SUBMARINE MENACE

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 8 May 1935, Page 2

SUBMARINE MENACE

—♦ AN “INVISIBLE” TORPEDO. NO TELL-TALE BUBBLES. Two improvements in the torpedo have been made by German naval experts which will combine to make submarine attacks much more deadly than in the past, said the naval correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” London, in a recent artcle. They are; Propulsion of the torpedo by electricity, instead of compressed air, making it “invisible,” and a method of invisible firing. The “invisible” torpedo lias now been standardised for use in the German Fleet. The use of electricity in place of compressed air for propulsion means the elimination of the tell-tale track of air bubbles widen, m the war, saved many a ship. The electric torpedo was first evolved in Germany in 1918, but the war ended befoiti it could be tried. Since then it has been greatly improved. its •speed is still inferior to that of the latest compressed air““heater»r r » torpedo, it has achieved? a speed an excess of 30 knots. It gives absolutely no indication of its approach, so that the keenest lookout from a. ship in the submarine danger zone would avail nothing. To warships moving at high speed the new torpedo may not be very dangerous, but against merchantmen of low or moderate speed it promises to prove deadly.

In conjunction with the new torpedo the Germany Navy has dkavised a method of invisible firing. Normally the discharge of a torpedo from a submarine is betrayed by an unheaval on the surface, due to the rush of air from the tube. This drawback has )>een overcome bv a simple device which prevents the air escaping from the muzzle of the tube as the torpedo leaves. It is now admitted in Berlin that the collaboration, of [certain “neutral” countries has enabled) Germany, in spite of the Peace Treaty embargo on submarines, to carry out exhaustive experiments with such craft. 'These tests have related' not only to new weapons, but to new methods of construction, such as the Flamm super-stability hull —which, it is claimed, enables a boat so built carry twice the weight of armament and protection carried by a conventional submarine of the same tonnage.