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Hello all, a question I would ask the more knowledgeable than I on a feasibility.

The situation is thus. The Astartes Strike Cruisers torpedo bays are fouled, perhaps for the for see able. You need a work around, and opt to convert a bay(s)/hanver(s) into a crude make shift to do, so you at least have the option.

Is this an actual feasible idea, or would you have to use more bays and other parts of the ship to accommodate the basic mechanicals for launch?

Would it compromise the structural integrity moving weight around the ship like that past or over unhardened parts, even with space and all and internal dampners?

You don’t really need a launch bay for a space torpedo. You could just hook it up outside the ship, drop it like a mine and it could use its own propulsion to move to the target.

And in term of moving it around the ship, there must be some way of loading torpedoes into a storage magazine, so just reverse that and then Float it around the outside of the ship until you get it where it needs to go. 40k torpedoes are famously the size of large buildings, so it unlikely that the interior of a starship would have space to move it much beyond the relevant torpedo decks.

Thank you for the reply Flinty . Though given, you could move it outside and attach it to a particular place need be. Could you still house it in a bay/hanger if you tore through the ajoining wall into another, and another if need be? So it remains hidden and protected from weapons fire when shields fail.

The basic idea I have is a (relatively) shortened torpedo, stretching over two or three bays/hangers. With the far bay acting as the opening.
Would it tear an Astartes Strike Cruiser ship apart to launch one in this manner?

That could probably be done without significantly compromising the overall ship. Imperial ships are utterly vast after all. As to whether it would damage the ship to launch it from a makeshift launch tube. Reared from spacecraft launch bays, well that depends on how it’s launched. If it is towed gently forward out of the bays before the main torpedo propulsion is ignited then it will do no damage. At the other, more facetious end of the scale, if a nuclear weapon is used to give it an initial kick out of the ersatz torpedo tube, then you might expect a bit more repainting of the launch bays to be required after launch.


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You might be better off kicking it out of the ship sideways before it’s own propulsion ignites though, rather than doing a more traditional forward tube launch.

Again, thank you. The perspective is very refreshing.

The torpedo could fit, bar a squeeze or two, into a single hanger. With a little adaptation to help ease it on it's way out the door. The engine can be fired as late as possible. Though expect damage to the area.
But in an emergency. The trade off in damage to what is inflicted is acceptable.

Well - specifically for a strike cruiser it's not an issue as most strike cruisers lack torpedo tubes.

However many marine capital ships do have both, so....let's see.

Torpedoes are described as "Up to 200 Terran feet long" so 60m long according to FFG roleplaying games and Battlefleet Gothic.

A thunderhawk gunship is about 26m long, 27m wingspan given the dimensions in various forgeworld books.

So whilst a torpedo is bigger, it's not catastrophically so given that a hangar has a lot of open space, and it's probably significantly smaller than the Landing Craft

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Space_Marine_Landing_Craft


Certainly internal companionways of a ship are pretty tough and can handle, say, moving land raiders and superheavies and similar around inside. You might have to do a bit of work to move a torpedo internally, or else move the torpedo in sections, but it's certainly possible.

Thanks locarno24. Flinty probably has it the best with moving it externally. The braking it down into parts and reassembling where needed would be long and arduous, though possible labour.
But your point about the torpedoes being only double the length of a Thunderhawk did surprise TBH. As always imagined them to be hundreds of metres long. So plenty of room for some form of machinery to help with the itial shove?

The torpedoes in Storm Of Iron and a few other novels are bigger, but they're explicitly surface-to-orbit weapons designed to be fired from the bottom of a gravity well.

Moving it externally would be easier but moving it internally means less risk of a catastrophic secondary explosion if you're doing it inside the ships shields and armour during a battle whilst under fire.

During battle seems a little overboard, with battle damage possibly blocking the one viable route needed. Plus the brake down in gear seems laborious. Considering the also needed moving/jury-rigging of equipment to help support and launch torpedo in a hanger refit.
I truely think Flinty hit it on the head moving them externally. Though your point is valid, and workable with more time.

Looking probably to be done on a warp engine cool down of, say a day. Before they jump into a system to do battle with a their sneaky surprise tucked firmly in sleeve.

But a range of thirty to three hundred metres for the size of a ship to ship torpedo, seems I could choose them to be somewhere in the range between perhaps.