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Despite real technical successes, she would finally fall foul of black propaganda, aimed at persuading foreign naval powers that the cruiser submarine did not work; even today uninformed opinion repeats the myth of her failure. 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Besides the well-known American involvement, the book also covers some of the craft used by the French in their earlier struggle with Vietnamese guerrillas.  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This lavishly illustrated encyclopedia describes vessels of every nation designed as river gunboats, plus those converted river steamers which took part in combat. Maps of the river systems where they operated are included, together with narratives of the principal actions involving river gunboats. 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It had long been understood that the most effective way of sinking a ship is to make a hole below the waterline, but centuries of experiments had failed to produce an effective method of achieving this. After many false starts and developmental cul-de-sacs, the answer proved to be the 'locomotive' or self-propelled torpedo, which became a practical proposition in the late nineteenth century. This book is a broad-ranging international history of the weapon, tracing not only its origins and technical progress down to the present day, but also its massive impact on all subsequent naval wars. Torpedo is the first dedicated study of this highly significant subject for over thirty years, a period in which much new information has come to light and the capabilities of the weapon itself have improved beyond recognition. 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