Torpedo Boats... Fear!

[5fish]

As many of us know the civil war is known for many of the military innovation that happen during the period. I think there was one if the Confederates could have master the technology could have even the playing field a little more during the war.

What if the Confederates had master and perfected the technology of their torpedo boats?

If you look into the torpedo boats of that era they were low in the water and streamed powered and could sneek up on unsuspecting ships with ease and strike. I read engagements and these little boats could take cannon hits and small arms fire when engaged in combat with a ship.

If the Confederates had found a away to mass produce them they could have terrorized the union ships in both the eastern and western rivers and harbors but there more.

What if they could have made coastal torpedo boats that could travel into northern waters and terrorize union commercial shipping and harbors then the war would have changed drastically. The wealthy in the north would have felt the pain of war in their wallet and the wealthy do not like to feel pain in their wallets.

The coast of the war for the north would have gone up dramatically along without being unable to maintain the blockade on the southern ports.

It would have been like the U-boats of WW2 which almost cause Britain to lose the war.


A musing "what if"......

 

[5fish]

Here the CSS Squib which perfromed a successful torpedo attack on the USS Minnesota. It alarmed the union naval command because a small fast boat could take out a Ship of the Line...

On the night of April 9, 1864 Lt. Hunter Davidson, CSN and a crew of six men in a small armored launch, successfully attacked the 265-foot, 47-gun, USS Minnesota in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The small 53-pound, soar mounted torpedo struck the Minnesota amidships creating havoc and despair among the Minnesota's crew. While the Minnesota was not severely damaged, the threat of small, fast boats with their deadly cargo of torpedoes was firmly established.

I think if the Confederacy had develop the CSS Squib technology earlier in the war it could have force the union to keep it ships further off the coast. It they could have made a ocean going version and terrorize union shipping lanes with these small fast crafts....Think about it, hundreds of cheap torpedo boats stocking union shipping and warrior ships..

 

[5fish]

Fear!!

When it comes to action on the seas or in the rivers the south did not have many triumphs. When comes to my questions I was thinking which military innovation if perfected could have level the playing field with the north.

Torpedo boats if used like U-boats were cold have brought terror to northern shipping and union warships. These stealth boats technology could have cause the financial markets fits and the insurance markets would have been in fear.

The south would not have had to many just a score or two of a ocean type Torpedo boat to bring fear to the shipping of the north. Think what a Torpedo boat attack on one or two commercial ships near New York harbor. It would have brought panic to the financial markets in New York.

If the south could have pulled off a couple attacks on commercial shipping in Northern waters monthly the financial cost in the fear from these attacks would have stress the financial system of the union war effort.

I know the south did not have the production abilities or technical skills to perfect Torpedo boats but what if they had?????

 

[rittmeister]

a potpourri of ideas

• a torpedo then was a mine (some of them mounted on a rather long stick)
• your coastal torpedo boats are what exactly? mine layers?
• no matter what they are if they want to terrorize northern harbours they need to make it past their 'personal' blockade squadrons first - did you say 'in numbers'?
• the confederacy wasn't capable to mass produce much of anything

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

Fear!!

When it comes to action on the seas or in the rivers the south did not have many triumphs. When comes to my questions I was thinking which military innovation if perfected could have level the playing field with the north.

Torpedo boats if used like U-boats were cold have brought terror to northern shipping and union warships. These stealth boats technology could have cause the financial markets fits and the insurance markets would have been in fear.

The south would not have had to many just a score or two of a ocean type Torpedo boat to bring fear to the shipping of the north. Think what a Torpedo boat attack on one or two commercial ships near New York harbor. It would have brought panic to the financial markets in New York.

If the south could have pulled off a couple attacks on commercial shipping in Northern waters monthly the financial cost in the fear from these attacks would have stress the financial system of the union war effort.

I know the south did not have the production abilities or technical skills to perfect Torpedo boats but what if they had?????

If the Confederacy could of they would of. The Germans had very good torpedo boats in WWII but they didn't break the British Blockade.
Kirk's Raiders

 

[5fish]

no matter what they are if they want to terrorize northern harbours they need to make it past their 'personal' blockade squadrons first - did you say 'in numbers'?

I envision low silhouette boats relatively fast TP boats sneaking out of the harbor at night... and going on the high seas terrorizing commercial shipping along the Northeast coast. No ship will be safe, with their low silhouette and a iron shell even warships will fear them... They would be hard to see and with a ironclad shell hard to sink...

your coastal torpedo boats are what exactly? mine layers?

