With respect to EL and capacitors/batteries vs propellant and warhead, I could posit a system where, much like your early WW2 fighters, the EL doesn't provide all the lift, but allows wings to be reduced to limit drag and increase speed. The rocket provides the forward speed for the wing lift as well, of course, to generate the velocity to get to the target.
The speed wouldn't have to be terribly high, say 20-30% greater than the aerial ships it is meant to kill. A pursuit course is never the way torpedoes work. They are fired at the broadside of the target and timed to intercept the target at a future point, not chase it down.
Basic setting of course and speed was known when Whitehead invented the modern water torpedo in 1866:
"The first trials were not successful as the weapon was unable to maintain a course at a steady depth. After much work, Whitehead introduced his "secret" in 1868 which overcame this. It was a mechanism consisting of a hydrostatic valve and pendulum that caused the torpedo's hydroplanes to be adjusted so as to maintain a preset depth."
And as soon as gyroscopes were available in the late 1890s, they were used instead and improved capabilities. WWI torpedoes were gyro stabilised.
Firing a spread has always been wasteful, absolutely, however until guided torpedoes came into being after WW2, firing a spread and hoping was the _only_ way to use torpedoes, so the concept is not out of hand.
In our world, torpedoes were originally fired in daylight from light ships against larger targets and from subs. The first set of techniques for daylight attack would be the obvious analogy to make, but the 3rd dimension of the EL world provide others. The submarine model could be used for attacking at night, especially moonlit nights, with the attacker moving silently on battery power and completely blacked out awaiting an enemy to come within attack range. Similarly, the PT model could be used with exceptionally fast, small EL torpedo craft lurking in clouds (analogous to PT boats lurking in inlets and bays) across the path of enemy aerial warships and then bursting out of the clouds in a small swarm to attack the bigger enemies.
The 3D nature of this EL world, though, also suggests a new method where ground anti-aerial battleship batteries launch torpedoes against enemy capital ships in a defensive manner much like the coastal batteries of our world protected harbours from enemy ships.
Loads of visual imagery there to play with.
Picture a young, dashing, New Englander at the helm of his Elco Levitation Industries 100' Patrol-Torpedo Craft, PT-109, bursting from the cover of a cloud along with the three other aircraft of his patrol to attack a destroyer-protected convoy over the Pacific in 1944. Having lain in wait for 4 hours, the convoy appears and the PT ambush is sprung. Approaching from above with two attackers to each beam of the convoy the first attack of the patrol quickly disable and dispatch the Japanese destroyer Sawakaze leaving 4 of the remaining 6 fast transports trying to resupply Rabaul to be destroyed at leisure.
Powered by 4 license-built Packard-Tesla Griffons, the Elco 100 footers could make 65kts while carrying six Whitehead-Westinghouse 24" Mk 14 aerial torpedoes, four twin .50-cal MG turrets and two 20mm Oerlikon turrets. The ELco PT Craft were the first to carry oxygen for all crew members allowing them to attack from much higher altitudes than previous craft. Later in the war, as targets dried up, PT Craft carried fewer and fewer torpedoes and increased the number of autocannon and switched to raiding the more local aerial shipping lanes for smaller vessels.
Paul
