TORPEDOES AND ARMOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 93, 17 October 1939, Page 10

TORPEDOES AND ARMOUR

A Berlin comment, published yesterday, on the sinking of the battleship Royal Oak, included the following statement: —"There seems to be every indication that the Germans have developed a new type of torpedo, capable of penetrating the heaviest armour plating on a modern warship. The Germans assert that the Royal Oak was provided with special antitorpedo protective armour, which apparently failed."

This is a piece of scaremongering. A torpedo weighs roughly a ton, travels at a maximum speed of 60 feet a second, and is made of thin steel plate. Twelve-inch armour is designed to stop a half-ton of almost solid steel cf the toughest and hardest kind travelling at 2000 feet a second. Warships' armour is never carried more than a few feet below the waterline, owing to its enormous weight, and torpedoes are always.set to strike at a greater depth. The whole striking power of a torpedo lies in the force of the explosion of some 200 or 300 pounds of high explosive, though it has been reported that torpedo headj have been constructed of such strength that they can penetrate ordinary ship's plating. The principal anti-torpedo protection desigr ed during the Great War and extensively applied afterwards is the "blister" or "bulge," which is a longitudinal watertight compartment built outside the regular hull. In theory, the torpedo was to explode on striking the outer skin of the "bulge" and waste mosts of its energy in the enclosed space. Two torpedoes fired at the same spot, however, might have a different final effect, -