo' would be several individual torpedoes (each on their own course) with launch points spread over several thousand yards. This is definitely NOT a torpedo salvo. As for their utility, I'll only note that the RN removed the torpedo tubes from Rodney and Nelson during their first wartime refit.

[Cpt M]

Oh, forgot to mention. The Germans seem to have been fond of the capital ship torpedo tube concept in WWII. In addition to Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Tirpitz had them added. In all 3 cases, the tubes seem to have come from light cruisers cut back from 12 tubes to 6 (or, in Leipzig's case, zero). The OPQ battlecruiser design incorporated a hull-mounted above water battery, and all of the H class variants had submerged tubes. In accordance with my perverse nature, back in my Seapower III days, in many a WWII fight Royal Oak made free use of her four above water hull-mounted tubes! LOL!

The deck mounted torpedo tubes on the Scharnhorst class and Tirpitz were (according to German sources) to be used in conjunction with raider operations. The idea was to use the torpedoes to sink any stopped merchants instead of using gunfire (although that does raise the question of why use torpedoes in lieu of opening the ship's seacocks).

[W. Clark]

I was browsing around on the net looking for more info on this and saw a line drawing of the "guide" for lack of a better word. It resembled a shoe horn or perhaps a cigar case cut lengthwise a bit more than half with the guide resembling the lesser half. I could see where something like that underwater sticking out of the side of a ship moving at speed would cause issues. Obivously the faster the ships was moving the more problems it woul.d cause.

[simanton]

May have the maximum launch speed pegged pretty specifically. In the section on the Courageous class in Oscar Parkes' British Battleships, he states that the submerged tubes could not be used above 23 knots due to the bars bending. Another source (not with me at the moment, I'll quote w/citation later) states that Lion launched several during the Run To The North @ Jutland. As Beatty and Evan-Thomas were roughly pacing the HSF at the time, that would be consistent.

[simanton]

However, all that being said, IMO the battleship-mounted torpedo was, like the battleship ram bow, an idea whose time had come and gone by about the Russo - Japanese War. In the second half of the 19thtriple century, a battle between armorclads was pretty much an exercise in frustration. (Eggleston's remark on the Virginia about snapping his fingers at Monitor pretty much summed it up). As Teggethof realized, it was ramming or nothing. The automobile torpedo must have seemed a godsend! You were going to be at close quarters anyway - low velocity guns with no fire control made that necessary even without ramming - and if you hit an armorclad with one of these gadgets it went "Blurp!" and vanished! Of course, hitting it was the rub! But until seagoing torpedo craft and tactics developed, it was ram or torpedo. Once they did, though, the battleship torpedo was vestigial. Aircraft torpedoes aside, the record is very clear that the vast majority of successful torpedo attacks were surprise attacks - which is why the submarine is the torpedo craft par excellance. And it's mighty hard to pull off a close range surprise attack with a battleship!

[W. Clark]

My understanding from reading Friedman is that it is the battleship torpedo and the Royal Navy's fear of it that caused them to keep pushing out the range at which they expected to shoot. They were not so afraid of a particular ship being hit as they were of what they called browning shots. That is torpedoes fired at a mass of ships and while missing their immediate target strike the one behind or the one after that and so on. What the Brits did not know was that the Germans were not thinking about browning shots at all, but rather precision shots taken at a particular ship or just what the Brits considered impractical. The Germans placed less imphasis on long range gunnery because they did not understand the British concern with browning shots that the Germans had no thought of taking. The Germans thus failed to understand the very reason the Brits were going for longer and longer ranged fire even though you can tie almost every pushing out of the range with a new leap in torpedo range. God, just think if someone had invented the long lance during that period. I find it likely that Jellicoe would have had them assinated to prevent such a dangerous technoloyg from being pursued.

[simanton]

Quite right. To the very end, German battleships and battlecruisers were optimized for close action.

