Japanese Type 93 versus US Mark XIII torpedo.

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The British used torpedoes with the air "enriched" by extra oxygen between the wars. I believe only on cruisers?

However the risk of enriched air mixtures let alone pure (or nearly) oxygen was finally thought to be too dangerous.
You also need an oxygen plant to top up the torpedoes on long cruises and some sort of oxygen storage facility on the ship.
The danger was why few countries tried to use oxygen fueled (I know it is the oxidizer and not the fuel) torpedoes in submarines. Too much oil/combustible material leaking into the submarine and oxygen will tend to settle into low places making for some really dangerous fuel/oxygen mixtures.
Most of the Japanese torpedoes did use oxygen enrichment.
 

The morale issue affected the Kriegsmarine as well, when U boat commanders returned having witnessed their torpedoes consistently failing.

MIflyer said:
The Shuttle was designed by NASA for NASA, to be operated by NASA, and all other launch systems were to be phased out to prevent competition with it.
Click to expand...

Actually, the US Air Force had considerable input in the Orbiter design, particularly the size of the payload bay being necessary to carry the air force's spy satellites. It was designed by North American/Rockwell International. The saga behind the shuttle and its various configurations is fascinating and is quite long winded and involved lots of US industry giants.
 
The Basket said:
The IJN used hydrogen peroxide which is not ideal.

Works nice but created a shed load of issues.
Click to expand...

The British developed HTP torpedoes, the Mk.XII Fancy and one was responsible for the loss of the submarine Sidon.

"The "Fancy" torpedo used high test peroxide (HTP) as an oxidizer. When an oxidizer line burst, HTP sprayed onto the copper fittings inside the torpedo, decomposing into oxygen and steam. The torpedo's warhead did not detonate, but its hull burst violently, rupturing the torpedo tube and causing the flooding that destroyed the boat. The torpedo programme was terminated and the torpedoes taken out of use by 1959."

HMS Sidon (P259) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And then there was the Kursk...
 
Hydrogen peroxide has a very dodgy history in navies.

All failed. Hydrogen peroxide in concentrated amounts is bad news.

It was used on the Me 163 Komet which is enough to tell you how bad news it is.
 
NASA thunk up the idea that the Shuttle would meet all launch requirements, thereby making manned spaceflight jobs bulletproof by being the only approved game in town. The unmanned missions need no special justification; they had become the equivalent of utilities and everybody wanted them.

Meeting the USAF requirements meant polar orbit missions would be required. And since the vehicle was manned, it had to be able to abort on the first orbit. Given the rotation of the Earth and the fact that the most useful polar orbits actually required the trajectory be somewhat West of due South, that meant the vehicle would arrive at the end of its first orbit over a vast amount of open sea, with no place to land. Since changing orbital inclinations was essentially impossible, that meant the Shuttle had to fly, in the atmosphere, at least a couple of thousand miles to reach a suitable landing site. NASA referred to this as "the Air Force Cross Range Requirement" but in fact it was a consequence of the NASA requirement that the vehicle handle all payloads and that it be manned.
 
I worked (briefly) for an aviation component manufacturer. I heard my one aviation joke there.
What does Morton-Thiokol and a walrus have in common?
They're both looking for a tight seal.
 
I wrote an article on the Challenger failure and in the process discovered something that made perfect sense to me but most people would be astonished to hear.

NASA did not violate the low temperature limits for launching the Shuttle on the STS-51L mission. Because. There. Weren't. Any.

The rest of our space boosters were modified Air Force ballistic missiles. As such they were designed to the standard low temperature limits as for aircraft and related equipment, -65F. That is how cold it gets up around 50,000 ft and if your high performance jet can't handle that it won't be much good. If WWIII starts and it is too cold for your delicate ballsitic missile to launch in North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Maine, New Mexico or Oklahoma you don't get to call a time out for better weather. They were designed to handle those low temperatures and since it never ever gets anywhere near that cold at the Cape and VAFB, it was an issue that never arose. Oh, there were concerns about some of the component parts being either too hot or too cold, but as far as the vehicle itself, we never worried if it was too cold out to launch.

But NASA did not specify a minimum launch temperature for the Shuttle. It was not something that anyone had ever worried about.

Later NASA established a standard of 32F as the lower limit for designs but that was never applied to the Shuttle. The solid rocket boosters were specified to be tested down to 40F but not even that ever occurred. You had to do the hot firings outside and you can't just order up a 40F day when you need one. Examination of the SRB joints after the Shuttle started flying showed erosion with outside temperatures in only the 50's but no one did anything about that. It was in the upper 20's at the Cape the morning that STS-51L launched.
 
The IJN used pure oxygen.

Sweden has used hydrogen peroxide oxidizers for its naval torpedoes, without issues, for decades. Russia uses hydrogen peroxide for its spacecraft thrusters. Amateur rocket makers routinely use 90% hydrogen peroxide with few problems.

High-energy compounds need to be handled with care.
 
I remember my Dad telling me about a Vickers Valiant crash when the plane crossed the airfield boundary but landed short of the concrete. It went boom and burnt itself to a puddle of Aluminium. That was caused by the liquid O2 system being damaged and sparks plus spilt kerosene turned the fuselage into a torch. Apparently it only burnt for about 2 minutes but all that was left was the radome nose section, wing tips and horizontal stabilisers.
 

During Desert Storm, I deployed to Morón AB in Spain with the 801 BW (P). The base was the primary abort-landing field for the STS if for some reason it couldn't attain orbit or turn back to Florida, so us firefighters got several hours of coursework on egressing and securing the craft and systems.

We were alerted for the two launches that occurred during our deployment as the launches counted down, because the flight time across the Atlantic was just a few minutes in certain situations. The big worry was brake fires (it would be landing heavy, obviously) and the thrusters around the nose, because of their hypergolics.

Interesting stuff.
 
Last edited:
Shortround6 said:
The British used torpedoes with the air "enriched" by extra oxygen between the wars. I believe only on cruisers?
Click to expand...

IIRC the Nelsons also used enriched torpedoes.


Per T.O 92-1 governing USAF CFR ops, any aircraft with either fuel or ammo uploaded/uploading that was receiving LOX charging required a stand-by truck -- one for every two aircraft. Bad stuff can and occasionally does happen when oxidizers and fuels mix.
 
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