Hi,
At the moment I'm incarcerated in bed unable to walk due to a damaged sciatic nerve, so with nothing better to do but heckle forum users (!), I thought I might post this article on torpedoplanes in WW1 I've been working on for some time now. It has not been published as a whole, but is comprised of bits that have been published in different sources, such as Cross and Cockade magazine. It's a bit long. I welcome any comments, criticisms etc:
Laying eggs in someone else's basket – Evolving Sopwith's Torpedoplane
The Whitehead locomotive torpedo was once described as a David to a naval battle-fleet's Goliath; this menacing little weapon was to have a profound effect on naval warfare unforeseen by its British inventor when first produced in 1866. In theory, the addition of the submarine and torpedo boat to any naval fleet could provide a means to narrow down any numerical advantage an opposing battle fleet might have against ones own. It was this plan of strategy that was proposed under Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's Doctrine of Risk in 1897, the impetus behind the naval arms race between Britain and Germany prior to the start of the Great War in 1914.
Within the first few months of the war, Tirpitz's proposed theories were becoming an uncomfortable reality for the Royal Navy. On September 5 1914 the first surface vessel lost to a submarine fired locomotive torpedo, the destroyer HMS Pathfinder was sunk by U 21 off May Island in the Firth of Forth. Seventeen days later Leutnant Otto Weddigen commanding U 9 quickly dispatched the cruisers Cressy, Aboukir and Hogue to the bottom of the North Sea off the Dutch coast. Over 1,650 seamen lost their lives from the four ships sunk that month. After these attacks and a further loss of a fourth cruiser to Weddigen's torpedoes, HMS Hawke on October 15, a rash of "periscope-itis" (panic sightings of periscopes often where there were none) broke out amongst the surface fleet of the Royal Navy.
The concept of an aeroplane carrying the locomotive torpedo was not lost on aircraft designers prior to the start of hostilities. According to the official document AP1344 "History of the Development of Torpedo Aircraft", compiled by the Aircraft Armament Torpedo Section of the RAF in March 1919, discussions were held concerning the use of torpedo aeroplanes in early 1911. Commander N. F. Usborne, Captain M. F. Sueter and Lieutenants D. H. Hyde Thompson and C. J. L'Estrange Malone of the Royal Navy proposed the use of airships and aeroplanes to carry torpedoes at a time when heavier-than-aircraft were barely capable of lifting a greater weight than that of their pilots.
From their mutual interest in the potential of torpedo carrying aircraft, Capt Sueter and Lt Hyde Thomson drew up the secret Specification No. 6938 "A Torpedo Carrying Seaplane" dated March 19 1914, stating:
"The invention relates to seaplanes (i.e. aeroplanes designed to rise from and alight apon water) which carry and launch automobile torpedoes. According to the invention the torpedo is directly suspended from the fusilage (sic.) of the seaplane and as close thereto as is conveniently possible, and to enable this to be done the supporting and bracing members of the main floats of the seaplane are so arranged as to leave a clear space between the floats to accommodate the torpedo and enable it to be dropped between the floats into the water."
A profile line drawing of a large, heavily braced two-seat twin float machine was submitted with the specification, there were also scrap views of the methods for carrying the torpedo between the floats.
It is generally accepted that the first release of a torpedo from an aircraft in flight took place in 1914 off the Italian city of Venice. Two years earlier prominent Italian lawyer Pateras Pescara advised the Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) on the use of a torpedo carrying aeroplane, as Capitano Alessandro Guidoni claims in his book "Aviazione-Idroaviazione", published in 1927. The Italian Navy High Command showed interest in Pescara's concept, detailing Guidoni to conduct preliminary ballistics trials. Using Guidoni's "faithful old Farman" biplane, experiments in weight dropping were carried out using lead weights up to 176 lb (80 kg), but the Farman was found to be unsuitable for lifting heavier weights.
