USS Walke, like her twenty "sisters" of the Paulding class, had six torpedoes as her offensive "main battery". Carried in three twin torpedo tube mountings (one on each beam amidships and one on the centerline aft), these 17.7-inch diameter (generally called "18-inch") ship-killing weapons were of Whitehead or Bliss-Leavitt design. They were 204 inches long, weighed between 1452 and 1800 pounds, and had high-explosive warheads of 200 to 326 pounds, capable of blowing a hole fifteen to twenty feet in diameter in the side of an enemy warship. These torpedoes' maximum speed was about 35 knots, some five knots faster than the destroyers that carried them. With their courses stabilized by gyroscopes, they could strike targets as much as two or three miles distant, though reliable hitting was usually only feasible at much closer ranges.
These complex devices required regular maintenance to keep them functioning properly, and to restore them to service after they had been fired in practice. This work was the responsibility of specially trained enlisted men, who from 1912 until 1921 were a subset of the Gunner's Mate rating, wearing torpedomen speciality insignia just below their uniform sleeve rating badge chevrons.
This page features some of the photographs from a collection related to the crew and activities of USS Walke (Destroyer # 34) in about 1914.
For a general description of this collection and more images
from it, see:
For overall photographs of USS Walke, see:
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
For a general description of this collection and more images
from it, see:
For overall photographs of USS Walke, see:
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 31 December 2004