Mines and Torpedoes

By

CHARLES H. HALL

Reprinted from April, 1917, issue of Sea Power

For Additional Copies of this Pamphlet No. 152, apply to the

NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES

S O U T H E R N B U I L D I N G , W A S H I N G T O N , D. C.

Copyright, 1917, by the Sea Power Publishing Company

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Mines and Torpedoes By CHARLES H. HALL

They have developed from crude beginnings to the deadly weapons of to-day

- p . ESTROYING the ene-I my by working from a

u •ik*| J distance is as old as the '" 'NuL history of warfare. * ^ ^ 3 Catapult, cannon and

fire ship all embodied this idea and so we find

as early as the siege of Antwerp in 1585 that small boats were stored with powder which was covered with heavy timbers and stones and in-tended to be exploded close along-side of the enemy by a slow burning fuse. In more modern times the ex-plosive charge was packed in a smaller container and set adrift above the enemy's ships. Bushnell, inventor of the first American submarine, is credited with having devised the floating mines that were set adrift in the Delaware River in January of 1778. The British held Philadelphia and a number of their men-of-war were anchored in front of the city. At the beginning of the ebb tide two boys in a row boat picked up a small floating barrel. A few moments later there was a tremendous explosion ; the barrel proved to be a floating mine. The British seamen at once manned their guns and, for the rest of the ebb, fired at every floating object in the river. A contemporary Philadelphia paper comments sarcastically upon this and mentions the alarm caused

when an old woman dropped a butter firkin overboard from one of the wharves. Commodore John Barry was in charge of the arrangements for this attack upon the enemy and Francis Hopkinson has celebrated it in the "Battle of the Kegs." All sorts of rumors flew about the waterfront, one of them being referred to by the poet as follows:

"These kegs, I'm told, the rebels bold Packed up like pickled herring,

And they've come down to attack the town

By this new means of ferrying."

The first electrical mines were used in England in 1839 to blow up the wreck of the ship-of-the-line Royal George. In 1854 the Russians used mechanically operated mines in the Baltic with considerable success. In this country Colonel Samuel Colt had experimented with electrically oper-ated mines as early as 1840.

Fulton developed mines to use with his submarine, but it was not until our Civil War that we find them in extensive use. The Confederates had practically no navy and the Federal naval forces were extremely active. To deny access to rivers and ports Southern engineers soon took up the submarine mine or the "torpedo" as it was then called. In its crudest

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Mines and Torpedoes

form it was a large demijohn with a charge of ordinary gunpowder and was ignited by a friction primer, a light cord leading to the shore. The observer lay hidden close to the bank and, when he thought the enemy's ship was over his mine, pulled the cord and an explosion resulted. Beer barrels, vinegar kegs, etc., were used, and later mines were made of sheet iron, tin or copper. The South made very effective use of them and a num-ber of Federal ships were destroyed. One of the first cases was in the Yazoo River when the gunboat Cairo was sunk by mines made from demijohns. They were laid by a Confederate naval officer who had formerly been in the United States service, Isaac N. Brown. As he saw the Cairo go down he de-scribed himself as feeling much as a

school boy might whose practical joke had taken a more serious shape than he expected. Mines were used ex-tensively at the entrance to Mobile Bay and the monitor Tecumseh was sunk, with most of her crew, at the very commencement of the battle. The Hartford, Farragut's flagship, drove ahead across the minefield, but though she bumped several of them, they proved ineffective and failed to explode. By this time Southern en-gineers had developed a mine designed to explode when struck by a hostile vessel. Indeed, some large mines were connected with the shore by insulated wires and were to be dis-charged electrically. An old boiler, containing a ton of powder, was planted off Charleston and the iron-clad New Ironsides lav ovei it for more

Kadel and Herbert

THE TORPEDO IS A DELICATE PIECE OF MECHANISM AND REQUIRES CAREFUL ADJUST-MENT TO SECURE ACCURACY.

