Torpedo boat - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval

Navy

A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...

vessel

Ship

Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...

designed to carry torpedo

Torpedo

The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...

es into battle. The first designs rammed enemy ships with explosive spar torpedo

Spar torpedo

A spar torpedo is a weapon consisting of a bomb placed at the end of a long pole, or spar, and attached to a boat. The weapon is used by running the end of the spar into the enemy ship. Spar torpedoes were often equipped with a barbed spear at the end, so it would stick to wooden hulls...

es, and later designs launched self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. They were created to counter battleship

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

s and other large, slow and heavily armed ships by speed and agility. A number of inexpensive boats attacking en masse could overwhelm a larger ship's ability to fight them off using its large, slow-firing guns. This way an inexpensive fleet of torpedo boats could defend against much larger and more expensive fleets, albeit only in the coastal areas to which their small size and limited fuel load restricted them.

The introduction of fast torpedo boats in the late 19th century was a serious concern to navies of the era. In response, navies operating large ships introduced smaller ships to counter the threat. These were essentially similar to the torpedo boats they faced, but mounted a light gun instead of torpedoes. As these designs became more formalized they became known as "torpedo boat destroyers", and eventually evolved into the modern destroyer

Destroyer

In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...

.

Torpedo boats also evolved over time, notably with the addition of guided missile

Guided Missile

Guided Missile is a London based independent record label set up by Paul Kearney in 1994.Guided Missile has always focused on 'the underground', preferring to put out a steady flow of releases and developing the numerous GM events around London and beyond....

s. Today the class is generally known as "fast attack craft".

American Civil War

The American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

saw a number of innovations in naval warfare, including the first torpedo boats, which carried spar torpedo

Spar torpedo

es. In 1861 President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

instituted a naval blockade of Southern ports

Union blockade

The Union Blockade, or the Blockade of the South, took place between 1861 and 1865, during the American Civil War, when the Union Navy maintained a strenuous effort on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast of the Confederate States of America designed to prevent the passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms...

, which crippled the South's efforts to obtain war materials from abroad. The South also lacked the means to construct a naval fleet capable of taking on the Union Navy

Union Navy

The Union Navy is the label applied to the United States Navy during the American Civil War, to contrast it from its direct opponent, the Confederate States Navy...

. One strategy to counter the blockade saw the development of torpedo boats, small fast boats designed to attack the larger capital ship

Capital ship

The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they generally possess the heaviest firepower and armor and are traditionally much larger than other naval vessels...

s of the blockading fleet.

The David

CSS David

CSS David was a Civil War-era torpedo boat built as a private venture by T. Stoney at Charleston, South Carolina in 1863, and put under the control of the Confederate States Navy. The cigar-shaped boat carried a 60- or 70-pound explosive charge on the end of a spar projecting forward from her bow...

class of torpedo boats were steam powered with a partially enclosed hull. They were not true submarines but were semi-submersible; when ballasted, only the smokestack and few inches of the hull were above the water line. On a dark night, and burning smokeless anthracite coal, the torpedo boats were virtually invisible. The Davids were named after the story of David

David

David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...

and Goliath

Goliath (Bible)

Goliath , جليات Ǧulyāt ) known also as Goliath of Gath is a figure in the Hebrew Bible . Described as a giant Philistine warrior, he is famous for his combat with the young David, the future king of Israel...

. The CSS Midge and CSS St. Patrick were David-class torpedo boats.

The CSS Squib and CSS Scorpion

CSS Scorpion

CSS Scorpion was a Squib-class torpedo boat procured late in 1864 by the Confederate States Navy and armed with a spar torpedo fitted to her stem. She performed picket duty in the James River under command of Lieutenant E. Lakin, CSN....

represented another class of torpedo boats that were also low built but had open decks and lacked the ballasting tanks found on the Davids.

The Confederate torpedo boats were armed with spar torpedo

Spar torpedo

es. This was a charge of powder in a waterproof case, mounted to the bow of the torpedo boat below the water line on a long spar. The torpedo boat attacked by ramming her intended target, which stuck the torpedo to the target ship by means of a barb on the front of the torpedo. The torpedo boat would back away to a safe distance and detonate the torpedo, usually by means of a long cord attached to a trigger.