From the Pescara-Guidoni PP, an indigenous twin-engined monoplane fitted with hydrofoil floats built to Pescara and Guidoni's design, an 827 lb (375 kg) mock-up missile was dropped in the waters off Venice on February 26 1914. Despite the fact that the object dropped from the Pescara-Guidoni PP was not an offensive weapon, history records that this was the first air dropping of a torpedo from an aeroplane. Although Guidoni's experiments were promising, further progression with these early experiments was not continued with immediately afterwards by the Regia Marina.
In the United Kingdom however, trials were held between aeroplanes built by Sopwith and Short Brothers in the spring of 1914 at Calshot, on the recommendation of Sueter and Hyde Thomson, with support from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Wintson Churchill. A milestone was reached when the commander of the Calshot Naval Air Station, Squadron Commander Arthur Longmore (later Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Murray Longmore G.C.B., D.S.O. RAF) flying a Short Folder (called as such due to their folding wings for stowage aboard ship, a first in naval aviation) carried out a successful air dropping of a torpedo on July 28 1914. Hyde Thompson had constructed a bracket to carry the 14-inch torpedo between the float undercarriage of the Short Folder No.121.
Despite the experiments in torpedo dropping in northern Italy in February 1914, to the Royal Naval Air Service goes credit for introducing the air dropped torpedo into service first. During the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915 the torpedo-carrying aeroplane first proved its worth in action. Whilst embarked aboard the seaplane carrier Ben-My-Chree, Flight Commander C.K. Edmonds flying Short S.184 No. 842 sank a Turkish steamer previously damaged after attack by the British submarine E.14, on August 12 1915.
Flt Cdr Edmonds scored a second kill with his torpedo-armed seaplane when five days later on August 17 he sank a Turkish supply vessel. These successes were added to on the same day when Flt Lt G. B. Dacre, also in a Short 184 torpedoed a Turkish tug. Whilst on patrol with Edmonds, Dacre's Short suffered an engine failure and he landed on the sea. Whilst undertaking repairs to the engine, he sighted the Turkish vessel, which he promptly torpedoed from the surface of the water!
The Royal Navy's successes with the Short 184 proved that aircraft could provide a third dimension to the use of the torpedo in warfare, although the machines in use were cumbersome seaplanes of limited flexibility. Wooden floats shattered with heavy landings and flying operations were called off in anything more than a moderate sea state. Furthermore, the 14-inch torpedo these aeroplanes carried was not considered sufficiently powerful enough to penetrate the waterline armour plating of modern capital warships.
The ships that carried the torpedo-armed seaplanes were converted merchantmen of poor turn of speed, which precluded their use in fleet actions. These 'seaplane tenders' as they were termed also had to come to a full stop in order to launch and retrieve their aeroplanes, thereby increasing their vulnerability to submarine attack.
The shortcomings of the Short seaplanes and possible remedial solutions to the question of launching torpedoes from aeroplanes were brought up at a conference held at the Board of Admiralty on April 3 1915. In attendance were senior RNAS personnel including Harris Booth of the Admiralty Air Department and Capt Sueter as Director of the Admiralty Air Department. Chairing the meeting was Churchill, who, on hearing of the inadequacies of the Short 184 was quick to ask why such an aeroplane could not be fitted with wheels instead of floats to be flown off a flat-topped barge? Concluding logically, he stated that after all, the weight saving with the removal of the floats could be utilised to carry a useful load.
By that time much innovation had been carried out in the field of launching aeroplanes from ships, but no purpose built vessels for the operation of landplanes existed. In spite of Booth stating that creating a landplane by simply removing the floats of a seaplane was not possible in counter to Churchill's query (although the Short Bomber was essentially a S.184 seaplane with a lengthened empennage and wheeled undercarriage); those assembled saw the sense in Churchill's statement.
The First Lord ended the discussion with his statement that torpedo carrying aircraft "must be pressed on with, so that if possible a decisive blow may be aimed at some of the enemy's capital ships with this weapon, either in a fleet action or in his harbours." It is likely that this is the first official mention of the use of torpedo armed aircraft for this purpose.
More later...
