Hello

Joanes de Fontana of Italy from the 16th Century designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire.

Do you know if this is design was true and build the surface-running rocket-powered torpedo?

Mythbusters want to know.

quote:

Originally posted by Pierre de Montereau:
Hello

Joanes de Fontana of Italy from the 16th Century designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire.

Do you know if this is design was true and build the surface-running rocket-powered torpedo?

Mythbusters want to know.

I believe a surface running rocket-powered torpedo would technically be called a missile.

The Soviet Navy was rumored to have been experimenting with very fast rocket powered torpedos, one of which detonated and sunk the Kursk. But you never know about these things.

What de Fontana actually did was publish a sketchbook of military rockets called "Bellicorum Instrumentorum Liber" (Book Of War Instruments) in 1420.

Like da Vinci - who was a generation or two later than de Fontana - de Fontana's sketchbook included a mix of practical designs and lots of sexy ideas which he had never built - mostly because the scientific understanding of multiple disciplines and manufacturing skills were not up to making the ideas reality. These scktechbooks were a form of olden marketing hype. It would be wrong to believe everything they contained were working, fielded devices.

As far as I can tell, de Fontana never proceeded beyond a sketch of this rocket-powered torpedo. Unless anyone can show that he did actually produce at least a working prototype, it would not be accurate to say he designed it. A concept sketch is not a design, no matter what NASA states in their history of rocketry site.

quote:

The Soviet Navy was rumored to have been experimenting with very fast rocket powered torpedos, one of which detonated and sunk the Kursk.

Yes and no. The accepted cause is one of the ship's torpedoes blew up. Those torpedoes are not "rocket powered per say. They are hydrogen peroxide-fueled supercavitating torpedoes. basically it uses a form of rocket fuel to react to form steam. That steam is used to drive a turbine which in turn turns the propeller, propelling the torpedo. Unstable, yes, but not a rocket.

Also that design has been around for a long time. That concept was widely used in WWII. The particular design type of torpedo that was used on the Kursk was a design from the 1960's.

Pieere: The 'History Channel' has already done this. Go to their store and order the "Ancient Discoveries" DVD 'Ancient Ballistics'.