lwd wrote:Subs tend to be moving quite slow when they launch. Surface ships don't. There was a point in time when BB vs BB actions were likely to be fought at 10,000 yards or less. At such ranges torpedos can be effective.
The German U-boat commanders invarioubly favoured launching attacks on the surface, under cover of darkness, until they were forced underwater by Allied countermeasures such as radar. Surface attacks do give subs far more mobility to stalk and attack, and were favoured by US commanders in the Pacific.
Another factor here is that as torpedoes improved technologically over time so would their effective range.
As far as I am aware there is only one occassion where a battleship successfully torpedoed another battleship - that was when Rodney torpedoed Bismarck on 27 May 1941.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
lwd wrote:Subs tend to be moving quite slow when they launch. Surface ships don't. There was a point in time when BB vs BB actions were likely to be fought at 10,000 yards or less. At such ranges torpedos can be effective.
The German U-boat commanders invarioubly favoured launching attacks on the surface, under cover of darkness, until they were forced underwater by Allied countermeasures such as radar. Surface attacks do give subs far more mobility to stalk and attack, and were favoured by US commanders in the Pacific.
Even surfaced I believe most subs were moving well under 10 knots when they launched. Surface ships or at least warships tend to be moving over 20 and in many cases over 30 knots.
Another factor here is that as torpedoes improved technologically over time so would their effective range.
Until you get guided torpedos it was much easier to increase range than effective range. Witness the PH of Japanese torpedos at longer ranges. It's even worse if you don't count hits on friendlies.
As far as I am aware there is only one occassion where a battleship successfully torpedoed another battleship - that was when Rodney torpedoed Bismarck on 27 May 1941.
But in the 20s and before it appeared more useful than it turned out to be. The early part of the 20th century saw a lot of different ideas in regards to warships experimented with. Some worked and some didn't.
I think it's likely that US submarines fired torpedoes on the surface at speeds greater than 15kts (21 kts max speed) in night time actions. However, the hydrodynamic forces involved woudn't be perpendicular to the firing angle in that case.
I am still trying to figure out why a WWII capital ship would carry torpedos at all? Surely if a target were close enough to hit with a torpedo, it shouldn't be difficult to hit with a gun. Shells are obviously cheaper and less cumbersome to store than a torpedo.
The only reason I can think of is that they could be a more efficient way of actually sinking (as opposed to blasting) a vessel when the target is a sitting duck, eg an unarmed freighter or Bismarck as a burning mangled hulk. If this were the case, an attacking ship would not need to be moving at speed, so it could launch from underwater (although again, why launch from underwater rather than from the deck?)
Separately, for anyone interested, here is an image of the H-39 design, which was to be significantly larger than Bismarck. There are some dents under the water-line towards the bow. I don't know if they are supposed to be for torpedos.
Bgile wrote:I think it's likely that US submarines fired torpedoes on the surface at speeds greater than 15kts (21 kts max speed) in night time actions. However, the hydrodynamic forces involved woudn't be perpendicular to the firing angle in that case.
Even at night increasing speed = increasing visible signature. However there is a good chance that at some point they did. And as you point out there wouldn't be the torque problem with subs. Would be interesting to know what the typical and extreme cases were.
hellomartin wrote:... And if the target is a merchant ship why use torpedoes instead of scuttling charges?
Your in a hurry? Especially if you are engaging a convoy stopping to set scuttling charges may cost you other targets.
Yes, you're right there, as I recall that the Scheer sank the Beaverford with a torpedo during its nightime attack on the scattered remnants of convoy HX 84.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
lwd wrote:
Even surfaced I believe most subs were moving well under 10 knots when they launched.
In the film ''Das Boot'' U-96 is shown as attacking a convoy on the surface at night moving at its flat out speed, in the words of the men ''like a torpedo boat'', launching four torpedoes and hitting two ships.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
Anyone advocating underwater torpedo tubes on a warship has only to think about the topedo defense system and it's bulkheads forming a layered defense against torpedoes. Where are you going to put the torpedo tubes? Wouldn't they have to go all the way through the TDS, including armor? That would be a HUGE weakness in the system.
The TDS systems didn't cover the aft and bow areas of the ship (as Bismarck discovered to its cost). The H-39 design puts the tubes forward of the TDS, towards the bow, in a similar fashion to a submarine.
