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American Torpedos

Author: MIke (---.com)
Date: 08-18-05 20:32

Dear All:

I have been able to find alot of information on everyone's torpedoes but US... I was wondering where the most extensive information is on US torpedoes is.

Thanks in advance..

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Re: American Torpedos

Author: Dan Odenweller (---.as.wcom.net)
Date: 08-21-05 02:52

You have mail on the subject.

Dan

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Re: American Torpedos

Author: terry (---.consolidated.net)
Date: 11-24-05 11:15

There are several websights that discuss american ww2 torpedoes...as you know the were defective at the start of the war...this had been known but was ignored because of political considerations, the detonator plunger would deform rather than detonating creating duds, and also the depth settings were faulty and the torpedoes would run too deep, passing under many ships.. Had American had these problems solved before Pearl Harbor with the numbers of submarines in the U.S. fleet, the depth of Jap penetration in the Pacific might have been stopped... If one looks at the production figures for submarines 1936 onward it is plain to seen that we were expecting war... subs make poor defensive weapons ... It is almost criminal to think that America sacrificed the Phillippines to the Japs...when the battle for Britain was long over...and the British were complaining that their island might sink because of American supplies...We let the our soverign territory be taken by the Japs and thousands of Americans killed, by ignoring what we already knew...Had Roosevelt reinforced the Phillippines with additional army and naval personel and equipment the Japs would have had a hard time taking those islands which would have protected much of SE Asia...so much for Europe first, which never worked anyway...

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Re: American Torpedos

Author: Patrick O'Connor (---.bay.webtv.net)
Date: 11-24-05 11:40

The BIGGEST problem with the torpedoes was the Mark VI magnetic detonator. It was a great idea- fire the torpedo under a ship and have the sips magnetic field detonate the torpedo under the ship, breaking the keel.

The US, Germany, England and Netherlands al had the same idea in the late 1920's. The other three tried the idea, but found that the earths magnetic field was too erratic for reliable operation, and they abandoned the idea.

The US Navy NEVER performed a live-fire test of the Mark VI.WHen we went into the war, the non-performing Mark VI, along with the poorly-designed contact exploder and the misadjusted depth setting mechanisims caused much grief in the Submarine Service.

And most apalling was the fact that the Submarine Command System was convinced that the Mark VI was perfect; that the captains were to blame.

It wasn't until mid-1943 that the Pearl Harbor command accepted that the Mark VI was defective and ordered it deactivated. Submarines Southwest Pacific in Australia continued to rely on the Mark VI for several more months.

One submarine officer commented after the war
that the Mark VI had probably saved 30-40 Japanese ships from being sunk. And, we may never know for sure how many boats are on Eternal Patrol because of torpedo failures...

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Re: American Torpedos

Author: Webmaster
Date: 11-24-05 15:24

Conversely, Dick O'Kane once pointed out that, during the early part of the war and before the problems with the contact detonator were discovered, it seemed likely that the majority of hits probably resulted from those occasions when the magnetic feature did work. It was far from reliable, but it wasn't subject to the inertial distortion of the firing pin guides on impact (as there was none) that hindered the contact detonator, so if you managed to get the torpedo under the target at the right depth it would detonate.

Much of the problem stemmed from an American design quirk, too. The U.S. was the only country that designed the mechanical part of the detonator (firing pin, guides, primers, safety chamber, etc.) with a veritical orientation, which greatly increased vulnerability to inertial distortion upon sudden deceleration at impact. Everyone else used a horizontal design.

In our case, BuOrd was seemingly trying to save on development costs by using a mechanical firing train that had already been proven reliable in the Mark 10 torpedo without, apparently, stopping to recognize that a 10 knot speed increase at impact would result in significantly greater inertia being exerted on the mechanism. With the Mark 14 fired on the low speed setting, the contact detonator was much more reliable, but few captains ever used the low speed setting until later in the war, after the bugs had been worked out.

J.T. McDaniel
Webmaster, FleetSubmarine.com
Author of: With Honour in Battle and Bacalao
General Editor: American Submarine War Patrol Reports series

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Re: American Torpedos

Author: Patrick O'Connor (---.bay.webtv.net)
Date: 11-26-05 23:50

Wasn't it Dan Daspit in TINOSA who fired a series of Mark 14's at the damaged tanker TONAN MARU 3 that ended up uncovering the defective contact detonator? I don't think any of us could reach the heights of rage he must have felt, seeing torpedo after torpedo go under the target and not explode..or hit the side of the target and not explode. I can, though, imagine his thoughts concerning the "Gun club" and the "Not invented here" mentality of the paper-shufflers atg BuOrd...

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