Design and Development
The initial concept developed in the mid-1950s was for a very fast (55 knot/100 km/h), deep-diving torpedo driven by an internal combustion engine, carrying high pressure oxygen as oxidant, guided by a wire system developed from the Mackle wire-guidance study dated 1952 using data transmitted from the firing submarine sonars and using an autonomous active/passive sonar developed from the abandoned 1950s UK PENTANE torpedo project.
The weapon was known as Project ONGAR because Ongar railway station was, until 1994, the last on the Central Line of the London Underground system. The engineers developing this weapon were confident that it would be so advanced that it would be "...the end of the line for torpedo development".
The programme ran into serious problems in the late 1950s because the technology required was too advanced to meet an in-service target date of 1969. In addition, the closure of the Torpedo Experimental Establishment, Greenock, Scotland in 1959 and the transfer of its staff to Portland in Dorset disrupted the pace of development.
In the early 1960s a series of wide-ranging reviews (one report was titled "Whither ONGAR?" - the pun being intentional) led to a greatly reduced performance specification which was realistically expected to achieve an in-service date of 1969.
The propulsion system was changed from an internal combustion engine to an electric motor with a silver zinc battery as the power source. This reduced the planned speed of the weapon from 55 knots to 24 knots (100 km/h to 44 km/h) with a short final-attack-phase capability at 35 knots (64 km/h).
The homing system was simplified by the exclusion of the anti-surface ship capability in the Mod 0 weapon.
Only the wire-guidance system was retained relatively unchanged. This was similar to the system used on the earlier Mk 23 torpedo.
The original requirement for a crush depth of 1,000 ft (300 m) was overtaken by rapid advances in SSN deep-diving performance and the requirement was progressively increased to 1,600 ft (490 m) and then 2,000 ft (600 m). Tigerfish never met these requirements and the best that could be achieved was 1,150 ft (350 m) and later 1,450 ft (440 m); the structure was incapable of further crush-depth development.
Read more about this topic: Mark 24 Tigerfish
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