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Dear friends
Today I’ll show you a very interesting weapon that could be not only intriguing but also very usefull to have in the italian arsenal; like the title suggests I’m talking about the mighty and fewknown MOTOBOMBA FFF ( FLUGZEUGTORPEDO LT. 350, for the german nomenclature).
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Motobomba FFF, was an Italian pattern-running torpedo used by Italian and German air forces during World War II. The designation FFF was derived from the last names of the three men involved with its original design: Lieutenant-Colonel Prospero Freri, Captain-Disegnatore Filpa, and Colonel Amedeo Fiore.
The FFF was a 500 millimetres diameter electric torpedo which was dropped on a parachute and was designed to steer concentric spirals of between 500 and 4,000 metres until it found a target. It weighed 350 kilograms, and contained a 120 kilograms warhead. Its speed was variable from 6 to 10 knots and it had an endurance of 30 minutes, after that time the torpedo stops its run and becomes a floating mine, after 70 minutes from the impact with the water the self destruction pistol enters in action.
Few more things to say: this torpedo can be dropped from 4.000-5.000m, at 130m the parachute* enters in action slowing the torpedo’s descent to 100m/s, after the impact with the water the torpedo reaches the depth of 1m, stabilizes itself and starts the run.
*In the firsts models there was only one parachute that measured 6m² attached to the mid section of the torpedo, but in the production models there where 2 parachutes (one little 1,5m² parachute that lead the aperture of the main parachute) and they were attached directly to the tail section of the torpedo allowing a more stable descent to the water
Here you can see a small scheme of the two systems.
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Aspect, Views and Colorations
The standard coloration for this weapon was grey with simmetric bands of white (note at the end of the tail the parachute)
Scheme
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https://weaponsandwarfare.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/seite-16j.jpg?w=584&h=286
MOTOBOMBA FFF’s spiral
The present scheme shows the movements of the weapon. After the impact with the water and the stabilization the Motobomba FFF runs in circles gradually larger.
“yes…keep watching the spiral my friends, the motobomba is good, you need the motobomba,keep watching the spiral…”
Operative use
The first attack using the FFF was made on July 17, 1942 when three SM.82s flew from Guidonia against Gibraltar, an effort repeated on July 25, both missions aborted before launch. On the night of August 20, a Major Lucchini conducted a successful mission against Gibraltar and this was followed by several attacks on targets in Albanian, Libyan, and Egyptian waters. Aircraft of 32 Stormo attacked Gibraltar once more in June 1942 and in that same month Lieutenant Torelli (based at Rhodes) attacked Alexandria harbour on the night of June 13.
The largest use of the weapon was against the PEDESTAL convoy to Malta on August 12, 1942 when ten Savoia-Marchetti SM.84s of 38 Gruppe’s 32 Stormo launched them against the convoy south of Cape Spartivento, Sardinia. This made the ships of the convoy alter course, which allowed conventional attacks to penetrate the convoy’s defences.
But this weapond was also appreciated by the germans that made their first mass attack using the weapon on March 19, 1943 when Junkers Ju 88 torpedo bomber’s launched 72 of them against shipping at Tripoli, sinking two supply ships, including Ocean Voyager, and damaging the destroyer HMS Derwent. Derwent was subsequently beached with her engine room flooded and although salvaged and returned to England, was never repaired.
The FFF was subsequently used in attacks against invasion shipping at Bône in Algeria on April 16, 1943 and at Syracuse during the Allied invasion of Sicily later that year. On December 2 a force of 105 German Ju 88s attacked Bari harbour with FFFs, destroying 16 Allied ships including the John Harvey, which had been carrying mustard gas.
Possible loadouts schemes:
SM.79: X2 FFF external
SM.84: X2 FFF external
CANT Z.1007 (BIS-TER): x4 external and 1x internal bomb FFF
SM 91: X2 FFFs under the fuselage
In “WAR THUNDER”
In game this torpedo could be a very usefull addition to the italian (but also german) arsenal, not only becuse it’s unique features (where else you can see a ww2 parachutable pattern-running torpedo?) but also becuse you can lunch them from “safety distance” and also in large numbers (sm 82 carries 8 of them, CANT Z. 1007 x5 (4+1), ju 88 at least x4, the SM 79 x2) and this means that you can cover strategic areas of the map. The circlyng pattern of the torpedo is also not only intriguing but also insidious… immagine to play around with your destroyer or your cruiser and suddenly a torpedo warning appears; you start to do classic evasive maneuvers but the torpedo doesn’t follow straight line and, instead, it continues to turn with your ship XD
In short it can be a good new weapon able to give a good variety to the torpedo doctrine in the naval battles (and we know that the use of the torpedo by medium-large bombers isn’t an easy task, considering also the power that the AAAs can unleash). NEW TACTICS, MORE USE OF MEDIUM BOMBERS IN NAVAL BATTLES, THE LIMITS OF THE APPLICATION OF THIS WEAPON IS YOUR IMMAGINATION.
But remember… the warhead is still much less than a standard torpedo (so less damage) and it isn’t a point-click weapond… you have to throw many of them to have the chanche to hit something; so bring friends with you!!
AVAILABLE SOURCHES
At the moment we have at disposition the german manual and the allied mine disposal manual (based on captured intelligence) aviable directly on internet, there is also the italian manual that can be found on the web; soon I will add them in this section.
German manual (front page)
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https://i0.wp.com/www.militarystory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/motobomba-fff.jpg?fit=1507,790
American/Allied mine disposal manual:
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Italian manual (available soon)
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https://i-com.cdn.gaijin.net/monthly_2021_09/manuale.jpg.7a22464d085251ca4e32fc0fea530a98.jpg
How it works (IL-2 sturmovick mod video to understand on Ju88)
another photo from IL2 mod
SM.82 during the loading procedures