At the moment I'm incarcerated in bed unable to walk due to a damaged sciatic nerve, so with nothing better to do but heckle forum users (!), I thought I might post this article on torpedoplanes in WW1 I've been working on for some time now. It has not been published as a whole, but is comprised of bits that have been published in different sources, such as Cross and Cockade magazine. It's a bit long. I welcome any comments, criticisms etc:
Laying eggs in someone else's basket – Evolving Sopwith's Torpedoplane
The Whitehead locomotive torpedo was once described as a David to a naval battle-fleet's Goliath; this menacing little weapon was to have a profound effect on naval warfare unforeseen by its British inventor when first produced in 1866. In theory, the addition of the submarine and torpedo boat to any naval fleet could provide a means to narrow down any numerical advantage an opposing battle fleet might have against ones own. It was this plan of strategy that was proposed under Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's Doctrine of Risk in 1897, the impetus behind the naval arms race between Britain and Germany prior to the start of the Great War in 1914.
Within the first few months of the war, Tirpitz's proposed theories were becoming an uncomfortable reality for the Royal Navy. On September 5 1914 the first surface vessel lost to a submarine fired locomotive torpedo, the destroyer HMS Pathfinder was sunk by U 21 off May Island in the Firth of Forth. Seventeen days later Leutnant Otto Weddigen commanding U 9 quickly dispatched the cruisers Cressy, Aboukir and Hogue to the bottom of the North Sea off the Dutch coast. Over 1,650 seamen lost their lives from the four ships sunk that month. After these attacks and a further loss of a fourth cruiser to Weddigen's torpedoes, HMS Hawke on October 15, a rash of "periscope-itis" (panic sightings of periscopes often where there were none) broke out amongst the surface fleet of the Royal Navy.
The concept of an aeroplane carrying the locomotive torpedo was not lost on aircraft designers prior to the start of hostilities. According to the official document AP1344 "History of the Development of Torpedo Aircraft", compiled by the Aircraft Armament Torpedo Section of the RAF in March 1919, discussions were held concerning the use of torpedo aeroplanes in early 1911. Commander N. F. Usborne, Captain M. F. Sueter and Lieutenants D. H. Hyde Thompson and C. J. L'Estrange Malone of the Royal Navy proposed the use of airships and aeroplanes to carry torpedoes at a time when heavier-than-aircraft were barely capable of lifting a greater weight than that of their pilots.
From their mutual interest in the potential of torpedo carrying aircraft, Capt Sueter and Lt Hyde Thomson drew up the secret Specification No. 6938 "A Torpedo Carrying Seaplane" dated March 19 1914, stating:
"The invention relates to seaplanes (i.e. aeroplanes designed to rise from and alight apon water) which carry and launch automobile torpedoes. According to the invention the torpedo is directly suspended from the fusilage (sic.) of the seaplane and as close thereto as is conveniently possible, and to enable this to be done the supporting and bracing members of the main floats of the seaplane are so arranged as to leave a clear space between the floats to accommodate the torpedo and enable it to be dropped between the floats into the water."
A profile line drawing of a large, heavily braced two-seat twin float machine was submitted with the specification, there were also scrap views of the methods for carrying the torpedo between the floats.
It is generally accepted that the first release of a torpedo from an aircraft in flight took place in 1914 off the Italian city of Venice. Two years earlier prominent Italian lawyer Pateras Pescara advised the Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) on the use of a torpedo carrying aeroplane, as Capitano Alessandro Guidoni claims in his book "Aviazione-Idroaviazione", published in 1927. The Italian Navy High Command showed interest in Pescara's concept, detailing Guidoni to conduct preliminary ballistics trials. Using Guidoni's "faithful old Farman" biplane, experiments in weight dropping were carried out using lead weights up to 176 lb (80 kg), but the Farman was found to be unsuitable for lifting heavier weights.
