Torpedo: The Complete History of the World's Most Revolutionary Naval Weapon

By Roger Branfill-Cook

The torpedo was the greatest single game-changer in the history of naval warfare. For the first time it allowed any small, cheap torpedo-firing vessel – and by extension a small, minor navy – to threaten the largest and most powerful warships afloat. The

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Aug 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473842700

Roger Branfill-Cook

ROGER BRANFILL-COOK is a qualified battlefield guide, a professional translator from French, and also a writer on military subjects and a modemaker. His most recent book was _River Gunboats: An Illustrated Encyclopaedia _ published by Seaforth in 2018.

Reviews for Torpedo

[k.g.budge · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Does indeed cover the breadth of torpedo history, including torpedo launch platforms, torpedo countermeasures, tactics, and operational history. Manages to do so without being breezy; in fact, the depth is fairly impressive.Oddly, my initial reaction was unfavorable. That's because about ten pages in, I found myself reading about Japanese suicide motor boats (in some detail) and was left with the impression of a spotty, breezy work. Checked the table of contents and discovered that the book was almost entirely organized by topic rather than chronologically, and torpedoing by ramming was an early topic, so it actually made sense to discuss the Japanese suicide boats there. Only I should be more careful; only the Navy version was deliberately suicide. The Army version called for the crew to drop a couple of depth charges next to a target then skedaddle, with a theoretical chance of getting away. This rarely worked in practice.Lots of good photographs and illustrations I hadn't seen elsewhere, including shots of the dished-in but unruptured torpedo bulkhead on USS Nevada from its single torpedo hit a Pearl Harbor, and a fairly impressive shot of the guts of a small tube boiler spilled by a torpedo hit. (What's impressive is that the ship was successfully kept afloat and towed to a dry dock for the photograph to be taken.)Surprises? I did not know that a number of British ships of the Second World War were fitted with defensive sonar meant to detect a torpedo in time to take evasive action. I did not know that fear of coal dust explosion after a torpedo hit was one reason the Royal Navy switched to oil. I did not know the Japanese had devised an air-dropped antisubmarine torpedo using a descending circular run; in fairness, neither did U.S. submariners, since it was deployed far too late in the war to matter. I did not know that G.E. had skimped on the usual robust design in its electric torpedo motor, in order to make a powerful enough motor fit in a torpedo casing, on the theory that if it sparked constantly and badly overheated during a torpedo run, well, no one much cared that this eventually damaged the motor. (Except in practice runs, and a conscious decision was made that the motor could be replaced or refurbished after each test shot.) I did not know that the Russians developed a Cold War torpedo that was essentially an underwater rocket moving at 200 knots; of course, terminal guidance was a bit of a problem.I think a lot of the crowd here would quite enjoy this book.