Torpedo boat

A swarm of expendable torpedo boats attacking en masse could overwhelm a larger ship's ability to fight them off using its large but cumbersome guns.

A fleet of torpedo boats could pose a similar threat to an adversary's capital ships, albeit only in the coastal areas to which their small size and limited fuel load restricted them.

The introduction of fast torpedo boats in the late 19th century was a serious concern to the era's naval strategists, introducing the concept of tactical asymmetric warfare.

In time they became larger and took on more roles, including making their own torpedo attacks on valuable enemy ships as well as defending against submarines and aircraft.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln instituted a naval blockade of Southern ports, which crippled the South's efforts to obtain war materiel from abroad.

This was a charge of powder in a waterproof case, mounted to the bow of the torpedo boat below the water line on a long spar.

Their low sides made them susceptible to swamping in high seas, and even to having their boiler fires extinguished by spray from their own torpedo explosions.

In 1864, Union Navy Lieutenant William B. Cushing fitted a steam launch with a spar torpedo to attack the Confederate ironclad Albemarle.

Also the same year the Union launched USS Spuyten Duyvil, a purpose-built craft with a number of technical innovations including variable ballast for attack operations and an extensible and reloadable torpedo placement spar.

A prototype self-propelled torpedo was created by a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis, an Austrian naval officer from Rijeka, then a port city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a town factory.

In 1864, Luppis presented Whitehead with the plans of the Salvacoste ("coastsaver"), a floating weapon driven by ropes from the land that had been dismissed by the naval authorities due to the impractical steering and propulsion mechanisms.

Whitehead was unable to improve the machine substantially, since the clockwork motor, attached ropes, and surface attack mode all contributed to a slow and cumbersome weapon.

However, he kept considering the problem after the contract had finished, and eventually developed a tubular device, designed to run underwater on its own, and powered by compressed air.

The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff ("mine ship"), the first modern self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on December 21, 1866.

It was a mechanism consisting of a hydrostatic valve and pendulum that caused the torpedo's hydroplanes to be adjusted so as to maintain a preset depth.

Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, the IJN commander, had ordered his torpedo boats to finish off the enemy flagship, already gunned into a wreck, as he prepared to pursue the remnants of the Russian battle fleet.

[6] The introduction of the torpedo boat resulted in a flurry of activity in navies around the world, as smaller, quicker-firing guns were added to existing ships to ward off the new threat.

This was found to be inadequate in combat, and the result was a "fleet torpedo boat" class (Flottentorpedoboot), which were significantly larger, up to 1,700 tons, comparable to small destroyers.

During the First World War, three junior officers of the Harwich Force suggested that small motor boats carrying a torpedo might be capable of travelling over the protective minefields and attacking ships of the Imperial German Navy at anchor in their bases.

In 1915, the Admiralty produced a Staff Requirement requesting designs for a Coastal Motor Boat for service in the North Sea.

The speed of the boat when fully loaded was to be at least 30 knots (56 km/h) and sufficient fuel was to be carried to give a considerable radius of action.

During the civil war in Russia, British torpedo boats made raids on Kronstadt harbour damaging two battleships and sinking a cruiser.

The Royal Navy's Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs), Kriegsmarine 'S-Boote' (Schnellboot or "fast-boat": British termed them E-boats), (Italian) M.A.S.

An even greater threat was the widespread arrival of patrol aircraft, which could hunt down torpedo boats long before they could engage their targets.

During World War II United States naval forces employed fast wooden PT boats in the South Pacific in a number of roles in addition to the originally envisioned one of torpedo attack.

PT boats performed search and rescue, reconnaissance, ferry and courier work as well as attack and smoke screening duties.

As a result, fast attack craft are being replaced for use in naval combat by larger corvettes, which are able to carry radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles for self-defense, and helicopters for over-the-horizon targeting.

Although torpedo boats have disappeared from the majority of the world's navies, they remained in use until the late 1990s and early 2000s in a few specialised areas, most notably in the Baltic.