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Mines and Torpedoes

THE U.S.S. SAN FRANCISCO WAS ORIGINALLY A CRUISER BUT IS NOW A MINE DEPOT SHIP. HER STERN HAS BEEN CUT AWAY TO FACILITATE MINE DROPPING.

than an hour while the Confederates tried vainly to explode the charge.

Up to 1870 all submarine explosives were called torpedoes, but after that date they were differentiated into tor-pedoes and mines, the mine being without motive power. Mines are either electrical or mechanical and may be set on the bottom, anchored at any depth below the surface or arranged to float freely. They may be fired by contact or at will from the shore. The former are called con-tact mines and are dangerous to friend and foe alike. The latter are observa-tion mines, are electrically fired, and may be rendered practically harmless by breaking the circuit ashore.

Contact mines are designed to ex-plode in close proximity to the vessel's hull. Ordinarily they are spherical in

shape, about 40 inches in diameter and contain 100 pounds of guncotton, TNT., or other high explosive. The observation mine, on the contrary, is meant to cripple a ship near by and usually has about 500 pounds of ex-plosives. They are often cylindrical in shape and about four feet in diameter. They are frequently set in groups of four, each group being joined to the same electric cable which is led ashore. Two observers at different points watch an approaching ship, each through a telescope swinging on a fixed pivot. As the ship, as seen from one station, apparently passes over a mine group the switch connected to the telescope closes the firing circuit to that cluster of mines. No explo-sion takes place, however, until the circuit is completed at the other

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Mines and Torpedoes Mines and Torpedoes

station when the ship is seen in the field of that observer's telescope.

A contact mine may be fitted to work elec-trically. When a vessel touches it a signal is made or a bell rung ashore. If the vessel is hostile, closing a switch will complete the circuit and explode the mine. Such mines may be ren-dered harmless by leav-ing the switch open and the circuit broken.

Ground mines are set on the bottom and usu-ally contain very large charges. They are, of course, electrically fired. Their advantage is that they are far enough be-low the surface to avoid damage or accidental explosion by a friendly vessel.

It is remarkable how much injury a mine will stand without explosion. Some of those set in our harbors in the Spanish War were dented and cut by passing vessels so that one won-dered why they had not exploded.

Mines were used abroad in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the German coasts were liberally strewed with them. They were also employed in the Russo-Turkish War in '78, and in our war with Spain in 1898. Both sides used them off Port Arthur in 1904-05 with considerable effect and floating contact mines were set adrift. Many innocent vessels suffered, peace-

by Waterman. • j LAUNCHING A TORPEDO FROM THE DECK TUBES OF A DESTROYER. THE LENGTH SLIDES IN A GROOVE IN THE TUBE AND SUPPORTS THE MISSILE

AND THE EXHAUS f'-AT THE

ful traders and junks being destroyed two years after the close of hostilities. These floating mines may be dropped during or just before a naval battle, and the enemy coaxed to cross them in chase of flying vessels or driven on to them. By the rules of the Hague Conference, floating mines must be rendered ineffective an hour after they are dropped, but this provision is apparently a dead letter.

The original purpose of a mine field was to detain the enemy's ships under the fire of a fort. Ships could

STUD ON TOP OF THE TORPEDO AT THE MIDDLE OF ITS UNTIL THE TAIL IS CLEAR. NOTICE THE BLUNT NOSE

TAIL.

run by forts, as we proved in the Civil War, their heavy batteries driving the gunners to shelter, but if mines were laid well within range of the fort's guns, the ships could not run by un-scathed and the fort could keep them at a distance.

Mines are laid by special vessels. Sometimes they are old men-of-war with their sterns cut away and tracks fitted on deck, fore and aft. A num-ber of mines, each with its anchor and distance weight, are mounted on small trucks and are run aft and drop-

ped at intervals. The mine anchor is saucer shape with the anchor cable on a reel in it. The "distance weight" is dropped over first and a fixed amount of its cable —10, 15, or 20 feet—allowed to unreel. The mine anchor is then dropped, and goes down, unreeling the mine cable until the dis-tance weight touches bottom. A brake locks the cable reel of the mine and the anchor sinks to the bottom, pulling the mine down to the proper distance below the surface.

