 Large tonnages of merchant shipping were sunk by submarines with torpedoes in both the Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific War.Torpedo boats, such as MTBs, PT boats, or S-boats, enabled relatively small but fast craft to carry enough firepower, in theory, to destroy a larger ship, though this rarely occurred in practice.The largest warship sunk by torpedoes from small craft in World War II was the British cruiser , sunk by Italian MAS boats on the night of 12/13 August 1942 during Operation Pedestal.