From the Pescara-Guidoni PP, an indigenous twin-engined monoplane fitted with hydrofoil floats built to Pescara and Guidoni's design, an 827 lb (375 kg) mock-up missile was dropped in the waters off Venice on February 26 1914. Despite the fact that the object dropped from the Pescara-Guidoni PP was not an offensive weapon, history records that this was the first air dropping of a torpedo from an aeroplane. Although Guidoni's experiments were promising, further progression with these early experiments was not continued with immediately afterwards by the Regia Marina.
In the United Kingdom however, trials were held between aeroplanes built by Sopwith and Short Brothers in the spring of 1914 at Calshot, on the recommendation of Sueter and Hyde Thomson, with support from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Wintson Churchill. A milestone was reached when the commander of the Calshot Naval Air Station, Squadron Commander Arthur Longmore (later Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Murray Longmore G.C.B., D.S.O. RAF) flying a Short Folder (called as such due to their folding wings for stowage aboard ship, a first in naval aviation) carried out a successful air dropping of a torpedo on July 28 1914. Hyde Thompson had constructed a bracket to carry the 14-inch torpedo between the float undercarriage of the Short Folder No.121.
Despite the experiments in torpedo dropping in northern Italy in February 1914, to the Royal Naval Air Service goes credit for introducing the air dropped torpedo into service first. During the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915 the torpedo-carrying aeroplane first proved its worth in action. Whilst embarked aboard the seaplane carrier Ben-My-Chree, Flight Commander C.K. Edmonds flying Short S.184 No. 842 sank a Turkish steamer previously damaged after attack by the British submarine E.14, on August 12 1915.
Flt Cdr Edmonds scored a second kill with his torpedo-armed seaplane when five days later on August 17 he sank a Turkish supply vessel. These successes were added to on the same day when Flt Lt G. B. Dacre, also in a Short 184 torpedoed a Turkish tug. Whilst on patrol with Edmonds, Dacre's Short suffered an engine failure and he landed on the sea. Whilst undertaking repairs to the engine, he sighted the Turkish vessel, which he promptly torpedoed from the surface of the water!
The Royal Navy's successes with the Short 184 proved that aircraft could provide a third dimension to the use of the torpedo in warfare, although the machines in use were cumbersome seaplanes of limited flexibility. Wooden floats shattered with heavy landings and flying operations were called off in anything more than a moderate sea state. Furthermore, the 14-inch torpedo these aeroplanes carried was not considered sufficiently powerful enough to penetrate the waterline armour plating of modern capital warships.
The ships that carried the torpedo-armed seaplanes were converted merchantmen of poor turn of speed, which precluded their use in fleet actions. These 'seaplane tenders' as they were termed also had to come to a full stop in order to launch and retrieve their aeroplanes, thereby increasing their vulnerability to submarine attack.
The shortcomings of the Short seaplanes and possible remedial solutions to the question of launching torpedoes from aeroplanes were brought up at a conference held at the Board of Admiralty on April 3 1915. In attendance were senior RNAS personnel including Harris Booth of the Admiralty Air Department and Capt Sueter as Director of the Admiralty Air Department. Chairing the meeting was Churchill, who, on hearing of the inadequacies of the Short 184 was quick to ask why such an aeroplane could not be fitted with wheels instead of floats to be flown off a flat-topped barge? Concluding logically, he stated that after all, the weight saving with the removal of the floats could be utilised to carry a useful load.
By that time much innovation had been carried out in the field of launching aeroplanes from ships, but no purpose built vessels for the operation of landplanes existed. In spite of Booth stating that creating a landplane by simply removing the floats of a seaplane was not possible in counter to Churchill's query (although the Short Bomber was essentially a S.184 seaplane with a lengthened empennage and wheeled undercarriage); those assembled saw the sense in Churchill's statement.
The First Lord ended the discussion with his statement that torpedo carrying aircraft "must be pressed on with, so that if possible a decisive blow may be aimed at some of the enemy's capital ships with this weapon, either in a fleet action or in his harbours." It is likely that this is the first official mention of the use of torpedo armed aircraft for this purpose.
More later...
reaction to my medication, I've been back to the doctors, but I'm slowly progressing. I can walk down the stairs without my crutches, now. 