In general, the Confederate torpedo boats were not very successful. Their low sides made them susceptible to swamping in high seas, and even to having their boiler fires extinguished by spray from their own torpedo explosions. Torpedo misfires (too early) and duds were common.

In 1864 Union Naval Lieutenant

Lieutenant

A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

Cushing

William B. Cushing

William Barker Cushing was an officer in the United States Navy, best known for sinking the Confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle during a daring nighttime raid on October 27, 1864, a feat for which he received the Thanks of Congress.-Early life and career:Cushing was born in Delafield, Wisconsin,...

fitted a steam launch with a spar torpedo to attack the Confederate ironclad CSS Albermarle

CSS Albemarle

CSS Albemarle was an ironclad ram of the Confederate Navy , named for a town and a sound in North Carolina and a county in Virginia...

. Also the same year the Union launched the USS Spuyten Duyvil

USS Spuyten Duyvil (1864)

During the American Civil War, the Union Navy suffered heavy losses from the explosion of Confederate torpedoes. This experience prompted the Union Navy to design and build vessels capable of using this new weapon...

, a purpose-built craft with a number of technical innovations including variable ballast for attack operations and an extensible and reloadable torpedo placement spar.

The era of self-propelled torpedoes

The first European prototypes of a self-propelled torpedo were created by Giovanni Luppis

Giovanni Luppis

Giovanni Biagio Luppis von Rammer was an officer of the Austrian Navy who had the idea of the first self-propelled torpedo.-Early years:...

, an Austrian naval officer from Fiume (today Rijeka, Croatia), a port city of the Austrian Empire. In 1860, he presented the salvacoste (coastsaver), a floating weapon, driven by ropes from the land. The project was not taken up by the Navy. Luppis knew Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a Fiume factory and in 1864 Luppis made a contract with him in order to perfect the invention. The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff, the first real self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Imperial Naval commission on December 21, 1866.

Late 19th century through the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905

During the mid-19th century, the ships of the line

Ship of the line

A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed from the 17th through the mid-19th century to take part in the naval tactic known as the line of battle, in which two columns of opposing warships would manoeuvre to bring the greatest weight of broadside guns to bear...

were superseded by large steam powered ships with heavy gun armament and heavy armour, named ironclads

Ironclad warship

An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship in the early part of the second half of the 19th century, protected by iron or steel armor plates. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, La Gloire,...

. Ultimately this line of development lead to the dreadnought

Dreadnought

The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...

class of all-big-gun battleship, starting with the HMS Dreadnought (1906)

HMS Dreadnought (1906)

HMS Dreadnought was a battleship of the British Royal Navy that revolutionised naval power. Her entry into service in 1906 represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts", as well as the class of...

But at the same time, the new weight of armour slowed them, and the huge guns needed to penetrate that armour fired at very slow rates. This allowed for the possibility of a small and fast ship that could attack the battleships, at a much lower cost. The introduction of the torpedo

Torpedo

provided a weapon that could cripple, or sink, any battleship.

The first boat designed to fire the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was HMS Lightning

HMS Lightning (1877)

HMS Lightning was a torpedo boat, built by John Thornycroft at Church Wharf in Chiswick for the Royal Navy, which entered service in 1876 and was the first seagoing vessel to be armed with self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. She was later renamed Torpedo Boat No...

, completed in 1877. The French navy followed suit in 1878 with Torpilleur No 1, launched in 1878 though she had been ordered in 1875. The Royal Norwegian Navy

Royal Norwegian Navy

The Royal Norwegian Navy is the branch of the Norwegian Defence Force responsible for naval operations. , the RNoN consists of approximately 3,700 personnel and 70 vessels, including 5 heavy frigates, 6 submarines, 14 patrol boats, 4 minesweepers, 4 minehunters, 1 mine detection vessel, 4 support...

's HNoMS Rap—the name meaning 'fast'— was ordered from Thornycroft, England in 1873, but was not equipped with self-propelled torpedoes until 1879.

The first recorded launch of torpedoes from a torpedo boat (which itself was launched from a torpedo boat tender

Torpedo boat tender

The torpedo boat tender was a type of warship developed at the end of the 19th century to help bring small torpedo boat to the high seas, and launch them for attack....

