IN THE "TIN-FISH" SHOP

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2741, 8 April 1916, Page 3

IN THE "TIN-FISH" SHOP

HOW THE TORPEDO WAS "EDUCATED"

(By William T. Palmer in "Daily Express.")

The torpedo shop has never welcomed visitors, and to-day so strict are tho sentries that the workers are itfmost afraid to get a hair-cut lest they should he challenged and presented with the business end of a bayonet. From its first invention the torpedo has been manufactured in secret, and 110 one beyond the selected gangs has entered tho enclosure at any time.. That old wooden hovel which used to stand in an empty lot at the far end of tho dock could tell a tiling or two. Those smart foreign attaches wbre for ever on tho watch, paying and plotting to get at its little secrets, and to-day spies and traitors are doing their best to get within its mystery, though the slightest slip means a firing party at dawn. '■'It's the torpedo," said old Bill, who has had twenty or' more years, at the game, "that has mado modern tactics at sea. "Without it the submarine would not have been developed, and evolutions would still have been carried out at ten knots- an hour. Yes, the torl pedo's a wonderful thing. "I remember a few things of the early days. For instance, there was that ox-

periment at dawn with a new steeringgear, and wo had tho dock gates opened to give the torpedo a thousand yards run. _ Not a big distance, say you. It was in those days when tho effective range of a torpedo was reckoned at a thousand feet, and some of the old admirals still thought that the only way was to tow the torpedo against the hull of a ship at anchor, or to fasten it on a spar and send a boat's crew to bang the fireworks against an enemy ship. A daft-like game that, but still it came off sometimes! , Giving Torpedo a Chance. "The first submarine that fired a torpedo bucked backwards and went to the mud, so tho old school swore the thing was more dangerous to the firer than to tho enemy, and so they would only build steam kettles to fire torpedoes from deck tubes. s Those littlo things could hardly carry a modern torpedo, for it's a mighty big machine now, \vith all sorts of nice little things inside. "Tho old heavyweights steaming tlioiE ten knots or so were not worth fitting with torpedo tubes. It took about half an hour to wear them round, to a mark, and ,by that time the other ship would be .out of range or sunk by gunfire.' The present fleet has. some, fine torpedoing ships., Look at the biggest' 1 cjass wo have—the battle-cruisers as long as a decent liner, running 25 knots ana turning as sharp as a destroyer or a scout. By, gum, it's wonderful! That's something like giving the torpedo a chance. One of our 'oat' squadron. put a braco ?f j or P e^oes ifito the Blucher and settled her hash in the race to Heligoland. "But we've nothing to do, in the torpedo shed, with either flats or deck?ubes' Our work is to get the tin-fish into full running and exploding order. And a tender, wise-liko job :ome of it is. I often look over a torpedo ready to go from our shed to the loaders, and try to think how it's been built up. "No one man has brought tho torpedo' to perfection. Tho engines are tho work of one school of invontors, and the steering gear belongs to another lot, and tho balance chamber is a thing for still another lot to study. Some of the machinery is that small that a watchbuilder wouldn't mind its credit. And there's trips here and cocks there to keep the torpedo to its depth, and there's turbines to drive it along. "It's a vastly different thing to the old torpedq.es we used to try in the dock at daybreak with a fine spring insido to put them along, and good luck mainly for balanco and direction. I'm one of the older hands now, and keep to the bench, but I saw a good deal of the practical work which made oui naval torpedo_ the gem it is. It's all right to say it's modelled on this sysi tem and that, fo # r a few men have mado great discoveries, but it's tho work inside the workshops and the experimental dock that has turned the intentions into most .use. It's been a bit more hero, a bit less there, add this and drop that, from the start, until the thing finished and ready for issue would hardly have been recognised by its inventor. North Sea "Fireworks." "Mishaps to torpedoes—wo used to hare little else of trial daj's, and a diver would go along, walking the dock mud, to find whore tiie 'blessed thing had got to. But in a bit problem after problem was worked out—range, speed, aceur-' acy, power, and charge—and one loosed a torpedo fairly sure it would go to tho right place. It wasn't easy to come at—a thing that would keep direction across the tide-rips of all strengths, and would keep to one level, and would get there before a cruise? could steam half a mile forward. Then, when we'd got tho torpedo so that it would go straight, somebody invented the net device, and all the job had to bo worked out again. Thinner torpedoes were tried, but they just altered tho mesh to stop them. "But the trick of piercing steel nets was found out, and now we have torpedoes that can cut chain or wire just liko paper, and a,run of four miles or so is not at all unusual with their compressed i air motors.

"I'll tell you what I would like. Though I've been twenty years in the sheus, I've never seen a torpedo explode except at tho cinema, and I would lilce to spend half-an-hour on the bridge of a, really swift destroyer that day when the German Bee,t comes out of its canal and there's a full-pitched battle in tho North Sea._ Tlic, torpedo work will be worth seeing. There'll be a million pounds' worth of fine fireworks loose in the North Sea in next to no time."