I like the mine layer Idea for that has more merit than the TP boat idea... developing a salt water mine was more in their technology scope...

 

[rittmeister]

I envision low silhouette boats relatively fast TP boats sneaking out of the harbor at night... and going on the high seas terrorizing commercial shipping along the Northeast coast. No ship will be safe, with their low silhouette and a iron shell even warships will fear them... They would be hard to see and with a ironclad shell hard to sink...

where is the capacity to built them?

I like the mine layer Idea for that has more merit than the TP boat idea... developing a salt water mine was more in their technology scope...

... and damn the torpedos referred to mines - the first torpedo as we now understand it sunk a ship in 1878.

 

[5fish]

where is the capacity to built them?

They had mines(called torpedo's ) during the war... They were poorly made and after a short time salt water would damage the insides... Like I say, if they had focus on making a mines to sink commercial shipping, I believe they could have done it.

the first torpedo as we now understand it sunk a ship in 1878.

When was the first one tested... 1866... wiki...

The word torpedo comes from the name of a genus of electric rays in the order Torpediniformes, which in turn comes from the Latin torpere ("to be stiff or numb"). In naval usage, the American Robert Fulton introduced the name to refer to a towed gunpowder charge used by his French submarine Nautilus (first tested in 1800) to demonstrate that it could sink warships.

Torpedo-like weapons were first proposed many centuries before they were successfully developed. For example, in 1275, Arab engineer Hasan al-Rammah – who worked as a military scientist for the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt – wrote that it might be possible to create a projectile resembling "an egg", which propelled itself through water, whilst carrying "fire".[1]

In 1866 British engineer Robert Whitehead invented the first effective self-propelled torpedo, the eponymous Whitehead torpedo. French and German inventions followed closely, and the term torpedo came to describe self-propelled projectiles that traveled under or on water. By 1900, the term no longer included mines and booby-traps as the navies of the world added submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers to their fleets.[6][7]

Test fired one was 1870...

Here is a great little article about modern torpedoes beginnings with Photos and diagrams...

A Brief History of U.S. Navy Torpedo Development - Part 1

maritime.org

The Newport Naval Torpedo Station was established in 1869 on Goat Island in Newport (Rhode Island) Harbor to work on torpedo development, experimentation, and testing. Work at the Station between 1870 - 1900 was centered on research and testing of mines and spar torpedoes. Various systems of torpedo propulsion were tested by Station personnel.

 

[5fish]

mine layers?

Frenchman had your mine idea... with a sub.... wiki...

Through friends like Gaspard Monge and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Fulton obtained an interview with Napoleon, but was unable to garner support for his vessel; however, Fulton's friends pushed the Minister of Marine into appointing a scholarly panel, to consist of Volney, Monge, and Laplace, to assess the submarine.

On July 3, 1801, at Le Havre, Fulton took the revised Nautilus down to the then-remarkable depth of 25 feet (7.6 m). With his three crewmen and two candles burning he remained for an hour without difficulty. Adding a copper "bomb" (globe) containing 200 ft3 (5.7m3) of air extended the time underwater for the crew for at least four and a half hours. One of the renovations included a 1.5-inch-diameter (38 mm) glass in the dome, whose light he found sufficient for reading a watch, making candles during daylight activities unnecessary. Speed trials put Nautilus at two knots on the surface, and covering 400 m in 7 minutes. He also discovered that compasses worked underwater exactly as on the surface.[1]:41

The first trial of a "carcass" destroyed a 40-foot sloop provided by the Admiralty. Fulton suggested that not only should they be used against specific ships by submarines, but be set floating into harbors and into estuaries with the tide to wreak havoc at random.[1]:42

The overseeing committee enthusiastically recommended the building of two brass subs, 36 ft (11 m) long, 12 ft (3.7 m) wide, with a crew of eight, and air for eight hours of submersion.

In September, Napoleon expressed interest in seeing Nautilus, only to find that, as it had leaked badly, Fulton had her dismantled and the more important bits destroyed at the end of the tests. Despite the many reports of success by reliable witnesses, like the Prefect Marine of Brest, Napoleon decided Fulton was a swindler and charlatan. The French navy had no enthusiasm for a weapon they considered suicidal for the crews even though Fulton had had no problems and despite evidence it would be overwhelmingly destructive against conventional ships.[1]:43

The tech was there for mining sea lanes.... wiki...

