From: "Steve Ewing" 

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 14:32:34 +0000, Adam Flinton
 wrote:

> Good thing nothing was sat in the tubes which could go bang upon being
> smashed into a seamount

On a 688 the torpedo tubes are set back quite a ways, and necessarily as a
result angled out to the sides.  The sonar takes up the whole bow.  You can
see in photos where the sonar dome ends and the hull begins-- let me look. 
Here: this is actually the first removal of a dome without going into
drydock, USS Baton Rouge:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0868908.jpg  and this one, same ship,
you can see it just forward of the draft markers:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0868904.jpg

Interestingly enough, because the tubes are angled you can't launch a
torpedo at full speed: it would whang against the tube coming out and
bend/break.   You have to slow below a certain speed.  Typically you are
going slow/silent anyway, though.

And, of course, the torpedoes have mechanisms to prevent them from arming
until certain conditions have been met: launched, certain distance run,
etc. (some of the parameters are settable).  I don't know what they use for
explosive and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'd be surprised if it were
something susceptable to a blow.

--
Steve 
http://www.qmss.com/sewing

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