Hello Matteo,
Where was the picture of the "Acciarino Taglia" taken?
Hi Drew,
the (terrible) picture of the
Acciarino Taglia Reti was taken at the Italian Navy Technical Museum of La Spezia, it is the only known sourviving sample. The drawing comes from the Royal Italian Navy monograph on the A60/356x4.920, which was like the A60/450x5.023 but with a "Woolwich" tail instead of a "Fiume" tail.
This particular device was to be fitted on A60/356 only, of the which 62 were purchased by the Royal Italian Navy (s/n ranging from 7028 to 7089) between 1899 and 1900.
The device was developed by a worker of the Royal Arsenal of Venice during 1886, Bellemo, and was effective against the ship nets made out of metal of the British company Bullivant, at the time the most advanced company producing net defenses.
To be noted that early nets were made out of hemp fibres, hence the very first expedient employed in order to let the torpedo reach the hull were saws profiles on the torpedo nose that used to cut the net by using the torpedo motion and mass alone; the introduction of metal made nets forced the developement of explosive cutters such as the Taglia Reti.
When anti torpedo net protection on ships was discarded, Bullivant developed the
Double Corrugated Net the which being very heavy introduced the harbor boom defense, ie it was not anymore the ship wearing the nets but the latters were layied on roadsted entrances, the boom defense.
Against this heavy harbor defense the early device was ineffective, for this reason Whitehead developed the
Acciarino a Cannone, a very powerful ram able to hole the double corrugated net; this device was mainly fitted on weapons in use on fast torpedo boats (ie MAS).
Net cutting devices were actually private engineering efforts of the single navies (Cannone apart), developed under the highest secrecy in order to keep an advantage on the counterpart, which had torpedoes just effectives as their.
Attached a couple of pictures of the MAS 15 on display at the Vittoriano Memorial, both torpedoes are fitted with Cannone.