Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 183 Cruise Torpedo
In September 1944, a test unit equipped with Kaiten torpedoes was formed on Otsu Island in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and volunteers were recruited nationwide to pilot the Kaiten torpedoes. Hiroshi Kuroki and Sekio Nishina, as the designers, were naturally in this suicide torpedo unit.

That same year, despite Nishina Sekio's advice, Hiroshi Kuroki tested the Kaiten torpedo in the Seto Inland Sea. The torpedo encountered rough seas, capsized, and sank. Lacking any escape mechanism, Kuroki died from oxygen deprivation inside the torpedo.

During the entire war, only 420 Kaiten torpedoes were produced, and records show that more than 40 were launched, achieving the results of sinking three US warships and severely damaging four others.

Obviously, the hit rate was still acceptable. However, the later Japanese soldiers no longer had the same Bushido spirit and fearlessness as the earlier Japanese soldiers.

Otherwise, with such a high hit rate, they could have taken out forty or fifty large American warships directly.

Putting everything else aside, if there were just ten thousand of these man-guided torpedoes, the entire Pacific Ocean would be under the control of the Japanese.

Unfortunately, there were far too few Japanese soldiers who were so fearless of sacrifice and death.

Of course, besides the Kaiten torpedo, the Japanese also used kamikaze fighters, which was a similar tactic.

The main reason Wang Gensheng was interested in torpedoes was that they could serve as a single-soldier vehicle, carrying one or two people to carry out demolition activities or to launch surprise attacks on ships.

There was no other way. Last time, we only stopped the warship ten kilometers away, and it took us several hours to swim close to it.

By the time they boarded the warship, apart from Wang Gensheng and Duan Peng, the remaining soldiers were almost completely exhausted.

This is without the warship starting up. If the warship were to start up, even a horse couldn't catch up.

Therefore, Wang Gensheng really wanted to have a small submarine or semi-submersible vessel that could run very fast to replace the way people swim to approach enemy ships.

Wang Gensheng believes that the "Huitian torpedo" method is a very suitable way to approach enemy ships. Frogman special forces can drive the Huitian torpedo to approach the enemy ship, plant bombs, and then drive the Huitian torpedo to retreat.

This way, the method of mutual destruction can be completely avoided.

In this way, although there is still great danger, it is not a mission that will definitely result in death, so naturally there is not so much fear.

Thinking of this, Wang Gensheng said to the chief engineer:
"By the way, Chief Engineer, are you familiar with the internal structure of this torpedo? Can you disassemble it?"

Upon hearing this, the chief engineer immediately nodded and said:

"I do know about this. It's a steam torpedo with a relatively long range. It uses compressed air and a propellant to heat water to power the engine, which in turn drives the propeller at the tail of the torpedo to propel it forward."

As he spoke, he even disassembled a torpedo for Wang Gensheng to explain the internal structure of the torpedo and the working principle of the so-called steam torpedo.

The working principle of a steam torpedo is quite simple. It uses three power sources: kerosene, compressed air, and pure water as propellants. During combustion, kerosene and air are pumped into the piston engine to form combustion gases, while water is sprayed to cool the engine cylinders. The evaporated water vapor and combustion gases together push the piston, which in turn drives the propeller to propel the torpedo.

This allows the torpedo to achieve high speeds underwater. The reason for using compressed air is that there is no air available underwater as a combustion aid, so the torpedo must use its own compressed air as a combustion aid.

However, because the internal storage space of a torpedo is limited, most torpedoes have a range of only a few kilometers to a dozen kilometers, and it is difficult for them to exceed twenty kilometers.

However, even so, it's still not as good as the earliest torpedoes that used compressed air as power, because torpedoes that used compressed air as power only had a range of a few hundred meters!
Furthermore, early steam torpedoes used compressed air containing only one-fifth oxygen, resulting in a very short range. However, if the air were replaced with oxygen, the torpedo range was expected to more than double! Thus, during World War II, various countries researched their own new torpedoes to increase their range and speed, the most famous of which was the Japanese Navy's Type 93 oxygen torpedo.

However, the Type 93 torpedo did not use pure oxygen. Japanese researchers discovered that mixing pure oxygen with fuel easily caused a deflagration during launch, damaging the torpedo engine. This problem was later solved by pumping a mixture of oxygen and air into the engine. Therefore, the Type 93 torpedo actually had two oxidizer tanks, one storing pure oxygen and the other storing air.

What excited Wang Gensheng was that as the engine depot disassembled the steam torpedo, he discovered that the largest space inside the steam torpedo was neither the engine nor the space for storing explosives.

Instead, it was an air tank containing compressed air, so Wang Gensheng asked the wheel steer:
"What if we installed a submersible tube on the torpedo, allowing the torpedo's engine to directly draw in air from the water's surface as a combustion aid? Wouldn't that greatly increase the torpedo's range? Not to mention 10 or 20 kilometers, even 100 or 200 kilometers wouldn't be a problem!"

Wang Gensheng's words immediately startled the chief engineer, who replied:

"But what's the point of this?"

Wang Gensheng responded with a smile:

"Of course it's meaningful, because with this kind of long-range torpedo, we don't need to launch it from submarines or warships. We can launch it directly from the shore and then cruise on the sea surface. If we encounter an enemy fleet, we can just control this torpedo to ram it."

However, Wang Gensheng's words confused the chief engineer, who immediately asked in bewilderment:

"Control? How do you control it? Do you strap someone to the torpedo?"

Wang Gensheng grinned and said in response to the chief engineer's words:

"That's right! It's about adding a person to the torpedo. Look, if we add a vent pipe to this torpedo, we won't need the gas tank anymore, so we can put someone inside to operate the torpedo!"

Wang Gensheng paused here, realizing that directly maneuvering a torpedo to ram into an enemy warship in a mutual destruction was too cruel and would put immense pressure on the pilot's mind and body. So he immediately added:
"Of course, it would be inhumane for our soldiers to directly control the torpedoes to crash into enemy warships and perish together with them. Therefore, we can design a retreat function that allows the pilots to disengage from the torpedoes one kilometer before impact, so that they will not have to perish together with the enemy warships."

Wang Gensheng's words immediately made the chief engineer's eyes widen; he never expected that torpedoes could be used in this way.

After being shocked by Wang Gensheng's method, the chief engineer thought for a moment and then said:
"This method is indeed very good. With external air, the range of torpedoes can be increased many times over, but piloting them is a problem. For example, how to observe them!"

(End of this chapter)