) in an actual battle was by Russian admiral

Admiral

Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...

Stepan Makarov

Stepan Osipovich Makarov was a Ukrainian - born Russian vice-admiral, a highly accomplished and decorated commander of the Imperial Russian Navy, an oceanographer, awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. Makarov also designed a small number of ships...

on January 16, 1878, who used self-propelled Whitehead

Robert Whitehead

Robert Whitehead was an English engineer. He developed the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo. His company, located in the Austrian naval centre in Fiume, was the world leader in torpedo development and production up to the First World War.- Early life:He was born the son of a...

's torpedoes against a Turkish armed ship Intibah during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. The first sinking of an armoured ship by a torpedo boat occurred in 1891 during the Chilean Civil War

Chilean Civil War

The Chilean Civil War of 1891 was an armed conflict between forces supporting Congress and forces supporting the sitting President, José Manuel Balmaceda. The war saw a confrontation between the Chilean Army and the Chilean Navy, which had sided with the president and the congress, respectively...

In the late 19th century, many navies started to build torpedo boats 30 to 50 m in length, armed with up to three torpedo launchers and small guns. They were powered by steam engine

Steam engine

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...

s and had a maximum speed of 20 to 30 knots (37 to 56 km/h).
They were relatively inexpensive and could be purchased in quantity, allowing mass attacks on fleets of larger ships. The loss of even a squadron of torpedo boats to enemy fire would be more than outweighed by the sinking of a capital ship.

The Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...

1904-1905, was the first great war of the 20th century. It was the first massive and practical testing of man's new steel battleships, cruisers, his fledgling destroyers (DD

- Computing :* dd , a program that copies and convert files and data* dd, an HTML element for specifying definition data* Dolby Digital, the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories...

s) and submarines, and the torpedo boat (TB

-Music:*Tenor and bass, a score for male chorus*The Beatles, the English rock band, the most lauded and successful group in the history of modern music**The Beatles , the tenth album by the above band, also known as the White Album...

). During the war the Imperial Russian Navy

Imperial Russian Navy

The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...

(IRN) in addition to their other warships, deployed 86 torpedo boats and launched 27 torpedoes (from all warships) in three major campaigns, scoring 5 hits.

The Imperial Japanese Navy

Imperial Japanese Navy

The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...

(IJN), like the Russians, often combined their TBs (which possessed only hull numbers) with their torpedo boat destroyers (TBDs) (often simply referring to them as destroyers) and launched over 270 torpedoes (counting the opening engagement at Port Arthur on 8 February 1904) during the war. The IJN deployed approximately 21 TBs during the conflict, and on 27 May 1905 the Japanese torpedo boat destroyers and TBs launched 16 torpedoes at the battleship Knyaz Suvorov, Admiral Rozhestvensky's flagship at the battle of Tsushima

Battle of Tsushima

The Battle of Tsushima , commonly known as the “Sea of Japan Naval Battle” in Japan and the “Battle of Tsushima Strait”, was the major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War...

. Already gunned into a wreck, Admiral Togo

Togo

Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...

, the IJN commander, had ordered his torpedo boats to finish off the enemy flagship as he prepared to pursue the remnants of the Russian battle fleet.

Of the 16 torpedoes launched by the TBDs and TBs at the Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n battleship, only 4 hit their mark, two of those hits were from torpedo boats #72 and #75. By evening, the battleship rolled over and sank to the bottom of the Tsushima Straits. By wars end, torpedoes launched from warships had sunk 1 battleship, 2 armored cruisers, and 2 destroyers. The remaining over 80 warships would be sunk by guns, mines, scuttling, or shipwreck.

Introduction of torpedo boat destroyers

The introduction of the torpedo boat resulted in a flurry of activity in navies around the world, as smaller, quicker-firing guns were added to existing ships to ward off the new threat. In mid-1880s there were developed torpedo gunboat

Torpedo gunboat

In late 19th-century naval terminology, torpedo gunboats or, in north European usage, torpedo cruisers, were a form of gunboat armed with torpedoes and designed for hunting and destroying smaller torpedo boats...

s, like the Spanish Destructor

Spanish warship Destructor

Destructor was a 19th-century Spanish warship. She was a fast ocean-going torpedo gunboat and a precursor of the destroyer type of vessel. Destructor was the first warship classified as a "destroyer" at the time of her commissioning...

