Italian guided torpedoes of WW II

[Firefinder]

I'm not sure it's an "unguided" weapon as it has control surfaces and actuators. Some sort of inertial guidance (i.e. try to maintain current flight path) seems most likely to me. The aft mounted propeller and drive shaft seems most likely to me to be a power producing mechanism - it looks like it goes into a gearbox but then I don't know; maybe one of the bits is a hydraulic accumulator?

All torpedoes from basically the Whitehead, the FIRST self propelled torp, had control surfaces ran by a simple gyroscope.

They were for ensuring the torp ran straight and true and not get fucked up to much by cross currents and like.

Despite this they wwre still known as unguided weapons since if you miss aimed...

Well you just missed.

 

[Dilandu]

BTW 1: on the same page there is the drawing of post #19; it is printed upsidedown in the book, so everyone posted it online in this way. This is the right orientation of the drawing:

The control system seems to be very complex for just the trajectory-following weapon. And what's the purpose of tubes then?

 

[red admiral]

All torpedoes from basically the Whitehead etc

But this weapon is a glide bomb and so needs some mechanism for say maintaining constant flight path angle instead of just being on a ballistic trajectory. I think I'd put inertially guided weapons into "guided" weapons category myself; maybe we need to bring back a "homing" weapons category as well?

From looking again at the cut away, I wonder if the circular (spherical) object is a gyrocompass?