Is that a Whitehead or a Blackhead (Schwartzkopf) Torpedo???

[Dronic69]

Good Evening All,

For the few members that may have an interest in early (pre-1900) torpedoes, I have attached for your amusement and light reading a report that I produced for the Explosion Museum in Gosport last year...................

In a nutshell, I was fortunate enough to be "invited" into the Museum's storage facilities to be shown an early vintage torpedo - the *key* issue the Museum had after I identified it as a Whitehead A22 type torpedo was: is it actually a Whitehead Fiume manufactured one, or the German Schwartzkopf copy of the A22????......
(The A22 was the 2nd mass-produced torpedo by Whitehead ~1877 and the one which Louis Schwartzkopf reportedly "copied"!)

At that time I did not even know!

(This has been a long outstanding query which I had on the "to investigate" list).

Several documented references indicated that there were a couple of minor differences, one being that the Schwartzkopf copy was reportedly overall slightly longer.

I have now identified a couple of *key* differences in the tail construction.

Please Enjoy!

Cheers
Drew

BTW - the last 2 x photos highlights what was "covered" up in front of the A22.

*All Photos where indicated are courtesy of the Explosion Museum, Gosport with permission.
In addition a number of photos are courtesy of the Naval Museum in Madrid (stolen from the internet)

 

[apfsds]

Fantastic information, photos and background! GREAT RESEARCH, Drew!

Jason