What does TORPEDO mean nd it is related to wat?

Question

What does TORPEDO mean nd it is related to wat?

Answer 1

The modern torpedo (historically called an automotive, automobile, locomotive, or fish torpedo) is a self-propelled explosive projectile weapon, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater toward a target, and designed to detonate on contact or in proximity to a target. The original use of "torpedo" was for a variety of devices that would today be mostly called a "mine". However, from the First World War onwards "torpedo" was only used for an underwater self-propelled missile, often called colloquially a "fish".

Today's torpedoes can be divided into lightweight and heavyweight classes, and into straight running, autonomous homers and wire-guided ones. They can be launched from a variety of platforms. Originally, the torpedo was primarily used in an anti-shipping role. This has been largely superseded by the missile, so the torpedo's main contemporary use is against submarines.[citation needed]

Torpedoes may be launched from submarines, surface ships, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, unmanned naval mines and naval fortresses. They are also used in conjunction with other weapons; for example the Mark 46 torpedo used by the United States becomes the warhead section of the ASROC (Anti-Submarine ROCket) and the CAPTOR mine (CAPsulated TORpedo) is a submerged sensor platform which releases a torpedo when a hostile contact is detected.

While the battleship had evolved primarily around engagements between armoured ships with large guns, the torpedo allowed torpedo boats, other lighter surface ships, submersibles, and aircraft to destroy large ships without large-caliber guns, though sometimes at the risk of being hit by longer-range shellfire. In the Battle of Samar, destroyer-mounted torpedoes were the only weapons available to the U.S. task force capable of damaging opposing Japanese cruisers and battleships.

[edit] Etymology

The word torpedo comes from a genus of electric rays in the order Torpediniformes, which in turn comes from the Latin "torpere" (to stun). In naval usage, the torpedo was so named by Robert Fulton, who used it to refer to a towed gunpowder charge used by his submarine Nautilus to demonstrate it could sink warships.

[edit] History

Prior to the invention of the self-propelled torpedo, the term was applied to any number of different types of explosive devices, generally having the property of being secret or hidden, including devices which today would include booby traps, land mines, naval mines, and others.

Much like the invention of the helicopter, the earliest torpedo concepts existed many centuries before being developed as working devices. The earliest known description is found in the work of Syrian engineer Hassan al-Rammah in 1275. His works show illustrations of a rocket-propelled device that appears to have been designed to move on the surface of water.[1]

[edit] Early naval "torpedoes"



Confederates laying torpedoes in Charleston HarborAlthough the term "torpedo" was not coined until 1800, the early submarine Turtle attacked using an explosive very similar in intent and function. Turtle dived under a British vessel to attach a bomb by means of an auger. The bomb was to be detonated by a timed fuse, probably a type of clockwork mechanism. In its only recorded attack, Turtle failed to penetrate the hull of HMS Eagle, which had been copper-plated to resist shipworms.

The first usage of the term torpedo to refer to a naval explosive was by American inventor Robert Fulton. In 1800, Fulton launched his submarine, Nautilus, and demonstrated its method of attack using a floating explosive charge Fulton called a torpedo. The submarine would tow the torpedo, submerging beneath an enemy vessel and dragging the torpedo into contact with it. Fulton successfully destroyed demonstration targets in both France and Britain, but neither government was interested in purchasing the vessel and Fulton's experiments ceased in 1805.

During the American Civil War, the term torpedo was used for what is today called a contact mine, floating on or below the water surface using an air-filled demijohn or similar flotation device. (As self-propelled torpedoes were developed the tethered variety became known as stationary torpedoes and later mines.) Several types of naval "torpedo" were developed and deployed, most often by the Confederates, who faced a severe disadvantage in more traditional warfare methods.

In this period, "torpedoes" floated freely on the surface or were bottom-moored just below the surface. They were detonated when struck by a ship, or after a set time, but were unreliable. These could be as much a danger to Confederate as to Union shipping, and were sometimes marked with flags that could be removed if Union attack was deemed imminent. Rivers mined with Confederate torpedoes were often cleared by Unionists placing captured Confederate soldiers with knowledge of the torpedoes' location in small boats ahead of the main fleet.