[simanton]

Here we go. This is from Battlecruisers by John Roberts - who stands pretty high in my esteem as a source. The section on torpedoes: "The Invincible class was fitted with five 18in torpeo tubes, two on each broadside and one astern. The broadside tubes were regarded as 'offensive' and the stern tube as 'defensive.' Subsequent development of long-range gunnery made it appear that there would be little opportunity to use these weapons except in the closing phases of an action, and the number of torpedo tubes fitted in Indefatigable, and later ships up to and including the Queen Mary, was therefore reduced to two, one being fitted on each side forward. However, during 1908 - 09 substantial advances were made in the development of the Royal Navy's torpedoes with the introduction of the more powerful 21in type and an enchancement of the propulsion system in the shape of the 'Hardcastle' heater. The last, in very simple terms, increased the range and/or speed of the torpedo by heating the compressed air use to drive its engine. The heater could also be retrofitted to the 18in torpedo and by 1910 the standard long range setting for these had increased to about 6500 yards, while the new 21in could reach over 10,000 yards at 30 kts. (para) "In 1910 another innovation was introduced in the shape of the 'angled gyro', a device that could also be fitted to existing as well as new torpedoes. This allowed the torpedo to be set to run at a different angle from that at which it was discharged, moving to its new course shortly after being launched. This obviated the need for the firing ship to be in exactly the right relationship to the target before the torpedo could be fired and added greatly to the flexibility of the system as a whole. Fixed settings were provided in 10 degree steps from 40 degrees abalt to 40 degrees before the tube's line of sight. (para) "These innovations produced a reconsideratin of the role of the torpedo as it was anticipated that good opportunities would occur for the capital shops of the fleet to fire them at a much earlier stage of an action. In June 1910 the C-in-C Home Fleet, Admiral W H May, recommended a reinstatement of the after broadside tubes to increase the possible volume of fire. Commenting on the C-in-C's recommendation, the Assistant Director of Torpedows, S Nicholson, stated that 'in the early stages of an action, when opportunities for firing torpedoes may be few and brief, it is very important to fire as many torpedoes as possible when the chances occur and for this reason more than one tube on each broadside is extremely desirable.' Consideration was given to carrying out this alteration on Queen Mary but it would have meant a 10ft increase in length and a 400-ton increase in displacement and it was decided to defer the change to the ships of the next year's program. Thus Tiger, completed in 1914, was the first and only battlecruiser to benefit from changes discussed four years earlier. The difficulties involved in fitting a submerged room aft required a substantial reworking of the arrangement of compartments in this area and led to her markedly change appearance with 'Q' turret moved aft of all the boiler rooms. The wartime battlecruisers, including Hood, did not have an after room and although this war requested for Hood the difficulties of fitting it into an area already crowded with magazines, shell rooms and propellor shafts led to the adoption of above-water tubes instead. There were, however, concerns about the vulnerability of torpedoes carried above-water dut to the danger of their warheads being detonated by direct hits or near misses which led to Hood's above water tubes being provided, initially, with armour 'box' protection to the front ends of the tubes. (para) Despite the potential offered by the torpedo it did not prove a decisive weapon in heavy ships either during the First or Second World Wars. Of the battlecruisers only Lion ever fired a tube in action. This was at Jutland where she fired two at the van of the enemy battlecruisers during the run to the north, one at a light cruiser (probably Wiesbaden) which was claimed to hit, and a further three at some German battleships. The latter were fired with extended range settings, by which the torpedo could reach about 18,000yds but at a much-reduced speed of about 18kts. As this gave a running time of around 30 minutes the chances of achieving a hit were slim. The only other battlecruiser to fire a torpedo at Jutland was Princess Royal which fired a single torpedo at around 8:30pm, late in the day action, at one of the German battleships at a range of 10,000yds. Apart from the possible hit on the cruiser non of these torpedoes are believed to have hit their targets."

[W. Clark]

I take it that the BCs were steaming at a speed greater than 10 knots when they took their submerged torpedo pots shots. As I recall they spent most of the at 23 knots or faster but I would have to check my Campbell to say for sure.