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Use of the torpedo

Most of the world's major navies took note of the development of this device by the late 1880s. Even the extremely reduced post-Civil War United States Navy was involved in torpedo development; and established a Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1870.

The first vessel sunk by self-propelled torpedoes was the Turkish steamer Intibah, on 16 January 1878, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. She was hit by torpedoes launched from torpedo boats operating from the tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin under the command of Stepan Osipovich Makarov.

Three naval actions during the late nineteenth century changed the world navies' perception of the torpedo:

During the 1891 Chilean Civil War, the Chilean vessel Almirante Lynch, torpedoed and sank in port the rebel frigate Blanco Encalada with a 14-inch (360 mm) Whitehead torpedo at a range of 100 yards.

In 1894, in the Revolta da Armada, the rebel Brazilian vessel Aquidaban was torpedoed and sunk at night while moored in a roadstead by the Brazilian torpedo gunboat Gustavo Sampaio with a 14-inch (360 mm) Schwartzkopff torpedo, and was perhaps also torpedoed by the torpedo boat Affonso Pedro.

In 1895, during the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese battleship Dingyuan was put out of action in port by multiple torpedo hits over the course of two nights by several Japanese torpedo boats.

The risks of torpedoes to the ships that carried them were shown, however, at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, in July 1898, when the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya was severely damaged by a shell hit that detonated one of her internally mounted bow torpedoes while it lay armed in its above-water tube. The USS Texas, which also fought in the battle, had its bow and stern tubes removed before the war under just such a concern. One of the major concerns of the US Navy in the Santiago campaign was Spanish torpedoes. All ships during the blockade of Santiago, despite the heat and to the great discomfiture of their crews, kept their portholes shut to delay sinking if the ships were struck by torpedoes or mines.

During Operation Weserübung in 1940, the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, the German heavy cruiser Blücher, already crippled by fire from shore batteries, was hit by two Whitehead torpedoes launched from fixed, shore-mounted tubes in Oscarsborg Fortress in Norway, and later sank. Whitehead's invention of the torpedo was a key development in naval history.

Robert Whitehead

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Robert Whitehead

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Robert Whitehead across IJR

Article

Early life

Article

Early life

Meeting Luppis

The first torpedo

Key innovations

Whitehead & Co.

UBAG Corporation

Use of the torpedo

Heritage

Descendants

Robert Whitehead across IJR