SQUID MISSILE?

Yes, there was one of these about 50% full size, known as the “10 bob” or “half a squid”

Sorry – I’ll just get me coat

ROTFPML! 😀

TT

Thanks to you all for enlightening me. It was called a missile in the report on the sinking of U-boats after WWII.

Not strictly aviation related, but the history of the Hedgehog was wonderfully-well described by Commander Cherry in his book ‘Yankee RN’. That is a weighty tome, but a fascinating read if you can find a copy.

As an American serving in the RN, he was put on a lend-lease destroyer (‘Battersea Power Station’ to ratings, because of four stacks!) and his cabin was located forward. The first Hedgehog was mounted on the bow and, when fired, ended up down in his cabin!

Bri 🙂

Yes, there was one of these about 50% full size, known as the “10 bob” or “half a squid”

Sorry – I’ll just get me coat

Yes the squid was the replacement for the long serving ‘hedgehog’ which laid a pattern of propelled depth charges in front of the attacking ship before ASDIC lost contact with the sub, Hedgehog was contact fused so would only explode on contact with the sub, where squid had a larger charge and would explode at a preset depth.

The use of Squid was later discontinued on some ships especially in the far east as the launchers were too dangerous and fragile to survive air attack and could easily sink the ship it was mounted too, squid was also fitted to some of the navies battleships who had them removed as they had to be trained by the big gun turret they were sitting on and had to be unloaded before the main armament could be fired due to the vibration of the guns firing may cause them to cook off.

curlyboy

Hi All

In his position as an Admiralty overseer my late father was involved in test firing one of these infernal devices on a frigate, it blew the deck in and broke every piece of crockery on the ship!

Blue Skys

Eric

The Squid (and later Limbo) were three-barrelled muzzle-loading depth-charge throwers.

The key feature of their design was that depth-charges could be thrown ahead of the destroyer/frigate/sloop at a submerged submarine while it was still in ‘asdic’ (sonar) contact. With conventional over the side/stern depth-charges ‘asdic’ contact was lost as the destroyer/frigate/sloop steamed over the submerged submarine (which could use this opportunity to change course to escape the effects of the depth-charges).

Yes the squid was the replacement for the long serving ‘hedgehog’ which laid a pattern of propelled depth charges in front of the attacking ship before ASDIC lost contact with the sub, Hedgehog was contact fused so would only explode on contact with the sub, where squid had a larger charge and would explode at a preset depth.

The use of Squid was later discontinued on some ships especially in the far east as the launchers were too dangerous and fragile to survive air attack and could easily sink the ship it was mounted too, squid was also fitted to some of the navies battleships who had them removed as they had to be trained by the big gun turret they were sitting on and had to be unloaded before the main armament could be fired due to the vibration of the guns firing may cause them to cook off.

curlyboy

I think you’ll find that Squid was a launcher for depth charges that launched – a long way – several simultaneously off the sides and rear of a destroyer, as opposed to bunging them over the side one at a time then running away from the ensuing bang.

Adrian