Word: torpedoed
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What these fishermen saw was the U. S. Navy's newest gadget: its growing squadron of motor torpedo boats, getting a sea test in rough water. Returning to the Brooklyn Navy Yard at nightfall each day with his five waterbugs, handsome Lieut. Earl Stevens Caldwell, youngest (and lowest-ranking) squadron commander in the Navy, was able to put down a favorable report. The new PTs (patrol torpedo boats) were as seaworthy as the designer of their prototype, famed Britisher Hubert Scott-Paine, had said they were. In 15-ft. waves they charged along at 40 knots, in smooth seas...
...commander of the first PT squadron, Lieut. Caldwell and his weather-battered men were pioneering the first new Navy fighting craft since planes became a fleet weapon. For their insignia they went to Cineman Walt Disney, got what they wanted from his Hollywood studio- a mosquito astride a torpedo. For their tactics they went abroad, for the new PTs-some 70 ft. of hull enclosing 4,500 h.p. in three engines- are designed for a job new to the U. S. Navy, old stuff to the British, Italians and Germans. The PTs are made for swift dashes into harbors...
...speed. If a German pocket battleship-the Admiral S cheer or the Lutzow-was indeed among them, the havoc could only be like that of a wolf in a hen roost. For the raider, armored against the merchantmen's light weapons, would have 11-inch guns, aircraft, torpedo tubes and surpassing speed of 26 knots. Unless they could scatter and escape in bad weather or darkness, the entire convoy could be blasted in their huddle, and, if necessary, run down and sunk...
...Italian naval officers named Raffaele Rossetti and Raffaele Paolucci, dressed in watertight rubber suits with air pouches at chest and back, and headgear shaped to look (in the sea) like drifting barrels, entered the waters outside Pola Harbor with what they called their "machine." It was a converted torpedo the forward part of which consisted of two "war heads," metal cylinders each filled with 400 pounds of TNT, and equipped with both clockwork and contact detonators. The war heads were detachable from the main body of the machine. The torpedo would make two miles an hour and could be steered...
Last week's "hybrid" was a development of the piloted torpedo of Pola. Reports indicated that the war head exploded harmlessly at the harbor entrance. The attack therefore failed. But it served notice on the British that their superiority in the Mediterranean will be challenged not by the wide-open sea battle every British manjack wants, but by Italian ingenuity...