The answer to the mine was formerly by the countermine — that is, charges were ex-ploded near them and the mines set off by concussion. T o - d a y , however, they are usu-ally found by sweeping.

Two small vessels take the ends of a wire rope and steam ahead at the proper distance apart, letting the rope or chain drag on the bottom between them. The bight of the rope catches a mine and brings it to the surface where it is usually destroyed by rifle fire. Another method is to "creep" for the cables of observation mines—that is, hooks are dragged along the bottom and the cables pulled up and cut or followed until the mines are reached.

Bushnell and Fulton, who experi-

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Mines and Torpedoes

merited with the submarine boat, depended on the operator to attach his torpedo to the bottom of the enemy's vessel. The next step was taken during our Civil War, when the explosive charge was placed on the end of a pole, pushed against the enemy's vessel and fired by suitable

means. Cushing used such a spar tor-pedo when he sank the A Ibemarle. He had to steer the boat, swing the spar into place, attach the torpedo and pull the lanyard. The Confederate David that blew up the Housatonic, also used a spar torpedo and the same device was used in the attack on the U.S.S.

t'acn trnuiu iV erxis

HOISTING A TORPEDO OUT OF THE WATER AFTER A RUN. A SECOND ONE FLOATS IN THE FOREGROUND. THE SHIP IS A FRENCH MAN-OF-WAR.

m

Mines and Torpedoes

Courtesy Scientific American

THE BRITISH TRAWLER FLEET—STURDY VESSELS WITH SKILLED AND HARDY CREWS-HAS DONE WONDERFUL WORK IN CLEARING OUT THE GERMAN MINE FIELDS.

Memphis. The Navy Department built a torpedo launch, called the Spuyten Duyvil, and also a little-known submersible named Alligator. Neither of these got into action.

In the war between France and China, in 1884, the Chinese warship Yang Woo was destroyed by a spar torpedo, and the weapon remained a favorite in the United States Navy until the early '80's.

Meanwhile, experiments were made abroad with the Harvey torpedo which was towed at the end of a long line, the object being to drag it across the bows of an enemy's vessel. The Sims-Edison and Lay torpedoes were developed, one was a self-propelled device, and both controlled from the shore. They were too slow and awk-ward and soon became obsolete.

About 1864 an Englishman, named Whitehead, had an engineering plant

at Fiume on the Adriatic. An Aus-trian naval officer, Captain Lupius, came to him with a cigar-shaped de-vice carrying an explosive charge, driven by clockwork and steered by a rope. The apparatus was crude, but Whitehead improved it and in two years brought out a torpedo that car-ried a charge of 18 pounds of gun-cotton and had a speed of six knots for a short distance. On this side of the Atlantic, Rear Admiral Howell de-veloped a torpedo driven by a heavy flywheel, which was spun up to a high speed just before launching. Its range was short, though the gyro-scopic action of the flywheel kept it on a straight course. The Whitehead tor-pedo of that date was most erratic in steering. Finally Ludwig Obry, an Austrian engineer, added a small gyro-scope to the steering gear of the Whitehead torpedo. This device was

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Mines and Torpedoes

tried by the Italian Navy about 1896 and revolutionized torpedo construc-tion, increased range and accuracy being given.

Before this the automobile, loco-motive or fish torpedo, as it was vari-ously called, had scored very few successes. It had been tried in the fight between the British ship Shah and the Peruvian Huascar and' had failed; also in the Russo-Turkish war in '77 without result, though the Rus-sians in '78 succeeded in sinking a Turkish revenue cutter off Batoum. In 1891 the Blanco Encalada was sunk in Caldera Bay, Chile, by the torpedo boats Almirante Lynch and Almirante Condell. They fired several torpedoes at short range before they succeeded in hitting the target. In the Brazilian Revolution of 1894 the battleship Aquidaban was sunk in a night attack by the torpedo boat Sampaio, though here again several misses were scored.

