Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "Who had the best torpedoes of WW2?" video.

  1. Yes. The Americans and Germans both had Acoustic Homing Torpedoes. The Germans used theirs from Subs while the "Fido" American was air dropped and used against subs. The Americans were so concerned with anyone realizing that they had a homing torpedo that the labeled the Mark 24 as a "Mine" ... and waited a damn long time before it was revealed to have existed. I didn't know if anyone else had any but a quick search reveals quite a few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Acoustic+Homing+Torpedoes&sourceid=Mozilla-search&ns0=1 Perhaps a video on Homing Torpedoes and the countermeasures used against them? I believe that some of the more modern Homing Torpedoes were in fact Wire Guided while others could try - fail and then retry. Curiously - the British used a conventional torpedo on the Belgrano but one was enough. I don't think they wanted to sink it - but - it's Water Tight Integrity wasn't all that great - and - the damage it caused took out the pumps (iirc). Fortunately - the ship had very sophisticated Life Boats and most of the crew survived. Argentina's Subs didn't have a lot of luck against the British Surface ships and the British didn't have a lot of luck finding them. Given the lack of opportunities this is the only actual shooting conflict I'm aware of involving subs since WWII. .
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  2. Seriously ... without all the jokes ... for anyone unaware of the Mark 14 story ... First off - as mentioned - the US had a number of different torpedoes which did not all have the same problems. For example the Mark 8 Torpedo Used by older Destroyers and PT Boats had it's own set of problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss%E2%80%93Leavitt_Mark_8_torpedo The PT Boats had their Mark 8's replaced by Mark 13's in '43 but - many such as Kennedy's second boat PT 59 had the torpedoes taken off and were turned into Gun Boats to hunt Japanese Wooden Barges. The Mark 14 Torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo had 3 major technical problems - which could not only in some cases influence each other but disguise the nature of what was wrong. 1) The Depth Setting was wrong so it ran lower than it was set. 2) The Magnetic Influence exploder - required the torpedo to be SET to run UNDER the target. So - if it failed - the contact detonator - wasn't even supposed to be involved. Since the Earth's Magnetic Field is not consistent - only if the field happened to be the same where the torpedo was fired as where it was calibrated would they work. If the field was to weak - they didn't go off at all - if it was to strong they would prematurely detonate. 3) The Contact Detonator would BREAK instead of setting off the warhead if it hit dead on - but - if it hit a glancing blow - might actually work. Ordnance DID test the torpedoes - but - they didn't want to pay to blow one up - much less for a target - so they tested the Magnetic Influence Exploders in the same Magnetic Field as they were calibrated in - without war heads - so they could recover the torpedo. When they were given an old Submarine to use as a target - they had a 50% failure rate - on the TWO Torpedoes they fired at it ... THEN - the Officer that had been running Ordnance was assigned to command some of the submarines using them - and flat refused to allow anyone to criticize or test HIS Torpedoes. Ordnance was utterly certain that none of these problems existed - and felt that the blame was on the subs firing them for doing something wrong. The Sub commands got frustrated with Ordnance and began working out what the problems were on their own. Eventually King got involved and THAT is when Ordnance became more responsive. The Germans tried to use the Magnetic Influence Exploders too. They had a U-Boat at the mouth of the Fjord the Warspite entered on it's way to sink those German destroyers - and he fired 4 torpedoes at it - which ALL prematurely detonated. The Same Sub was there when it came out and fired ANOTHER 4 torpedoes at it - which all prematurely detonated as well. On returning to base - the Captain of that U-Boat went in to report where he was literally pounding on a desk and screaming that HE was NEVER going to use those Magnetic Influence Exploders again. The Germans, to my understanding - stopped using them. The British also tried to use them but I don't have a good story about that. The thing is - the British and the Germans recognized right off that they didn't work - and why - so they both stopped using them. The Japanese and the Italians didn't use them that I know of. The biggest failure on the part of the Americans - was administrative. Ordnance just didn't want to admit that there was any problem with the work they'd done and utterly failed the submarine community. Obstructive commanders were also a problem. Another issue here - was in the peace time training - if the sub was detected - it was considered sunk - and so it's Captain was blamed. Thus - Peacetime Sub Captains were trained to be very, very cautious and this influence their effectiveness. This hesitancy was also one of the reasons they were blamed for the torpedoes failure. I'm currently re-reading Vice-Admiral Charles A. Lockwood's book Sink 'em All https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._Lockwood on Submarine Operations in the Pacific where there's quite a lot of discussion of these problems. .
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