Jacket blurb

Without the torpedo the submarine would still be a nautical toy of little military value and 25,706,096 tons of merchant shipping might not be rusting on the bottom of the sea. Without the torpedo Jutland could well have been an overwhelming British victory and the Battle of the Atlantic need never have been fought.

Webster's Biographical Dictionary dismisses the creator of this devastating weapon in one curt sentence : 'Robert Whitehead, English inventor, invented a self-propelled underwater torpedo.' Yet this relatively unknown engineer exerted more influence over the tactics of naval warfare and the design of warships than all the world's top admirals and naval architects put together. And the weapon he created twice brought Britain to the verge of defeat.

Edwyn Gray, a noted naval historian and author of The Killing Time and A Damned Un-English Weapon, tells, for the first time, the absorbing story of Robert Whitehead's fascinating life and traces, in layman's terms, the development of the torpedo from its birth to its place in today's missile age.

There was little in Whitehead's benevolent character to suggest that he was destined to become one of the greatest single architects of destruction in the history of mankind. A hard-working practical engineer from Boltonle-Moors in Lancashire a devoted family man who watched proudly as his children married into the cream of European Society, and a self-made millionaire with extravagant and eccentric tastes, by his single-minded determination he gave the world's admirals the 'Devil's Device' — a weapon that he fondly believed would make warfare at sea something too terrible to contemplate.

It is not a peaceful story, for violence is the essence of torpedo warfare but it fills an important gap in naval history and brings due, if belated, honour to Robert Whitehead.

Contents

List of illustations

1. Der Küstenbrander
2. The earliest known Whitehead torpedo
3. The trial of the fish torpedo at Woolwich
4. The first known photograph of Whitehead
5. The 18-inch Whitehead torpedo
6. Torpedo loading on HMS Thunderer
7. The Devil's Device
8. A detailed view of Harvey's torpedo
9. Harvey's torpedo in action
10. Whitehead wearing the Order of Francis Josef
11. Whitehead at Paddockhurst
12. Cadets learning 'The Secret'
13. Kapitanleutnant Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead
14. 'A thorough Englishman'
15. The Howell torpedo
16. The Sims-Edison Torpedo
17. Ericsson's torpedo gun
18. A new torpedo boat—No 79
19. Torpedoes awaiting pre-firing checks
20. A Blackburn Dart in flight
    

Similar books for sale at camberpete.co.uk