In 1812 Russian engineer Pavel Shilling exploded an underwater mine using an electrical circuit. In 1842 Samuel Colt used an electric detonator to destroy a moving vessel to demonstrate an underwater mine of his own design to the United States Navy and President John Tyler. However, opposition from former president John Quincy Adams, scuttled the project as "not fair and honest warfare".[12] In 1854, during the unsuccessful attempt of the Anglo-French fleet to seize the Kronstadt fortress, British steamships HMS Merlin (9 June 1855, the first successful mining in history), HMS Vulture and HMS Firefly suffered damage due to the underwater explosions of Russian naval mines. Russian naval specialists set more than 1500 naval mines, or infernal machines, designed by Moritz von Jacobi and by Immanuel Nobel,[13] in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The mining of Vulcan led to the world's first minesweeping operation.[14][15] During the next 72 hours, 33 mines were swept.[16]

The Jacobi mine was designed by German-born, Russian engineer Jacobi, in 1853. The mine was tied to the sea bottom by an anchor. A cable connected it to a galvanic cell which powered it from the shore, the power of its explosive charge was equal to 14 kilograms (31 lb) of black powder. In the summer of 1853, the production of the mine was approved by the Committee for Mines of the Ministry of War of the Russian Empire. In 1854, 60 Jacobi mines were laid in the vicinity of the Forts Pavel and Alexander (Kronstadt), to deter the British Baltic Fleet from attacking them. It gradually phased out its direct competitor the Nobel mine on the insistence of Admiral Fyodor Litke. The Nobel mines were bought from Swedish industrialist Immanuel Nobel who had entered into collusion with Russian head of navy Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov. Despite their high cost (100 Russian rubles) the Nobel mines proved to be faulty, exploding while being laid, failing to explode or detaching from their wires and drifting uncontrollably, at least 70 of them were subsequently disarmed by the British. In 1855, 301 more Jacobi mines were laid around Krostadt and Lisy Nos. British ships did not dare to approach them.[

 

[rittmeister]

When was the first one tested... 1866...

tests, tests and failures

a test doesn't make a deploayable weapon, not even if the test succeeds

 

[5fish]

a test doesn't make a deploayable weapon, not even if the test succeeds

A successful test proves it could be viable so with more money and resources something may come of it, all I am saying.

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

A successful test proves it could be viable so with more money and resources something may come of it, all I am saying.

If the Confederacy can't even make reliable artillery fuzes and ammunition for repeating rifles then how are they supposed to be the world's leading nation of military innovations?
Kirk's Raiders

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

Frenchman had your mine idea... with a sub.... wiki...

Through friends like Gaspard Monge and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Fulton obtained an interview with Napoleon, but was unable to garner support for his vessel; however, Fulton's friends pushed the Minister of Marine into appointing a scholarly panel, to consist of Volney, Monge, and Laplace, to assess the submarine.

On July 3, 1801, at Le Havre, Fulton took the revised Nautilus down to the then-remarkable depth of 25 feet (7.6 m). With his three crewmen and two candles burning he remained for an hour without difficulty. Adding a copper "bomb" (globe) containing 200 ft3 (5.7m3) of air extended the time underwater for the crew for at least four and a half hours. One of the renovations included a 1.5-inch-diameter (38 mm) glass in the dome, whose light he found sufficient for reading a watch, making candles during daylight activities unnecessary. Speed trials put Nautilus at two knots on the surface, and covering 400 m in 7 minutes. He also discovered that compasses worked underwater exactly as on the surface.[1]:41

The first trial of a "carcass" destroyed a 40-foot sloop provided by the Admiralty. Fulton suggested that not only should they be used against specific ships by submarines, but be set floating into harbors and into estuaries with the tide to wreak havoc at random.[1]:42

The overseeing committee enthusiastically recommended the building of two brass subs, 36 ft (11 m) long, 12 ft (3.7 m) wide, with a crew of eight, and air for eight hours of submersion.

