Why a Dreadnought was a difficult torpedo target

A lone HMS Dreadnought looked like an attractive target because it stood out among slower pre-dreadnoughts, but its tactical situation mattered. When operating with an 18-knot battle line, the ship retained enough extra speed and manoeuvrability to frustrate an attack aimed at its predicted position. An early torpedo's roughly 1,100-yard run took close to a minute, while Dreadnought's 12-pounder guns could engage the attacking craft from many times that distance and fire rapidly. By the First World War, heated, wet-heater, compressed-air, and oxygen-enriched arrangements were making torpedoes faster and more powerful, although compressed-oxygen systems took much longer to mature. The continuing mismatch between launch range and defensive gunfire made a mathematically neat sniping attack hard to execute against an alert fleet.