How do aerial torpedoes damage their target?

[kotori87]

in wet navies, torpedoes inflict damage below the armor belt and below the waterline, using a lot of explosives and the incompressibility of water to punch a gigantic hole in the side of a ship.  When the torpedo detonates, the water around it resists compression and concentrates the explosive force on the side of the ship, similar to a shaped charge.  Once a hole has been opened in the side of the ship, water rushes in, flooding compartments, disabling systems, threatening to sink the ship, and all sorts of other problems related to ships filling up with water.  Overall, wet navy torpedoes rely on two elements to damage their target:

1) the incompressibility of water to concentrate the explosive blast
2) water to flood the interior of the ship once a hole has been opened

With aerial battleships, both of those critical elements have been removed.  Air is much more compressible than water, so there is no concentrating of the explosion, and once a hole has been opened, there is no water to flood in and cause problems.  We all know how large shells exploding outside heavy armor will fail to cause any damage, and early torpedoes carried a pretty weak explosive charge.  So, once it hits, how does an aerial torpedo inflict harm upon its target?

[Worktroll]

Cannon shells (and canon shells ) do their damage by penetrating the armour belt, then exploding inside to damage interior systems. Aerial torpedos carry large quantities of high explosives that do concussive damage. It's not a spalling effect like WW2 HESH; however, the shockwave causes pipes and wires to flex and snap, bulkheads to buckle, guns to slip their mounts, etc. The effects of creating a leak in an electroid tank should also be obvious.

In theory, the old "dynamite guns" might have well achieved a similar effect, except that it's hard enough to hit a leviathan with a cannon, let alone a lower-velocity howitzer or mortar.