MTB.

This is coolbert:

Concluding with extracts and commentary from the original articles as seen at the isegoria.net Internet web site. Thank you isegoria.net in all cases.

Small and fast! Motor torpedo boat!

"Trade off and compromise"

"On Design Constraints"

"Donald Pittenger shares his thoughts On Design Constraints — which he, as a humanities type, never had to consider"

IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE CONSIDER NOT SO MUCH THE DESIGN CONSTRAINTS , MODIFICATION "TRADE OFF AND COMPROMISE" BUT THE VALUE OF ASYMMETRIC WEAPONS OF WAR, SUCH AS THE MOTOR TORPEDO OF THE PRE-DREADNOUGHT AND DREADNOUGHT ERA.

"Battleship designers in those days were seriously concerned about the danger posed by torpedoes launched from small, fast ships, the solution being secondary quick-firing four or five inch guns for defense. Until the war, such guns were placed in casemates strung along the upper part of the ship’s hull. But with the battleship at speed in any but the calmest seas, many of the guns couldn’t be operated dues to splashing water. The obvious solution was to mount the guns higher, on the main deck itself. But this would raise the ship’s center of gravity, making it less stable and seaworthy. After the Great War most navies plated over the casemates and did move the guns higher, but that required some compensating weight-shifting and perhaps making beams wider."

Japanese motor-torpedo boat [MTB] during the Battle of Tsushima successfully attacking a much larger Russian capital ship. Direct hit! Night time encounter between a capital ship and a MTB most particularly to the disadvantage of the former.  

The motor-torpedo-boat [MTB] extremely cost-effective? Just the threat of small and fast torpedo boat attack and the danger from same requiring the major world powers to modify their capital ships in a manner that rendered them less capable than originally intended? A swarm of MTB an example of asymmetric naval warfare.

coolbert.