In September, Napoleon expressed interest in seeing Nautilus, only to find that, as it had leaked badly, Fulton had her dismantled and the more important bits destroyed at the end of the tests. Despite the many reports of success by reliable witnesses, like the Prefect Marine of Brest, Napoleon decided Fulton was a swindler and charlatan. The French navy had no enthusiasm for a weapon they considered suicidal for the crews even though Fulton had had no problems and despite evidence it would be overwhelmingly destructive against conventional ships.[1]:43

The tech was there for mining sea lanes.... wiki...

In 1812 Russian engineer Pavel Shilling exploded an underwater mine using an electrical circuit. In 1842 Samuel Colt used an electric detonator to destroy a moving vessel to demonstrate an underwater mine of his own design to the United States Navy and President John Tyler. However, opposition from former president John Quincy Adams, scuttled the project as "not fair and honest warfare".[12] In 1854, during the unsuccessful attempt of the Anglo-French fleet to seize the Kronstadt fortress, British steamships HMS Merlin (9 June 1855, the first successful mining in history), HMS Vulture and HMS Firefly suffered damage due to the underwater explosions of Russian naval mines. Russian naval specialists set more than 1500 naval mines, or infernal machines, designed by Moritz von Jacobi and by Immanuel Nobel,[13] in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The mining of Vulcan led to the world's first minesweeping operation.[14][15] During the next 72 hours, 33 mines were swept.[16]

The Jacobi mine was designed by German-born, Russian engineer Jacobi, in 1853. The mine was tied to the sea bottom by an anchor. A cable connected it to a galvanic cell which powered it from the shore, the power of its explosive charge was equal to 14 kilograms (31 lb) of black powder. In the summer of 1853, the production of the mine was approved by the Committee for Mines of the Ministry of War of the Russian Empire. In 1854, 60 Jacobi mines were laid in the vicinity of the Forts Pavel and Alexander (Kronstadt), to deter the British Baltic Fleet from attacking them. It gradually phased out its direct competitor the Nobel mine on the insistence of Admiral Fyodor Litke. The Nobel mines were bought from Swedish industrialist Immanuel Nobel who had entered into collusion with Russian head of navy Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov. Despite their high cost (100 Russian rubles) the Nobel mines proved to be faulty, exploding while being laid, failing to explode or detaching from their wires and drifting uncontrollably, at least 70 of them were subsequently disarmed by the British. In 1855, 301 more Jacobi mines were laid around Krostadt and Lisy Nos. British ships did not dare to approach them.[

Mines are a double edged sword. If the Confederacy did produce reliable mines eventually the USN would in broad daylight sieze a mine and reverse enginer it. Blockade runners could only enter Confederate ports at night. If the USN laid mines in large numbers that would be devestating to blockade runners. Blockade runners can't use lights to find mines at night because that would attract USN gunfire.
Kirk's Raiders

 

[Wehrkraftzersetzer]

A successful test proves it could be viable so with more money and resources something may come of it, all I am saying.

the magical word is confederacy

 

[Wehrkraftzersetzer]

Mines are a double edged sword. If the Confederacy did produce reliable mines eventually the USN would in broad daylight sieze a mine and reverse enginer it. Blockade runners could only enter Confederate ports at night. If the USN laid mines in large numbers that would be devestating to blockade runners. Blockade runners can't use lights to find mines at night because that would attract USN gunfire.
Kirk's Raiders

somethings are not so well at, like the boarding of a frighter by Somali pirates oops British Frigate

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

somethings are not so well at, like the boarding of a frighter by Somali pirates oops British Frigate

When did that take place or is there You Tube footage? The Somali prorated at a remarkably good run but a bunch of speed boats can't fight off twenty plus Navies.
Essentially the Somali pirates were at best using 1960's technology vs various Navies using fifty plus year newer technology.
Kirk's Raiders

 

[Wehrkraftzersetzer]

When did that take place or is there You Tube footage? The Somali prorated at a remarkably good run but a bunch of speed boats can't fight off twenty plus Navies.
Essentially the Somali pirates were at best using 1960's technology vs various Navies using fifty plus year newer technology.
Kirk's Raiders

was in the press, then, there was yet annother inciden't when the tried to board a US warship

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

was in the press, then, there was yet annother inciden't when the tried to board a US warship

I will see if I can find it.
Kirk's.Raiders

 

[rittmeister]

it was a french frigate - click -

 

[rittmeister]

they actually tried that not only with rthe french - spanish navy

documentary:

if someone wants to pursue this feel free to open a thread. i'll move the pertinent posts there