Fun with torpedoes
Apparently, when sailors in the Australian Navy get bored, they go and blow shit up. This site displays a series of photographs showing “the awesome power of a Mark 48 war-shot torpedo fired at the stationary hulk of the old destroyer-escort, TORRENS. The plume of water and fragments shot some 150 metres skywards as the blast of the torpedo cut the ship in two. The submarine was over the horizon and submerged when it fired the torpedo.”
There’s some interesting info about how torpedoes work. They never actually touch the ship. Instead,
the warhead detonates below the keel of the target ship, as opposed to striking it directly. When the detonation occurs below the keel, the resulting pressure wave of the explosion ‘lifts’ the ship and can break its keel in the process. As the ship ’settles’ it is then seemingly hit by a second detonation as the explosion itself rips through the area of the blast. This combined effect often breaks smaller targets in half and can severely disable larger vessels.
Anyway, the pictures are cool.
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