Re my comment/image above, I checked the armament profile of the H-39 and it does indeed include 6 x 21"torpedo tubes. Given the H-39 was a more advanced design than Bismarck, the lack of torpedo tubes was obviously seen as a deficiency in Bismarck and underwater launch (for whatever reason) was the preferred system. I assume they were meant for dispatching merchant vessels, perhaps firing a spread at a close formation convoy (Das Boot style).
hellomartin wrote:The TDS systems didn't cover the aft and bow areas of the ship (as Bismarck discovered to its cost). The H-39 design puts the tubes forward of the TDS, towards the bow, in a similar fashion to a submarine.
Re my comment/image above, I checked the armament profile of the H-39 and it does indeed include 6 x 21"torpedo tubes. Given the H-39 was a more advanced design than Bismarck, the lack of torpedo tubes was obviously seen as a deficiency in Bismarck and underwater launch (for whatever reason) was the preferred system. I assume they were meant for dispatching merchant vessels, perhaps firing a spread at a close formation convoy (Das Boot style).
So they put torpedoes in an unprotected part of the ship, where a hit by a 5" shell might blow the ship's bow off? Seems strange to me. What happens if she hit a mine and it set off the torpedo warheads?
At what point in a battle are you envisioning a super battleship being in a position to fire a spread of torpedoes at a close packed convoy? By the time she got into torpedo range they would all be running away from her in various directions, to say nothing about the large number of torpedoes the escorts would be firing at the German ship if she got that close.
here is a quote from a paper on TDS posted elsewhere on this site:
"A torpedo defense system (TDS) typically extended from the bottom of the belt to the turn of the bilge vertically, and from just forward of the foremost magazines to just aft of the aftermost magazines. Beyond this region, fore and aft, the ship became too narrow for installation of a TDS. No adequate means was ever devised to protect a ship’s seaworthiness forward, or its rudders and screws aft, from a torpedo hit."
From the illustration of the H-39, the tubes appear well forward of the magazines and hence the TDS. The forward part of the ship was indeed vulnerable as amply demonstrated by PoW which put a shell through Bismarck's bow and flooded the forward diesel bunker.
I can only imagine that the Germans wouldn't be stupid enough to store torpedos in the tubes, just as they didn't store shells in the turrets. However, there is also no reason why the tubes themselves wouldn't be armoured.
How they proposed to use this forward torpedo system, your guess (if you had one) is as good as mine. However, given that they put three tubes on either side of the bow, it would would imply that they intended to shoot them off simultaneously in an array.
Since they did not have the range to effectively target other capital ships in a naval battle, and given that these battleships were designed to prey on convoys, then one would deduce they were designed to sink merchantmen.
Given that the H-39 would have been a full 50' longer than Bismarck, weighed an extra 10,000 tons and would have been armed with 20 16" and 6" guns, I find it difficult to envisage your image of the H-39 being intimidated by a set to with British convoy escorts of corvetts and destroyers. The cruisers shadowing Bismarck, not surprisingly, tended to beat a hasty retreat when they got within its range.
In addition, the reason Bismarck set out as a duo with PE is that one of the warships was designed to take on the escort (if there was a large enough one) while the other dispatched the fleeing freighters (which were far slower than the battleships). One would imagine the more projectiles H-39 had to throw at the convoy as it was breaking up the better.
Having said all this, I really don't know how the tubes would have been used, but the Germans clearly put them there for a purpose. Any better ideas?
They added torpedoes to Tirpitz to deal with crippled ships when raiding. A torpedo is a much more efficient way to sink a ship than gunfire.
IMO putting them in the bow was not a good idea. There would be reloads stored there. There is a big difference between having a shell from PoW hit your bow (bad enough in itself with the flooding) and having a shell, mine, or torpedo hit there set off all of the stored torpedoes you have there, which would cause a catastrophic explosion.
All other navies ultimately rejected the idea of having torpedoes on battleships. The Germans put them on Tirpitz, but they weren't in a location which would threaten her survival, or at least not to the same degree. They accepted the risk because of her commerce raiding function.
The damage suffered by Nelson to an aerial torpedo in her bow is a good indication of the hazard there. Not mention Lutzow. Both Nelson and Rodney dropped their torpedo weaponry during the war.
