Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy

5. The Creation of the German Torpedo Arm, 1877–1889

47 The Torpedo Arm under Stosch When Tirpitz joined the Torpedo Commission, the first halting steps had already been taken in the evolving technology that would culminate in the sleek, deadly underwater missiles of the twentieth century. One idea was to put a mine at the end of a spar and use it as an exploding ram. Another was the Harvey tow torpedo, a floating charge on a tether attached to a boat, with the intention of turning the boat away at the moment of attack and allowing the charge to strike the target. Both these methods required almost suicidal bravery on the part of crews of improvised 10-knot torpedo boats. Nevertheless, by the early 1870s, most naval powers were trying out variations of these weapons. The possibility, even if remote, of sinking expensive battleships with cheap torpedoes was too tempting to resist, especially for smaller navies. A more dynamic approach was the self-propelled “fish” torpedo. An English engineer, Robert Whitehead, director of the Firma Stabilimento Tecnico in Fiume, pursued this concept, the outcome of which would be the modern torpedo. In 1867 the Austrian government bought Whitehead ’s patent. As early as 1869 a delegation from the North German Navy visited Fiume. By 1873, with Stosch in charge, the Imperial German Navy purchased torpedoes under license from the Austrian government and Whitehead.1 Stosch explored torpedo development in the context of his ambitious ten-year expansion plan.2 In 1873 Stosch set up a Torpedo Experiment Commission under Commander Alexander Graf von Monts, who or5 The Creation of the German Torpedo Arm, 1877–1889 48 Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy dered one hundred torpedoes from Whitehead. At the same time Stosch commissioned, from an English yard, the construction of Zieten, a large torpedo vessel of 1,170 tons, which was especially designed to test the Whitehead torpedo.3 By 1876, when Zieten was completed, disappointing experiments with the spar and tow torpedoes confirmed the focus on the Whitehead torpedo. Commander Eduard von Heusner, director of the new torpedo depot at Friedrichsort, near Kiel, was put in charge of technical development of the Whitehead torpedo. His assistant was Lt. Commander Otto von Diedrichs, Tirpitz’s old shipmate from Niobe.4 On 1 January 1877 Stosch appointed twenty-seven-year-old Lt. Commander Tirpitz to be the officer in charge of detonators and warheads in the Torpedo Commission.5 There is no contemporary evidence to suggest that anyone regarded this as other than a routine assignment.6 After a few months of orientation in the Torpedo Commission Office in Berlin, Tirpitz privately felt anxious. He wrote to his parents in April, saying, “the whole torpedo story seems to me more and more regrettable.” Stosch was making demands impossible to fulfill.7 In May Tirpitz accompanied Heusner to Fiume to learn firsthand about torpedo construction. He met Whitehead and his family, and noted that Russian, French, Danish, and Portuguese officers were also studying torpedo assembly.8 Upon his return to Kiel in June, Tirpitz noted the large number of German officers there who had become invalids from service in the tropics, a prospect he had come to dread. Already present were the first hints of his lifelong hypochondria.9 The work was frustrating. There was no praise from Heusner or Stosch. The latter kept a keen eye on torpedo development but underestimated its difficulties. “Stosch wants the matter to be developed as easily as training with a pike.”10 “I hear, I see, nothing but torpedoes. I dream that I have become one myself.”11 On 18 September 1877 Stosch watched Tirpitz, as torpedo officer of Zieten, score three direct hits with practice Whitehead torpedoes at a stationary target 730 meters away.12 Stosch still had doubts and polled a group of officers, including Tirpitz, about the torpedo’s feasibility. Tirpitz’s written response so impressed the gruff Stosch that he called it “exemplary.”13 Although Tirpitz had less than a year’s experience with torpedoes, his document anticipated, to a remarkable degree, both the future course of torpedo development and ideas that were to characterize his work when he moved to a much larger stage in 1897. The Creation of the German Torpedo Arm, 1877–1889 49 Perhaps influenced by the experience of sitting impotently in Wilhelmshaven aboard König Wilhelm during the war with France, he began with words he would use much later: It...