The Fleet Type Submarine Online
21-Inch Submerged Torpedo Tubes

21-Inch Submerged Torpedo Tubes, Ordnance Pamphlet 1085, is one of a series of submarine training manuals that was completed just after WW II. The series describes the peak of WW II US submarine technology.

In this online version of the manual we have attempted to keep some flavor of the original layout while taking advantage of the Web's universal accessibility. Different browsers and fonts will cause the text to move, but the text will remain roughly where it is in the original manual. O.P. 1085 is typeset in a more complex way than the other manuals of this series. This has lead to many more compromises between retaining that original flavor and remaining comprehensible on in the web version. In addition to errors we have attempted to preserve from the original (for example, it was H.L. Hunley, not CS Huntley), this text was captured by optical character recognition. This process creates errors that are compounded while encoding for the Web. Please report any typos, or particularly annoying layout issues with the Mail Feedback Form for correction.

Our thanks to IKON Office Solutions (now Ricoh USA http://www.ricoh-usa.com) for scanning services.

For information about the development of U.S. Navy Torpedoes, see A Brief History of U.S. Navy Torpedo Development by Jolie.

Richard Pekelney
Webmaster

THIS PUBLICATION IS RESTRICTED AND SHOULD BE HANDLED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF ARTICLE 76, U.S. NAVY REGULATIONS, 1920

IN REPLY ADDRESS
BUREAU OF ORDNANCE, NAVY DEPARTMENT
AND REFER TO NO.
(Re6a)

 
RESTRICTED          June 1944
 
 
ORDNANCE PAMPHLET 1085

21" SUBMERGED TORPEDO TUBES MARK 32 TO 39 INCLUSIVE.

1. Ordnance Pamphlet 1085 is issued for the guidance of the Naval Service in the operation and maintenance of the subject tubes.

2. The instructions are specific as to operation and maintenance, and supplement the instructions contained in the Bureau of Ordnance Manual.

3. This publication supersedes that portion of Ordnance Pamphlet 586 (1st Revision) pertaining to 21" Submerged Torpedo Tubes Mark 32 to 39 inclusive.

4. This publication is RESTRICTED and should be handled in accordance with Article 76, U. S. Navy Regulations, 1920.
 

Torpedo tubes in all U. S. submarines numbered SS170 et seq. are fundamentally similar, but few installations are exactly alike. Submarines vary in general design according to where they are constructed, and also according to changes and improvements that may be made in individual vessels between the laying of their keels and their commissioning. Some change may be ordered in a mechanism and included in all vessels then under construction or on order. If experience should prove that the change was unnecessary, or that no important operating advantages were gained through its installation, it might be discontinued. In the meantime, however, the change would have been included in several vessels which were under construction at the time the change was recommended. In any case, it is obviously impossible to cover all variations from basic torpedo tube design in a single publication, hence this pamphlet, in its text and illustrations, confines itself to the torpedo tube installations existing in SS198 and up. The general principles which are discussed in Chapter 1 apply to all U. S. NAVY submarines. Most of the mechanisms pictured and described herein are identical with, or are evolved from, those as far back as SS170, and considerable similarity exists also to the installations in SS167, 168 and 169. For descriptions applying specifically to those older submarines, however, see O.P. 281 for the tubes in SS167, 168 and 169, and O.P. 586 for the tubes in SS 170 and up.

Generally speaking, anyone with a reasonable degree of mechanical knack, after thorough study of this pamphlet, should find such variations in torpedo tube construction and operation as he may encounter relatively easy to understand. There is, in fact, nothing very difficult to grasp about any part of a submarine torpedo tube, if those who study them do not attempt to understand them all at once.

This pamphlet, as has been said, is a torpedo tube primer, and not an engineering treatise; it includes nothing "over the head" of the beginning student of submarine torpedo tubes.