Deadly man-steered torpedo
Item
-
Title (Dublin Core)
-
Deadly man-steered torpedo
-
Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
-
A Deadly Man-Steered Torpedo. Would you pilot five hundred pounds of gun-cotton toward a hostile battleship and brave gun-fire?
-
Caption: When the torpedo has been released the weight of the conning tower section causes it to
keel over, thus forming a kind of canoe in which the pilot paddles back to his vessel
-
extracted text (Extract Text)
-
THE modern Whitehead automobile
torpedo is by far the most feared
weapon of modern naval warfare.
It is, in effect, a little automatic sub-
marine boat, with engines and rudders
controlled by a mechanical brain. The
soul of the torpedo is the gyroscope—a
flywheel spinning at several thousand
revolutions per minute. Unfortunately,
this flywheel loses speed from the
moment of launching. Modern naval
battles are fought at ranges of five to
ten miles. The Whitehead torpedo is
inaccurate at such distances. Indeed,
in the whole history of naval warfare
the torpedo has reached its target only
at short ranges.
Among the plans which have been
suggested for increasing the effectiveness
of the torpedo, perhaps the most daring
is that of providing it with a real brain
and a real controlling hand in the shape
of a man. Commander Davis of the
United States Navy, designed a little
vessel, some years ago, which was to
contain a huge explosive charge and
which was to be guided by a super-bold
mariner against a battleship amid a
storm of bullets. That men will volun-
teer for such hazardous work recent wars
have abundantly demonstrated. We
have only to remember how the Merri-
mac was sunk in the mouth of Santiago
harbor, during the Spanish-American
war, in the effort to imprison the
Spanish ships believed to lie within.
Dozens of men volunteered to block the
channel under the fire of Spanish guns.
Hence, when Jacob S. Walch, of Walla
Walla, Washington, suggests a torpedo
controlled by a pilot carried along on its
flight, we can well believe that he has
not underestimated human courage.
He builds his torpedo so that the part
in which the pilot sits may be detached
after the explosive charge has been
released to proceed under its own auto-
matic control.
The detachable, pilot-carrying portion
is attached to the main body of the
torpedo and the various levers and
controlling devices are all within the
reach of the operator. When the
torpedo is traveling on the surface of
the water, partly submerged, the com-
pressed air used by the engine may be
taken from an air-chamber, which is in
communication with the atmosphere,
through vertical tubes resembling peri-
scopes. When the forfedt is to be
submerged to a greater depth the tubes
are lowered and the engine is then
supplied with gas from a compressed-gas
tank. The depth of submergence may
be regulated by the inclination of planes
at the side of the body.
When the torpedo has been brought
to proper striking distance by the pilot,
who has meanwhile fixed the control for
the correct course and the proper
submergence, a rod is operated which
causes pressure from the compressed air
tank to separate the torpedo body from
the pilot section. As soon as the pilot
section is free from the main body of
the torpedo, the weight of the conning-
tower portion causes the section to
turn over, the top now acting as a keel.
After opening the hatch-way, the pilot
maneuvers his way back to his vessel.
-
Contributor (Dublin Core)
-
Jacob S. Walch (inventor)
-
Language (Dublin Core)
-
eng
-
Date Issued (Dublin Core)
-
1916-11
-
pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
-
694-695
-
Rights (Dublin Core)
-
Public Domain (Google digitized)
-
Archived by (Dublin Core)
-
Filippo Valle
-
Alberto Bordignon (Supervisor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 89, n. 5, 1916