In the Spanish War it was used but little and at Santiago the dangers of the above water-tube were shown when a shell struck a torpedo on the Oquendo and caused a fearful explosion. The Japanese began their war by a torpedo attack on the Russian vessels in Port Arthur.

A naval officer wrote in 1880: "When torpedoes can be discharged from guns or tubes under water, tor-pedo ships for cruising on the high seas will doubtless come into favor." How true a prophecy! To-day all capital ships and many cruisers carry submerged tubes, while scouts and destroyers depend on the deck tube.

The latest model torpedo is a cigar-shaped affair made of steel and having rather a blunt nose. I t is 21 inches diameter, 1 7 ^ feet long and

weighs over 2,000 pounds. The head holds over 200 pounds of wet gun-cotton and a detonating charge. It fired by a pin which is driven against a detonator on striking the target. On this pin is threaded a safety device like a tiny propeller which unscrews and drops off after it has traveled a certain distance.

Collapsible "exercise heads" of the same weight as the war head are used for practice.

Next to the head comes the air flask in which is stored air, the motive power, compressed to over 2,200 pounds to the square inch. In one with the air flask is the fuel and water compartment containing alcohol and fresh water to be used in the super-heating system for developing steam which, with the air, drives the engine and works the various auxiliaries. This heating system has increased the effective range greatly, for otherwise the expansion of the air would chill it to a low temperature. In the after body, which is cone-shaped, are two turbine engines, capable of develop-ing nearly 200 horsepower. Here also are the lubricating system, the steer-ing gear, the depth regulating device and the position and duration locking mechanisms. Two propellers, rotat-ing in opposite directions and turning 1,750 revolutions per minute are mounted at the extreme after end and drive the weapon.

The torpedo is set to travel at a fixed distance below the surface, vary-ing from zero to 25 feet. Should it go deeper than wished, the pressure of the water, acting on a piston and re-sisted by a spring, turns the hori-zontal rudders up. A pendulum, how-ever, keeps it from going up at too

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Mines and Torpedoes

great an angle. The gyroscope is mounted on gimbals like a compass and is spun at a high speed. Should the torpedo deviate from a straight course, the gyro moves the steering engine, and brings it back to the proper heading.- Indeed, the gyro may be set in the desired direction and the torpedo fired more than 90 degrees from its course, the gyro bringing it around and holding it in the designed direction.

Large ships are fitted with under water broadside tubes. Before the torpedo is fired a "spoon" is run out and carries the torpedo clear of the ship's side. Modern submarines have four bow tubes.

Our latest destroyers have four triple tubes, three tubes being mounted together on turn tables on deck. The pointer sits in a bucket seat on top of the tube with the direct-ing gear in front of him. He must allow for the speed and course of his own vessel and also of the enemy's.

A torpedo is expelled from its tube by compressed air. The forward end

of the tube is cut away on the bottom and has a groove inside along the top. A stud on the torpedo travels in this groove and the tail is clear of the tube before it drops. A lever is tripped by a stud on the tube, igniting the heat-ing device, and another lever, tripped when striking the water, starts the engines.

The range of the modern torpedo is about 10,000 yards and its speed at the beginning of the run is over 40 knots. The cost is about $7,500 each.

One field of torpedo warfare that has proved fascinating to the inventor covers the distant control of the weapon. One device governs it by sound, the missile being drawn toward the enemy by the noise of its machin-ery. Another, with a surface float, will follow a bright light—a search light leading it to its goal. A still more promising field seems to be that of wireless control, and some remark-able feats have been performed with a motor boat as well as with tor-pedoes by an operator on the shore.

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