Nuclear “torpedo?”
Didn’t know there was such a thing. What would it be used for, making an enemy aircraft carrier glow in the dark?
Enemy submarines................
Target would probably be a harbor facilty...
Called a SubRoc torpedo, it would be fired like a torpedo, break the surface and ignite its rocket, fly towards a target submarine, dive back into the water over the target, and then detonate.
Problem was that the boat launching it could not get far enough away to escape the kill radius of the nuclear blast. It was likely a suicide shot.
Look up ASROC. We had nukes on a destroyer.
“Didn’t know there was such a thing.”
They had them but phased them out. The U.S. withdrew its last nuclear torpedo, the Mark 45 (ASTOR), from service in 1977. Modern U.S. submarines rely on advanced conventional, high-explosive torpedoes like the Mark 48.
The U.S. and Soviet navies developed nuclear torpedoes during the Cold War (1950s–1970s) primarily to destroy high-speed, deep-diving nuclear submarines and aircraft carrier groups that were difficult to hit with conventional weapons. These weapons guaranteed a “kill” against, or massive damage to, hardened targets even with a near-miss. They were literally an underwater “shotgun blast”.
wy69
Making an enemy carrier disappear. Carriers need as many as ten conventional torpedoes for sinking.
Nuclear torpedos like the Mark 45 were anti-harbor weapons. One torpedo would have disabled Haiphong Harbor, for example, back in the day. I served on a boomer (ssbn599) and we carried several and that wasn’t even our mission.
Other subs, especially SSBNs.