, but they were considered too slow to catch torpedo boats because of the popular belief that the speeds attained by torpedo boats in trial conditions equated to speeds obtainable in service.

By 1892 an entirely new class of warship, the torpedo boat destroyer (TBDs), was invented to counter them. These ships, which, after the Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...

(1904–1905), became known simply as destroyer

Destroyer

s, were basically enlarged torpedo boats, with speed equal to or surpassing the torpedo boats, but were armed with heavier guns that could attack them before they were able to close on the main fleet.

Destroyers became so much more useful, having better seaworthiness and greater capabilities than torpedo boats, that they eventually replaced most torpedo boats. However, the London Naval Treaty

London Naval Treaty

The London Naval Treaty was an agreement between the United Kingdom, the Empire of Japan, France, Italy and the United States, signed on April 22, 1930, which regulated submarine warfare and limited naval shipbuilding. Ratifications were exchanged in London on October 27, 1930, and the treaty went...

after World War I limited tonnage of warships, but placed no limits on ships of under 600 tons. The French

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

, Italian

Regia Marina

The Regia Marina dates from the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 after Italian unification...

, Japanese

Imperial Japanese Navy

and German

Kriegsmarine

The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...

Navies developed torpedo boats around that displacement, 70 to 100 m long, armed with two or three guns of around 100 mm (4 in) and torpedo launchers. For example the Royal Norwegian Navy

Royal Norwegian Navy

Sleipner-class destroyer

Sleipner class destroyer

The Sleipner class was a class of six destroyers built for the Royal Norwegian Navy from 1936 until the German invasion in 1940. The design was considered advanced for its time, and it was the first class of vessels for the Norwegian Navy that used aluminium in the construction of the bridge, the...

s were in fact of a torpedo boat size, while the Italian Spica-class torpedo boat

Spica class torpedo boat

The Spica-class were a class of torpedo boats of the Regia Marina during World War II. These ships were built as a result of a clause in the Washington Naval Treaty, which stated that ships with a tonnage of less than 600 tons could be built in unlimited numbers...

were closer in size to a Destroyer escort

Destroyer escort

A destroyer escort is the classification for a smaller, lightly armed warship designed to be used to escort convoys of merchant marine ships, primarily of the United States Merchant Marine in World War II. It is employed primarily for anti-submarine warfare, but also provides some protection...

. After World War II they were eventually subsumed into the revived Corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...

classification.

The Kriegsmarine

Kriegsmarine

torpedo boats were classified Torpedoboot
German torpedoboats of World War II
The German torpedoboats of World War II were armed principally, if not exclusively, with torpedoes and varied widely in size. They should not be confused with the larger destroyers, nor with the smaller, torpedo-armed Schnellboote .-Raubvogel and Raubtier :The six Raubvogel class torpedo boats were...

with "T"-prefixed hull numbers. The classes designed in the mid-1930s, such as the Torpedo boat type 35

Torpedo boat type 35

The Type 35 and Type 37 Torpedo boats were small destroyers built for the German Kriegsmarine between 1939 and 1942. They were designed to exploit a clause in the Washington Naval Treaty, which stipulated that ships under 600 tons standard displacement did not count towards limited tonnages...

, had few guns, relying almost entirely upon their torpedoes. This was found to be inadequate in combat, and the result was a "fleet torpedo boat" class (Flottentorpedoboot
Elbing class torpedo boat
The Elbing class torpedo boats were a class of 15 small warships that served in the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Although classed as Flottentorpedoboot by the Germans, in most respects—displacement, weaponry, usage—they were comparable to contemporary medium-size destroyers...

), which were significantly larger, up to 1,700 tons, being in fact small destroyers. This class of German boats could be highly effective, as in the action in which the British cruiser HMS Charybdis

HMS Charybdis (88)

HMS Charybdis was a Dido-class cruiser of the Royal Navy. She was built by Cammell Laird Shipyard , with the keel being laid down on 9 November 1939...

was sunk off Brittany by a torpedo salvo launched by the Elbing-class torpedo boat

Elbing class torpedo boat

The Elbing class torpedo boats were a class of 15 small warships that served in the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Although classed as Flottentorpedoboot by the Germans, in most respects—displacement, weaponry, usage—they were comparable to contemporary medium-size destroyers...

s T23 and T27.

