Motor torpedo boat

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Motor torpedo boat is the translation of the designation in various countries for small torpedo speedboats powered by internal combustion engines . In Germany, the collective term Schnellboot was established for this , but it also includes larger boats and those with artillery or missile armament. The term motor torpedo boat is used to specify those types of boats that differ from the concepts of the torpedo speedboats used in the German Navy.

From 1932, the term Motor Torpedo Boat and its acronym MTB were used mainly in the United Kingdom and the countries associated with it . The US Navy also officially called their boats that, but they became better known as PT boats . Other countries used the name in the respective language version (e.g. Sweden: Motortorpedbåtar).

The term motor torpedo boat was created to distinguish it from its predecessors, torpedo boats with steam engines , which originally had about the same size and task. The torpedo boats had increasingly been assigned a role in naval battles in cooperation with capital ships during the First World War and had grown to a size of up to several hundred tons of displacement. For coastal defense and operations in shallow waters, internal combustion engines were now the ideal propulsion system for small, fast boats. Initially, petroleum or gasoline engines were used , later also diesel engines or gas turbines .

literature

  • Gebauer / Krenz: Marine Encyclopedia. Tosa Verlag, Vienna 2003.
  • Angus Konstam: British Motor Torpedo Boat 1939-45 . Osprey Publishing Ltd., Oxford 2003, ISBN 978-1-84176-500-6 (English)