In December 1939, HMS Salmon hit Leipzig below the waterline near the bulkhead between two boiler rooms. The explosion bent the armoured deck, damaged the keel, flooded more than 1,700 tons of water, and cut electrical power to the pumping system. An escorting destroyer was also torpedoed, while another torpedo passed just ahead of the damaged cruiser. British bombers attacked the group during the return passage. The sequence shows why machinery and damage-control systems need redundancy even when a ship appears likely to survive an initial hit.
Chapter · 25:31-29:48
HMS Salmon's torpedo and the cost of weak redundancy
A torpedo hit from HMS Salmon exposed how a single well-placed strike could flood boiler rooms and disable Leipzig's pumping power.