Small torpedo craft

Before World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

steam torpedo boats which were larger and more heavily armed than hitherto were being used. The new internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...

generated much more power for a given weight and size than steam engines, and allowed the development of a new class of small and fast boats. These powerful engines could make use of planing

Planing (sailing)

Planing is the mode of operation for a waterborne craft in which its weight is predominantly supported by hydrodynamic lift, rather than hydrostatic lift .-History:...

hull designs, such as in the British Coastal Motor Boat

Coastal Motor Boat

During the First World War, following a suggestion from three junior officers of the Harwich destroyer force that small motor boats carrying a torpedo might be capable of travelling over the protective minefields and attacking ships of the German Navy at anchor in their bases, the Admiralty gave...

, capable of much higher speed under appropriate sea conditions than displacement hulls.

The result was a small torpedo boat 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30 m) in length with maximum speed of 30 to 50 knots (56 to 93 km/h), carrying two to four torpedoes fired from simple fixed launchers and several machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

s. Torpedo boats sank the Austrian-Hungarian SMS Wien

SMS Wien

SMS Wien was a pre-dreadnought battleship and coastal defense ship of the Monarch class that was constructed by the Austro-Hungarian Navy at the end of the 19th century. The Wien was laid down in the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyards in Trieste on the same day as her sister ship Budapest,...

in 1917, and the SMS Szent Istvan

SMS Szent István

SMS Szent István was a dreadnought , the only one built in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary. The Ganz & Company's Danubius yard in Hungarian-owned Fiume was awarded the contract to build the battleship in return for the Hungarian government agreeing to the 1910 and 1911 naval budgets...

in 1918. During the civil war in Russia, British torpedo boats made a raid on Kronstadt harbour damaging two battleships and sinking a cruiser.

Such vessels remained useful through World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

's Motor Torpedo Boat

Motor Torpedo Boat

Motor Torpedo Boat was the name given to fast torpedo boats by the Royal Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy.The capitalised term is generally used for the Royal Navy boats and abbreviated to "MTB"...

s (MTBs), Kriegsmarine

Kriegsmarine

'S-Boote' (Schnellboot or "fast-boat": British termed them E-boat

E-boat

E-boats was the designation for Motor Torpedo Boats of the German Navy during World War II. It is commonly held that the E stood for Enemy....

s), (Italian) M.A.S. and M.S. and U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

PT boat

PT Boats were a variety of motor torpedo boat , a small, fast vessel used by the United States Navy in World War II to attack larger surface ships. The PT boat squadrons were nicknamed "the mosquito fleet". The Japanese called them "Devil Boats".The original pre–World War I torpedo boats were...

s (standing for Patrol Torpedo) were all of this type.

A classic fast torpedo boat action was the Channel Dash in February 1942 when German E-boats and destroyers defended the flotilla of Scharnhorst

German battleship Scharnhorst

Scharnhorst was a German capital ship, alternatively described as a battleship and battlecruiser, of the German Kriegsmarine. She was the lead ship of her class, which included one other ship, Gneisenau. The ship was built at the Kriegsmarinewerft dockyard in Wilhelmshaven; she was laid down on 15...

, Gneisenau

German battleship Gneisenau

Gneisenau was a German capital ship, alternatively described as a battleship and battlecruiser, of the German Kriegsmarine. She was the second vessel of her class, which included one other ship, Scharnhorst. The ship was built at the Deutsche Werke dockyard in Kiel; she was laid down on 6 May 1935...

, Prinz Eugen

German cruiser Prinz Eugen

Prinz Eugen was an Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser, the third member of the class of five vessels. She served with the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. The ship was laid down in April 1936 and launched August 1938; Prinz Eugen entered service after the outbreak of war, in August 1940...

and several smaller ships against RN MTBs.

By World War II torpedo boats were seriously hampered by higher fleet speeds; although they still had a speed advantage, they could only catch the larger ships by running at very high speeds over very short distances, as demonstrated in the Channel Dash. An even greater threat was the widespread arrival of patrol aircraft, which could hunt down torpedo boats long before they could engage their targets.