"Torpedoes" (mines) could also be detonated electrically by an operator on shore (as demonstrated also by Fulton), so friendly vessels or low-value enemy vessels could be ignored while waiting for the capital ships to sail over them. However, the Confederacy was plagued by a chronic shortage of materials including platinum and copper wire and acid for batteries, and the wires had a tendency to break. Electricity was a new technology, and the limitations of direct current for effective distance was poorly understood, so failures were also possible because of the decrease in voltage when the torpedoes were placed too far from the batteries. Former United States Navy Commander Matthew Maury, who served as a commander in the Confederate Navy, worked on the development of an underwater electrical mine.

David Farragut encountered tethered and floating contact mines in 1864 at the American Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. After his leading ironclad, USS Tecumseh, was sunk by a tethered contact mine (torpedo), his vessels halted, afraid of hitting additional torpedoes. Inspiring his men to push forward, Farragut famously ordered, "d**n the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

The first torpedo designed to attack a specific target was the spar torpedo, an explosive device mounted at the end of a spar up to 40 feet (12 m) long projecting forward underwater from the bow of the attacking vessel. When driven up against the enemy and detonated, a hole would be caused below the water line. Spar torpedoes were employed by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, as well as by David-class torpedo boats, among others. However, these torpedoes were liable to cause as much harm to their users as to their targets.

[edit] Bombs and booby traps



Illustration of naval torpedoes moored to the river bottom (the predecessors of modern naval mines)During the US Civil War, the term "torpedo" was also used to refer to various types of bombs and boobytraps. Confederate General Gabriel Rains deployed "sub-terra shells" or "land torpedoes", artillery shells with pressure fuses buried in the road by retreating Confederate forces to delay their pursuers. These were the forerunners of modern land mines. Union generals publicly deplored this conduct.

Confederate secret agent John Maxwell used a clockwork mechanism to detonate a large "horological torpedo" (time bomb) on August 9, 1864. The bomb was hidden in a box marked "candles" and placed aboard a barge containing Union ammunition (20,000–30,000 artillery shells and 75,000 small arms rounds) moored at City Point, Virginia, on the James River. The explosion caused more than US$2 million in damage and killed at least 43 people.

The coal torpedo was a bomb shaped like a lump of coal, to be hidden in coal piles used for fueling Union naval vessels. The bomb would be shoveled into the firebox along with the real coal, causing an explosion. Although the North referred to the device as the coal torpedo in newspaper articles, the Confederates referred to it as a "coal shell".

[edit] Self-propelled torpedoes



Nordenfelt-class Ottoman submarine Abdülhamid (1886) was the first submarine in history to fire a torpedo while submerged. Two submarines of this class, Abdülhamid (1886) and Abdülmecid (1887) joined the Ottoman fleet. They were built in pieces by Des Vignes (Chertsey) and Vickers (Sheffield) in England, and assembled at the Taşkızak Naval Shipyard in Istanbul, Turkey.

The torpedo room of Argonaute, a Cold War-era French Diesel submarine.From World War I onwards, the word torpedo was used only for self-propelled projectiles that travelled under or on water.

The first working prototype of the modern self-propelled torpedo was created by a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis (Ivan Lupis), an Austrian naval officer from Fiume (today Rijeka, Croatia), a port city of the Austrian Empire, on Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a Fiume factory. In 1864, Luppis presented Whitehead with the plans of the salvacoste (coastsaver), a floating weapon, driven by ropes from the land, and made a contract with him in order to perfect the invention.

Whitehead was unable to improve the machine substantially, since the clockwork motor, the attached ropes and the surface attack mode all contributed to a slow and cumbersome weapon. However, he kept considering the problem after the contract had finished, and eventually developed a tubular device, designed to run underwater on its own, and powered by compressed air.

The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff (mine ship), the first real self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on December 21, 1866.

Maintaining proper depth was a major problem in the early days but Whitehe

Answer 2

its weaponary on submarines... its kind of like an underwater rocket to sink ships and other submarines

Answer 3

it is a worm which eat wood & found in ship where they reside

& damage the whole ship,

it is actually economical animal.

which yearly destroy so many ship.