About those Mark XIV torpedos

[Simaril]

In the premission chatter last Friday, the subject of early war American torpedoes came up. We got to talking about the propulsion, and hit a stone wall -- because several of us remembered different things about them. I think Baumer remembered that they were steam turbine with compressed air, and Ghost thought they were alcohol powered. I remembered that too, but a quick internet search before launch seemed to say they were electrically powered.

This is one of those rare times that we were all right!

The early war Mk14s had terrible times with their fuses and detonators, to the point that they were almost useless. (The discussion started when one of us remembered that one of the survivors of Torpedo 8 at Midway ended up using the body of a US torpedo as a life preserver, since the warhead had dropped broken off and sank on launching!) But their propulsion worked pretty well, and I've found that after upgrades the model was used for decades by a variety of navies. Turns out the prop was driven by a turbine, which relied on an alcohol engine and compressed air!

[daddog]

 

[Ghosth]

Forgot about the air for that engine having to come from someplace. So yes compressed air makes sense Sim.

WTG on the research.