When fired at a ship as you see in films and it misses the target did the torpedo explode after a while or just sink to the bottom of the sea then hit the bottom and explode or just sit there?
Must be plenty of unexploded ordanance at the bottom of the sea bed.
A daft question yes but i would like to know.. :-)
|
>> Must be plenty of unexploded ordanance at the bottom of the sea bed.
There certainly is. I know that in the forties the navy used regularly to dump obsolete or elderly shells, bombs, depth charges and even Oerlikon and small-arms ammo in deep bits of ocean.
Seemed a bit wasteful to me... but then the military are wasteful. As are their main functions, in spades.
|
I think it was fairly common to dispose of entire ships and submarines that way, apart from the ones that foundered or were sunk by enemy action. The sea was regarded as being so vast as to be unpollutable.
Still is really. Tankers washing out etc..
|
>> A daft question yes but i would like to know.. :-)
>>
The WW2 Compressed air and diesel propelled ones (MK8) would sink unless it was a practice shot with a Dayglow painted "warhead" in which case it should float. The modern battery powered ones (basically an underwater guided missile) sink, the practice ones are used in shallow water and recovered with a ROV. There is mild panic if one goes astray, they are very expensive and a bit secret.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 16 Jun 13 at 16:42
|
>> they are very expensive
Torpedoes always were expensive compared to mere projectiles or depth charges... and didn't some torpedoes even in WW2 home in on the sound of propellers or engines, giving them a sort of guided missile side? Not entirely sure about that though, could easily be wrong.
|
>> Not entirely sure about that though, could easily be wrong.
>>
>>
A bit before my time, we had homing torpedoes in the 60s, that is as far back as my personal experience goes, also magnetic fuses. I suspect the Germans had them before us.
|
>> magnetic fuses.
AKA 'proximity fuses'... dunno who had them first but they could easily date from WW1.
|
>> A bit before my time, we had homing torpedoes in the 60s, that is as
>> far back as my personal experience goes, also magnetic fuses. I suspect the Germans had
>> them before us.
Indeed, they invented them. The british navy had to de-guass ships by dragging huge coils down the side of the ship when they left port. The Kriegsmarine reverted to contact torpedoes.
Back to the original post, sunken live torpedoes are weedy insignificant threats compared to
the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery, which still contains 1400 tonnes of TNT.
|
On a lighter note, a Bob Newhart story involving a torpedo....
monologues.co.uk/Bob_Newhart/Defusing_a_Bomb.htm
|
|
Wasn't the Belgrano sunk by a "dumb" WW2 design torpedo ?
|
>> Wasn't the Belgrano sunk by a "dumb" WW2 design torpedo ?
>>
Yes, 3 of them, one missed, the first one hit the screws and stopped her and the fourth one passed ahead of her. Shots two and three hit amidships.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 16 Jun 13 at 20:59
|
>> Back to the original post, sunken live torpedoes are weedy insignificant threats compared to
>> the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery, which still contains 1400 tonnes of TNT.
And that's all but in the middle of the Thames estuary. I do wonder why they haven't stuck a torpedo into that to see what happens. Better than it blowing up at a random time.
As it breaks up it's only going to get harder to recover and remove, and they'll presumably have to deal with it if they build the Boris Johnson Memorial Airport.
|
|
maybe davey jones locker is the best place for all that trinitrotoluene... i seem to remember watching danger UXB tv series about ww2 bomb disposal team, 9 times out of ten they would pump sea/salt water into the bomb to clag it up
|
>> maybe davey jones locker is the best place for all that trinitrotoluene... i seem to
>> remember watching danger UXB tv series about ww2 bomb disposal team, 9 times out of
>> ten they would pump sea/salt water into the bomb to clag it up
That was to "clag up" the detonator
|
ww2 Torpedo. - Armel Coussine
