oxygen torpedoes on IJN Cruisers

Excellent.Thanks.

 

According to one very authoritative account, the British effort to develop an oxygen-fueled torpedo for the Nelson-class battleships was, in fact, the inspiration for the Japanese Type 93 torpedo. But the Japanese went the British one better, for the British 24.5" Mk.I was not a LOX fueled torpedo, but used oxygen-enriched air as a combustion agent. The Japanese did not understand this and thought the British "super torpedo" was fueled by liquid oxygen, and thus used that in their own development efforts.

See:British Torpedoes Pre-World War II



The USN did experiment with a Liquid oxygen/hydrogen peroxide fueled torpedo in the 1930's. This was called the "Navol" torpedo, but results were disappointing and the cost and effort of manufacturing both the fuel and the torpedo was thought to be excessive, so the effort was dropped before any operational torpedo along these lines was developed prior to the war. During WW II, the USN revived experiments with the "Navol" engine system, and about 1,000 such torpedoes were built, but none saw active use in the war.

See:Information on USA Torpedoes

 

Super.Thanks...Now is there any relation to the T-stoff and F(?)-stoff that was used to power the Komet ? I thought some of the ingredients for the fuel were hydrogen peroxide and liquid oxygen?.Also another that was very corrosive. Just checkin' 'cause I'm interested.

 

Poppy,

I'm neither a chemist, nor familiar with the fuel used by the Germans in their rocket powered aircraft, so I can't definitely say whether LOX and Hydrogen peroxide are the same as "T=stoff" or "H-stoff". All I know is that the Germans experimented with a variety of both aircraft and marine propulsion systems which utilized various combinations of LOX, Hydrogen peroxide, and other chemicals. I also know that LOX and Hydrogen peroxide are very difficult and volatile substances to store and handle, so they may have some similarity to "T-stoff" and "H-stoff", whatever those two substances are.

 

Thank you. Surely someone here can explain the t-stoff , f-stoff question here. This is what made the Komet so dangerous to fly. When fueling the Komet, the 1 fuel truck was kept very far away from the other fuel truck. One of the fuels was so corrosive that rubber suits were worn while fueling. The explosive reaction of combining the 2 fuels caused the propulsion. A lot of the accidents occurred when landing and the remaining fuels would slosh around and accidentally mix causing an explosion/death of pilot...I am neither an expert. Am merely looking for clarity.

 

By the by, devilsad, do you remember the Mt. St. Helens eruption? I was on vacation down there when the durn thang went off . It was really something to see all that ash all over God's country.

 

I sure do. We had a place on a hill behind a little town called Scappoose, about 12 miles south of St Helens (the town, not the mountain) at that time. We actually had a much better view of the mountain then than we do now. We had been warned that there was probably going to be an eruption, but nobody knew for sure when or how big. We (my wife and I) were sitting at our kitchen table on a Sunday morning when the eruption started. I was reading the paper when my wife said very calmly, "Look at that." I looked up just in time to see the side of the mountain start to slide into the valley below it. Since we were on the southwest side, and the eruption occurred on the north face of the mountain, we could only see a small part of the landslide, but the smoke, dust, and debris shooting up over the summit was clearly visible. The strangest part was that this immense eruption was in complete silence for the first several seconds until the noise reached us. A huge plume of ash drifted off to the southeast and continued to cover everything for days. We didn't get much ash because the prevailing wind is from the northwest or north and we were out of the path, but for one day, the wind changed around and deposited about 2" of ash all over our area. The ash contained glass particles that were dangerous to breath, and a few people and animals were injured, but otherwise it didn't do much damage. My wife was born on the island of Borneo and lived not far from an active volcano for much of her childhood, so she wasn't much impressed with the eruption of Mount St. Helens. But it was the first time I had ever seen such an incredible explosion and I was deeply impressed.

 

Wow. That's a great story. Thanks for sharing.