PojDuIar Science Monthly 



Vol. 90 

 No. 5 



239 Fourth Avenue, New York City 



May, 1917 



$1.50 

 Annually 



Foiling Torpedoes with Whirling Plates 



Hundreds of disks, rapidly rotated, are dropped 

 into the water to act as an impenetrable steel wall 



By John B. Flowers, E.E.. U. S. Navy 



ALTHOUGH 

 hundreds of 

 ships have been 

 sunk by submarines 

 since the war began, 

 practically nothing 

 has been done toward 

 thwarting the torpedo. 

 To be sure, huge nets 

 of steel or of rope have 

 been adopted for the 

 protection of battle- 

 ships in some navies, 

 but they are of use 

 only when the vessel 

 is anchored. When a 

 ship is under way, 

 they produce an enor- 

 mous retarding effect. 

 At speeds of six 

 knots and more, they 

 are literally torn off. 

 I n vestigations 

 which I have con- 

 ducted in an experi- 

 mental tank of great 

 dimensions have con- 

 vinced me that it is 

 feasible to protect 

 ships from torpedo 

 attack by means of 

 rapidly rotating 

 disks of steel. If a 

 flat disk spins fast 

 enough, its centrifu- 

 gal force will keep 

 it in one plane. 

 These disks are 

 made up of a metal 

 and a wood plate screwed together so they 

 Pink very, very slowh-. Another kind of disk 



John B. Flowers, the inventor of the 

 whirling plate system for foiling torpedoes 



fVATE 5nNNIN& AT 1910 

 RtVOLUTIONS PER MINUTt 



«80 LBS AIR THRUST 



ORWING PULLtY 

 SPINNING AT 3600 

 RTVOLUTIONS PtR 

 rllNUTt 



How the disks 

 launching gun. 



is all steel with a hol- 

 low air-filled interior. 

 This also sinks ver^-, 

 ver>- slowly. Either 

 kind may be used. If, 

 then, it were possible 

 to pour over the side 

 of a vessel a large 

 number of whirling 

 disks or plates, they 

 would remain suffi- 

 ciently long in posi- 

 tion to constitute a 

 protecting wall 

 against a torpedo. 

 My steel disks are two 

 inches thick and two 

 feet in diameter. 

 They are built up of 

 one thirty^-pound plate 

 and tsvo thin cover 

 plates, which when 

 welded together leave 

 the disk hollow. 

 Forty disks are placed 

 in the magazine of 

 each gun of a launch- 

 ing battery. They 

 are fed one by one 

 towards the rect- 

 angular barrel of the 

 gun by a column of 

 compressed air. 

 When nearing the 

 top, a disk is caught 

 b>- three rotating 

 rollers which are re- 

 volved by an elec- 

 tric motor. A speed 

 of no less than two thousand revolutions 

 per minute is thus given the disk, and the 



DISCHARGE 

 PLATE 



are revolved and shot out of the 

 There are forty disks to each gun 



643 



