At the same range a torpedo like those used at Jutland
would be making only 50 feet a second or 35 miles an hour. Thus shells
whizz through the air forty times faster than torpedoes sneak through
the water. A torpedo, in fact, is itself very like a submarine, more
or less cigar-shaped, and with its own engine, screw, and rudder.
Hitting with a torpedo really means arranging a collision between it
and the ship you are aiming at. When you and the ship and your torpedo
and the water are all moving in different ways you can see that hitting
is not so easy. The shorter the range the better. But you cannot see
at all unless your periscope, with its little mirror, is high and dry
out of the water; and periscopes are soon spotted by a sharp look-out
at very short range. The best torpedoes are over twenty feet long and
as many inches through, and they will go ten miles. But the longer the
range the slower the pace and the less the chance of hitting. The
engine is driven by air, which is compressed so hard into the middle of
the torpedo that it actually bulges out the steel a tiny fraction of an
inch.
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