Torpedo boat

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A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to launch torpedoes at larger surface ships. They were created to counter battleships and other large, slow and heavily armed ships by speed and agility.

1 American Civil War
2 The era of self-propelled torpedoes
3 See also
4 External references
5 Bibliography

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American Civil War

The American Civil War saw a number of innovations in naval warfare, including the first torpedo boats. In 1861 President Lincoln instituted a naval blockade of Southern ports, which crippled the South's efforts to obtain war materials from abroad. The South also lacked the means to construct a naval fleet capable of taking on the Union Navy. One strategy to counter the blockade saw the development of torpedo boats, small fast boats designed to attack the larger capital ships of the blockading fleet.

Image:CSS David drawing.jpg The David class of torpedo boats were steam powered with a partially enclosed hull. They were not true submarines but were semi-submersible; when ballasted, only the smokestack and few inches of the hull were above the water line. On a dark night, and burning smokeless anthracite coal, the torpedo boats were virtually invisible. The Davids were named after the story of David and Goliath. The Midge and St. Patrick were David-class torpedo boats. Image:CSS David photo.jpg The CSS Squib and CSS Scorpion represented another class of torpedo boats that were also low built but had open decks and lacked the ballasting tanks found on the Davids.

The Confederate torpedo boats were armed with spar torpedoes. This was a charge of powder in a waterproof case, mounted to the bow of the torpedo boat below the water line on a long spar. The torpedo boat attacked by ramming her intended target, which stuck the torpedo to the target ship by means of a barb on the front of the torpedo. The torpedo boat would back away to a safe distance and detonate the torpedo, usually by means of a long cord attached to a trigger.

In general, the Confederate torpedo boats were not very successful. Their low sides made them susceptible to swamping in high seas, and even to having their boiler fires extinguished by spray from their own torpedo explosions. Torpedo misfires (too early) and duds were common.

In 1864 Union Naval lieutentant Cushing fitted a steam launch with a spar torpedo to attack the Confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle. Also this year the Union launched the USS Spuyten Duyvil, a purpose-built craft with a number of technical innovations including variable ballast for attack operations and an extensible and reloadable torpedo placement spar.

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The era of self-propelled torpedoes

During the late 1800s, the development of metal-hulled ships of large size, and the use of gyroscopes to even out the motion of waves, allowed for the rapid development of the very large gunship, which soon became known as battleships, later dreadnoughts. These were fiendishly expensive, so only the largest and richest nations could afford to continue in the race to build such ships.

But at the same time, the new weight of armor slowed them, and the huge guns needed to penetrate that armor fired at very slow rates. This allowed for the possibility of a small and fast ship that could attack the battleships, at a much lower cost. The introduction of the torpedo provided a weapon that could cripple, or sink, any battleship.

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It is commonly acknowledged today that the very first torpedo boat (as opposed to torpedo-equipped gunboat) designed to launch self-propelled torpedoes was the Royal Norwegian Navy's HNoMS Rap—the name meaning 'fast'—ordered from Thornycroft, England in 1873. The first recorded launch of torpedoes from a torpedo boat (which itself was launched from a tender) in an actual battle was by Russian admiral Stepan Makarov on January 16, 1877, who used self-propelled Whitehead's torpedoes against a Turkish armed ship "Intibah" during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.

In the late 19th century, many Navies started to build torpedo boats - relatively small ships, about 30 to 50 m in length, armed with up to three torpedo launchers and small guns. They were powered with steam engines and developed speed of 20 to 30 knots (37 to 56 km/h). They were relatively inexpensive and could be purchased in quantity, allowing for mass attacks on larger fleets. While some of them would undoubtedly be lost to the guns of the larger ships while they ran into firing range, their cost was so low that sinking even one battleship in return would be a victory.

The introduction of the torpedo boat resulted in a flurry of activity in the fleets around the world, as smaller and faster guns were added to existing ships to ward off the new threat. Eventually an entirely new class of ships, the torpedo boat destroyer, was invented to counter them. These ships, today known simply as destroyers, were just enlarged torpedo boats, with speed equal to the torpedo boats, but including heavier guns that could attack them before they were able to close on the main fleet. Destroyers were also armed with torpedoes. Considerable effort was put into designing fleet actions that would allow the destroyers to operate far enough from the main "van" to keep the torpedo boats away, while still remaining close enough that they couldn't be "picked off" by an opposing fleet.

Destroyers became so much more useful, having better seaworthiness and more capabilities than torpedo boats, that they eventually replaced most torpedo boats. Until World War II, classic torpedo boats remained only in a small number in some navies, e.g. German and French. By that time, they were ships 70 to 100 m long, armed with a 2 to 3 guns typically 100 mm (4 in) and torpedo launchers. After the war they eventually disappeared.

Before the World War I, as torpedo boats were growing larger, armed with heavier guns, there appeared different class of torpedo boats, going back to their roots, being small and fast ships again. The introduction of the internal combustion engine resulted in a power source that could offer much higher output from a small source. This also eventually allowed replacement of the slower displacement hulls with planing designs capable of much higher speed under appropriate sea conditions.

The result was a small torpedo boat, perhaps 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30 m) in length with high speed 30 to 50 knots (56 to 93 km/h), carrying 2 to 4 torpedoes, fired from simple fixed launchers, and several machine guns. Such torpedo boats remained useful until World War II, in particular the Royal Navy (RN) Motor torpedo boats (MTBs), Kriegsmarine 'S-Boote' (Schnellboot or fast-boat: British termed them E-boats) and U.S. PT boats (standing for Patrol Torpedo) served their users well.

The Kriegsmarine also had warships classified separately as "torpedo boats" (Torpedoboot and Flottentorpedoboot) with "T"-prefixed hull numbers. The early classes had few guns, relying almost entirely upon their torpedoes for punch. In wartime, this was found to be inflexible and the later classes had a more balanced armament. They were larger than the E-boats, up to 2500 tons and the later versions were more like small destroyers, with which they are sometimes grouped. They could be highly effective, as in the action in which the British cruiser HMS Charybdis was sunk by a torpedo salvo off Brittany.

A classic fast torpedo boat action was the Channel Dash in February 1942 when German E-boats and destroyers defended the flotilla of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen and several smaller ships against RN MTBs.

By World War II torpedo boats were seriously hampered by the higher fleet speeds, although they still had a speed advantage, they could only catch the larger ships by running at very high speeds over very short distances as demonstrated in the Channel Dash. An even greater change was the widespread arrival of patrol aircraft, which could hunt them down long before they could even see their targets.

During World War II, United States naval forces effectively employed fast plywood motor torpedo boats in the South Pacific, where they intercepted Imperial Japanese Navy supply lines in support of the "island hopping" strategy in the region. This enabled the concentrated effort to attack and capture fewer islands, largely in support of aviation endevors, while allowing the bypassed islands to simply "wither on the vine".

The class has not entirely disappeared, due to the arrival of the guided missile. Today a number of navies operate boats of the same general size and concept as the older torpedo boats, but armed with long-range anti-shipping missiles that can be used at ranges between 30 and 70 km. This reduces the need for high speed chases to a degree, and gives them much more room to operate in while approaching their targets. Aircraft remain a major threat, and any fleet combining air elements makes their use almost suicidal.

They are still used by many navies and coast guards to police their territorial waters against smugglers, particularly those smuggling narcotics and weapons to insurgents. The interdiction and boarding of potentially armed hostile fast boats, which often are indistinguishable from legitimate coastal craft, is something which has to be done from a heavily armed fast boat, often with the assistance of maritime patrol aircraft.

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