TO ANNIHILATE DREADNOUGHTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 175, 28 August 1909, Page 3

TO ANNIHILATE DREADNOUGHTS.

That latest and most terrible engine of naval warfare, the new dirigible torpedo whose movements are controilsd by wireless telegraphy, carries a change of 1980 pounds—not far short of a ton --of dynamite. What this means can be faintly imagined when it is remembered that the largest dirigible torpedoes employed up till now carry less than 200 pounds.

Yet the results obtained with the&e and others of even smaller size have been sufficiently awful. TORPEDO IN A FRUIT BOAT. Thus, the very first torpedo of the modern dirigible type that wa6 ever used in warfare, which contained a bursting charge of only 90 pounds, sufficed to destroy the fine new Turkish monitor Dai-Matsin during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.

The Japanese, during their last war with China, used comparatively small torpedoes of a very similar type. Yet by their aid they succeeded in sinking the great ironclad Ting-Yuen, the pride of fhe Chinese Navy.

On 3rd July, 1880, the Chilian transport Loa was destroyed in Callao harbor by a non-dirigible torpedo concealed in a fruit boat, which carried a bursting charge of 300 pounds of dynamite. This was the biggest quantity that up till then had been used in naval warfare, and the effect was terrible. Not oniy was the Loa herself blown to bits, with the loss of 150 men out of her crew of 20ft. but every house in Callao was 1 shaken to its foundations, and the ships in the .harbor rocked to aud fro as from an earthquake shock. BLOWN UP WITH- EASE. Perhaps, however, the most striking example of what can be accomplished by «a heavy charge of high explosive fired in close contact to an ironclad's' ■bottom was afforded by the destruction! of the Petropavlovsk during the RussoJapanese War. This splendid vessel was the fiairship of the Russian Admiral Makaroff, and w*>as first-class in every respect. Yet she was blown up and sunk with the greatest ease by a oontact mine containing 500 pounds of dynamite.

And now nearly four times this qnanfitv is to be used, and in dh'igible torpedoes. The next naval war ought to witness a bis mortality amongst Dreadnoughts.l —Pearson's Weekly. I