Air-Sea torpedo late XIXth

Exact drop height is insignificant if you use parachutes or wings to slow vertical descent rate.
Modern ram-air parachutes have glide ratios of 3 or more to 1. ... modern para gliders even more.
If you limit parachute technology to Rogallos, you can still exceed glide ratios of 2:1.
Modern gliders exceed 50:1, obviating the need to fly directly over the doomed ship.
TOW is a modern anti-tank rocket with wire guidance. A Zeppelin no longer needs to hold course after releasing a torpedo .... as long as the bomb-aimer can still see his torpedo and target.

Also remember that deck armour is a mere fraction of the thickness of armour at the waterline .... favouring dive-bombers or steeply-arriving steerable bombs.
 
Exact drop height is insignificant if you use parachutes or wings to slow vertical descent rate.
Modern ram-air parachutes have glide ratios of 3 or more to 1. ... modern para gliders even more.
If you limit parachute technology to Rogallos, you can still exceed glide ratios of 2:1.
Modern gliders exceed 50:1, obviating the need to fly directly over the doomed ship.
TOW is a modern anti-tank rocket with wire guidance. A Zeppelin no longer needs to hold course after releasing a torpedo .... as long as the bomb-aimer can still see his torpedo and target.

Also remember that deck armour is a mere fraction of the thickness of armour at the waterline .... favouring dive-bombers or steeply-arriving steerable bombs.
Have fun getting those wire-guided bombs (especially ones with TV cameras) in the 19th century. Similarly, with your fancy paragliders.
 
Modern ASW aircraft drop torpedoes from "relatively" higher altitudes using parachutes. The kicker is that these are ASW torpedoes with complex self contained homing systems. Unguided torpedoes (ie: those you have to aim at the target) were around in the late 19th century but homing torpedoes were a WWII development, and even then were relatively primitive and required being "almost" aimed at the target.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Have fun getting those wire-guided bombs (especially ones with TV cameras) in the 19th century. Similarly, with your fancy paragliders.

At the range of 5000 to 9000 feet from the ship, it could be eye guided. We are talking 3000 meters or less against the target the size of mid-size building. Modern snipers can hit at half this range with a bullet.
 
At the range of 5000 to 9000 feet from the ship, it could be eye guided. We are talking 3000 meters or less against the target the size of mid-size building. Modern snipers can hit at half this range with a bullet.

Yes but there are serious probably overwhelming engineering constraints regarding control, the massive drag 3000 ft of wire (you're actually probably going to need multiple cables to control it) is going to cause on an unpowered glider, and then the airship also has to carry a generator on board and thousands of ft of wire.

A glider bomb adds nothing but complexity, weight, and danger when you'd be much better off carrying more bombs and dropping them from a height out of reach of the enemy's guns. WWI showed that simply flying so high the enemy can't shoot you is the airship's best defense. Late 19th century engineers had a very difficult time getting wire guided torpedoes to work from ships and land stations. Trying to do it in the air with a glider is very unlikely to happen with any modicum of military success.
 
"... because it's the height of torpedo launchers (above water) on the larger of the vessels which used them."

IIRC, submerged launchers were tried. Idea was to avoid all the problems with waves, having big, explosive whatsits on deck during combat etc etc. Snag was the ship's probably making a dozen knots, so torpedo is shoved *side-ways* against its tube during launch-phase...
 

Saphroneth

Banned
IIRC, submerged launchers were tried.
Yes, and there were some crazy ships during this period like the Hotspur (a torpedo ram) which had forwards-facing underwater tubes. Of course, she wasn't intended to be used in an open ocean conflict - her express purpose was basically to sidle up to Cherbourg boom at night, charge through it, launch torpedoes at something valuable and run like hell.


The thing people should probably realize is that a torpedo in this period (and indeed clear through to WW2) isn't just a slower shell that goes underwater - it's a cutting-edge piece of miniaturized mechanical science which has to be treated carefully for best results, and which often failed in practice because of that very complexity. Adding in an extra step where you push it out of a dirigible and expect it to fly several thousand feet is just making things far too complicated.
 
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Glide bombs would be a good weapon, reasonable chance of scoring a hit and it keeps the aircraft at a safer distance from the target and return fire.
If the bomb can be set to fly a straight or a preprogrammed course guidence isn't really necessary. 1870s ships weren't all that fast or maneuverable.
 
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What about mine laying? Fly over a ship formation, drop your mines to limit enemy movement while sea ships do the heavy lifting
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Glide bombs would be a good weapon, reasonable chance of scoring a hit and it keeps the aircraft at a safer distance from the target and return fire.
"reasonable" chance? Not really, an unguided glide bomb is pretty unlikely to hit anything. There's a lot more sea than ships, and it's quite possible to dodge.

If the bomb can be set to fly a straight or a preprogrammed course guidence isn't really necessary. 1870s ships weren't all that fast or maneuverable.
1870s bombs, however, would weigh about nothing because there were no airships in the 1870s. The first airship (La France, 1884) had pathetic payload-range, and even the 1901 LZ1 Zeppelin had trouble carrying more than about half a dozen people. (For reference the basic Whitehead torpedo was about 850 lbs)

But if we assume a glide bombing capability (i.e. bombs with wings, straight course) in the 1870s, then it's still not really going to work as 1870s ships were still quite fast - the Devastation (1871) had a speed of 13 knots, for example, which meant she could outrun the LZ1 quite handily! Turning away much as was done with OTL torpedoes would work fine, as would simply turning aside.

What about mine laying? Fly over a ship formation, drop your mines to limit enemy movement while sea ships do the heavy lifting
This is... tricky. The reason why sea mines are so dangerous is that they detonate underwater and are invisible until struck, and this is managed by weighting them so they float a few feet below the surface (by having the weight on the bottom and a cable of appropriate length). If you're dropping mines on a fleet at sea then you have to drop them floating, and floating mines tend to be most effective in the dark and/or when unexpected - in daytime and when just obviously dropped, they're visible and can simply be destroyed by QF guns.
Of course, naval mines are also heavy (and they'll have to be bloody strong to survive being dropped, unless they have parachutes in which case they're even more obvious) and the payload/range problem turns up again.
 
This is... tricky. The reason why sea mines are so dangerous is that they detonate underwater and are invisible until struck, and this is managed by weighting them so they float a few feet below the surface (by having the weight on the bottom and a cable of appropriate length). If you're dropping mines on a fleet at sea then you have to drop them floating, and floating mines tend to be most effective in the dark and/or when unexpected - in daytime and when just obviously dropped, they're visible and can simply be destroyed by QF guns.
Of course, naval mines are also heavy (and they'll have to be bloody strong to survive being dropped, unless they have parachutes in which case they're even more obvious) and the payload/range problem turns up again.
But every soldier that has to man those QF guns is not manning a battery or helping with the rest of the crew, could that work for an area saturation type of attack?
Actually imagine, even mines with parachutes would work for that.

The attack of the 99 Luftballonen
 

Saphroneth

Banned
But every soldier that has to man those QF guns is not manning a battery or helping with the rest of the crew, could that work for an area saturation type of attack?
So? Their duty station in battle is the QF guns, they're a key part of the armament under the doctrine of the time. Unless the enemy fleet is literally a few miles away when the drops take place the mines will be cleared out.


As for "area saturation", frankly it would be easier to just drop bombs rather than mines. Of course, any realistic attack of that type would be taking place in the 20th century.
 
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