The old bomb idea proved next to worthless, for it was a very hard job to fix it to the ship to be sunk, and even if the submarine operator did succeed in so doing it was at best a dangerous piece of business, and so the odds for its failure were about as 100 is to 1.
As soon, therefore, as the submarine had been developed to a point where it was clear that it was the coming weapon of modern naval warfare, inventors began to rack their brains for some scheme which would do away with the danger and uncertainty of the old-fashioned bomb, and to make the submarine safer for its crew and deadlier for the enemy.
Many attempts were made, but its improvement was very slow, for the old idea of the simple bomb was firmly fixed in the minds of the inventors and it was hard for them to break away from it.
After a long time, though—that is to say in 1860—Captain Lupius, an Austrian inventor, hit upon a new and novel plan for a torpedo which would travel under water, by means of a little motor in it and a pair of wires which connected it with the submarine so that it could be directed at will.
The First Submarine Torpedoes.—Lupius took his idea to Whitehead, an English engineer of genius and ability, and he built the first controlled torpedo which traveled under its own power in 1864. Then Whitehead did a little thinking on his own account and he built the automobile torpedo in 1868, the cleverest and most diabolical destroyer that man has ever yet been guilty of.
The automobile torpedo is one that not only runs under its own power but that steers itself as well after it has left the torpedo tube of the submarine. To Whitehead, then, must be given the credit not only of having invented the submarine torpedo that is used with such telling effect in the present war, but of making a success of it. The Germans, though, with their great dislike for everything of British name and make call their torpedo of this type blackheads.
How to Make a Model Submarine Torpedo.—Before I explain how a real automobile torpedo is made and works, I will tell you how to make a model torpedo which, while it will not explode at the end of its trip through the water, will show you how a real torpedo does its work.
The Body of the Torpedo.—Get a piece of nice soft pine 1½ inches in diameter and 10 inches long, and whittle it out to the shape shown in [Fig. 36]. Cut a groove down the middle of it ¾ inch deep and ¾ inch wide, to within an inch of each end. This done, screw a small screw-eye in the warhead of the torpedo, as the blunt nosed end of it is called, inside the groove.
