TORPEDOES. An examination of the details of vessels designed, built, and building in all the countries making any attempt to progress in this art, discloses the application of torpedoes to vessels of all classes and dimensions, from the smallest second-class torpedo boat to the monstrous armored battle-ship. In addition to the boats being built by firms making that a specialty, naval constructors are giving particular attention to a ship of aver age dimensions to meet the requirements of torpedo warfare. The development has already carried us from second-class torpedo-boats, up through boats of the first class, Fig. 1, torpedo dispatch vessels, torpedo gunboats. to torpedo cruisers and torpedo depot ships.
For all naval warfare there is needed a torpedo possessing high speed, good range, as sured directive power, simplicity, and handiness ; it must have inherent and positive directive force to resist any efforts to cause deviation. In order to be launched without deflection from a vessel running at high speed, Fig. 2, it must possess this paramount quality of maintaining the direction in which it is pointed. Such a torpedo will also be the most efficient for use in defending or taking the place of fixed mines, and for other harbor de fenses ; for automatic torpedoes, fired from bomb-proof casetnates and torpedo boats, will certainly be re lied upon as most important harbor de fenses.
As a torpedo is an engine or machine invented for the pur pose of destroying ships by blowing them up, and as it is a pro jectile which may he projected either in the air, upon the sur face of the water, or under it, for conven ient reference the fol subdivisions are made : T.—Air torpedoes (although a small part of their trajectory may be subaqueous), in eluding rockets and dynamite shell.
II.—Ground and buoyant mines.
III.—Spar, towing, and submarine shells.
I V.—Controllable.
V.—Automatic, automobile, or fish.
Types I., II. and IV. will probably be found useful for discharge from fixed defenses.
Type T. are now passing through a series of tests which should determine their usefulness. Type II. are for harbors, channels, and rivers. There may be some isolated eases where cir cumstances may afford a chance to use Type III. Great development has gone on with controllable torpedoes. Type IV., but none of them have equalled the possibilities of the self contained fish-torpedo, which will more efficiently supplement the ground and buoyant mines for fixed defenses than any other.
I. Am. ToReEnons. —.Rockets have been familiar for many years, and. although still fur nished for signaling purposes, they have not undergone any great development as aerial or aqueous torpedoes during the past decade. Those that were tried in the water have been very difficult to control, particularly if there was a rough sea, which deflected them from their course to such an extent, that they have been known to jump up in the air. and upon again striking the water, to take a course just opposite that in which they originally started. Those intended to pass through the air have been too much influenced by wind and other conditions to admit of any degree of accuracy.
55 Dynamite Projeetiles.—There are two types of projectiles thrown by the dynamite gun now in use, in various sizes, known as full-calibers and sub-calibers. The tnil-cialiber, which fills the bore of the gun completely, consists of a light, strong ease containing the explosive, fuse, etc., with a small tube in the rear supporting the rotating blades or vanes which control the Clirection of the flight. The ease or bo0 consists of a steel or iron tube to in. thick, closed at the front end by a brass colloidal-shaped head, and at the rear by a hemispherical base easting of bronze. The base casting has a socket in the center to attach a small tube that supports the rotating blades. Eight blocks of vulcanized fiber, on each end of the shell, center it in the bore, causing thereby friction, heat. vibration, etc.