During World War II United States naval forces employed fast wooden PT boats in the South Pacific in a number of roles in addition to the originally envisioned one of torpedo attack. PT boats performed reconnaissance, ferry, courier, search & rescue as well as attack and smoke screening duties. They took part in fleet actions and they worked in smaller groups and singly to harry enemy supply lines. Late in the Pacific War

Pacific War

The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...

when large targets became scarce, many PT boats replaced two or all four of their torpedo tubes with additional guns for engaging enemy coastal supply boats and barges, isolating enemy-held islands from supply, reinforcement or evacuation.

The most significant military ship sunk by a torpedo boat during WWII was the cruiser HMS Manchester which was sunk by two Italian torpedo boat (M.S. 16 and M.S. 21) during Operation Pedestal

Operation Pedestal

Operation Pedestal was a British operation to get desperately needed supplies to the island of Malta in August 1942, during the Second World War. Malta was the base from which surface ships, submarines and aircraft attacked Axis convoys carrying essential supplies to the Italian and German armies...

on 13 August 1942.

Fast attack craft today

Boats similar to torpedo boats are still in use, but are armed with long-range anti-ship missile

Anti-ship missile

Anti-ship missiles are guided missiles that are designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea-skimming type, many use a combination of inertial guidance and radar homing...

s that can be used at ranges between 30 and 70 km. This reduces the need for high speed chases and gives them much more room to operate in while approaching their targets.

Aircraft are a major threat, making the use of boats against any fleet with air cover very risky. The low height of the radar mast makes it difficult to acquire and lock onto a target while maintaining a safe distance. As a result fast attack craft are being replaced for use in naval combat by larger corvette

Corvette

s, which are able to carry radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles for self-defense, and helicopters for over-the-horizon targeting.

Although torpedo boats have disappeared from the majority of the world's navies, they remained in use until relatively recently in a few specialised areas, most notably in the Baltic. The close confines of the Baltic and ground clutter effectively negated the range benefits of early ASM

Anti-ship missile

s. Operating close to shore in conjunction with ground based air cover and radars, and in the case of the Norwegian navy hidden bases cut into Fjord

Fjord

Geologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:A fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Glacial melting is accompanied by rebound of Earth's crust as the ice...

sides, torpedo boats remained a cheap and viable deterrent to amphibious attack. Indeed this is still the operational model followed by the Chinese Navy

People's Liberation Army Navy

The People's Liberation Army Navy is the naval branch of the People's Liberation Army , the military of the People's Republic of China. Until the early 1990s, the navy performed a subordinate role to the PLA Land Forces. Since then, it has undergone rapid modernisation...

with its Type 025 class torpedo boat

Type 025 class torpedo boat

The Type 025 class torpedo boat is also known as Huchuan class, and it was once the backbone of the People's Liberation Army Navy in its confrontations with their much larger opponents in the Republic of China Navy. Although no longer serving as the frontline workhorse, this class is still quite...

for the protection of its coastal and estuarial

Brown-water navy

Brown-water navy is a term that originated in the United States Navy, referring to the small gunboats and patrol boats used in rivers, along with some of the larger ships that supported them as "mother ships," from which they operated...

waters.

They are still used by many navies and coast guards to police their territorial waters against smugglers, particularly those smuggling narcotics and weapons to insurgents. Heavily armed fast boats, often with the assistance of maritime patrol aircraft, are needed for the interdiction and boarding of potentially armed hostile fast boats, often indistinguishable at a distance from legitimate coastal craft.

Selected torpedo boat histories

USS Hoyt (1863)
USS Hoyt (1863)
USS Hoyt was a steamer acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was used by the Union Navy for various tasks, including those of a torpedo boat....
USS Belle (1864)
USS Belle (1864)
USS Belle was a steamer acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War.She was used by the Union Navy for various tasks, including those of a torpedo boat.- Built in Philadelphia in 1864 :...
Bulgarian torpedo boat Drazki

External references

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American Civil War

The era of self-propelled torpedoes

Late 19th century through the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905

Introduction of torpedo boat destroyers

Small torpedo craft

Fast attack craft today

See also

Selected torpedo boat histories

External references