I may be a nuke, but being the busybody that I was, I have watched the evolution MANY times.
We are going to start with a simple scenario:
1)The torpedo needed to go in the tube is already stowed in front of the tube it needs to go in.
2)The Torpedo tube is already empty.
Now, then ordered to load the tube, they have to angle to torpedo to line up with the torpedo tube. The tubes are canted outwards, the torpedo's themselves are stowed in a direct fore to aft configuration.
One a 688 the two outward stowage trays (4 stows per tray) are designed to cant inward at the rear of the to line up the inboard stows of this tray with the tubes directly ahead of them.
The torpedo tube is verified dry and the outer door shut. The weapon is then unstrapped and lifted on a array of rollers that 'pop up' when the tie down straps are released. The nose cone cover is removed (easy and quick to do). The inner door is then opened and the torpedo is rammed home via a hydraulic shuttle. The speed of the weapon load is determined by the hand that controls the hydraulics. Yes, there are safety limts, but if your butt is on the line, you CAN load faster.
Now, the weapon is in the tube. They hook up the umbilical and the 'wire', and close the inner door. Folks, this is QUICK.
Once the weapon is in the tube they can power it up the same time they are flooding the tube. From there is is tell the weapon who to kill and launch the puppy.
Now, lets complicate it some. Lets put a weapon in the tube, and the weapon you WANT in the center rack on the bottom.
You first, have to index your weapons to get an EMPTY slot behind the tube. Normally, you have ONE empty lot on the room. You want to go out with as many weapons as you can. The whole tray can't move laterally to be next to the center tray. We have an 'bridge/elevator' that can move up and down between the outer trays and the center tray. Thus you have to start a puzzle type game where you are moving the weapon left or right while at the same time moving weapons up and/or down these elevators. After a little while you finially get an open slot behind the tube you want to unload. Now you have to open the inner door, hook up to the hydaulic shuttle and pull your umbilical before you can extract the weapon. If you mess up the connection you now have a DEAD weapon in your room, so you have to be careful. Once you have the weapon on the tray, you have to secure it, then you can move it around to get the weapon you WANT in the correct position. Each time you load or unload a weapon you have to pivot your outer tray which means you are done moving weapons till you can put the tray back in the original position.
As you can see, it can take a SIGNIFICANT amount of time to move that weapon to the outboard tray to be able to load it.
The question was asked about trim shift when you launch a weapon. From my understanding there is some, but not much as you are replacing the weight of the weapon with a large volumn of water in the now empty torpedo tube once the torpedo is fired. Once you close the outer door, the water is drained inboard into a trim tank inside the boat so again, you have not lost a large amount of weight from the front. The same thing happens when you launch a VLS weapon. The tube is filled with water so you stil have a significant amount of weight in the tube thus not effecting trim that much. How do you think a boomer would stay down if they had shot their load?
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