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U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

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Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#71

Post by yborg »

caycep wrote: post #46
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strategically crucial in a Pacific that had seen most everything the Japan side of Midway fall. If Midway had fallen, New Guinea, Coral Sea and Fiji were next in line, putting Australia and New Zealand at risk. What you call minimal gain would, had Yamamoto's plan come off, have put over 60% of the Pacific under Imperial Japanese control. US would have been fighting their way across the Pacific, island to island at a…

Granted, Yamamoto himself had no illusions re: a protracted struggle between Japanese industry, vs. American industry of the '30's/'40's era. Assuming no loss of political will, I suspect even in a worse case scenario where the US lost all its 3 carriers, it would still have eventually produced enough to win the war. Just maybe it would have taken several years longer...

https://youtu.be/l9ag2x3CS9M

One of the best visualizations I've come across of just how dominant the US industrial base was in the 1940s under full mobilization.

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#72

Post by greedo »

rshnotsecure wrote: post #12

It’s very likely that the torpedoes did not work for the whole war really. It sometimes is scary to think about all the complaints sub commanders put in, only to be dismissed by the Department of the Navy as excuses for bad leadership or tactics. I get that you have to take this line sometimes but still... That being said it should be noted US Naval strategy has never particularly relied on subs or been that great at…

"That being said it should be noted US Naval strategy has never particularly relied on subs or been that great at it."

In WW2, the US used sub warfare to strangle Japan. It's arguable that this blockade was the most effective tactic pound for pound in the entire war.

And the US has relied upon subs to be the most survivable and effective nuclear deterrent in the Triad.

"This has always fallen to the Eurasian powers such as Germany, Russia, and China/Japan."

China? Seriously? Japan? No. And for all the fear we had of Soviet submarines during the Cold War, they definitely weren't great at it. They simply never had the resources for a blue-water fleet.

Basically nothing you've written is factually correct.

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#73

Post by csours »

gricardo99 wrote: post #70
jandrese wrote: post #45

> Because of this logistics fiasco, veteran submariner and historian Paul Schratz said he ‘was only one of many frustrated submariners who thought it a violation of New Mexico scenery to test the A-bomb at Alamagordo when the naval torpedo station was available.’ LOL. Another interesting fact about the US torpedoes is that they were slow by WWII standards, especially compared to the Japanese torpedoes. This is normal…

I remember reading a similar side effect of slower technology during the sinking of the Bismark. The British were using older bi-plane torpedo planes, while the Bismark had the latest anti-aircraft, mechanized guns. The swiveling speed of these newer guns was too fast to accurately track to slow bi-planes. This made the Bismark's anti-aircraft less effective.

Another big factor was that the contact-fused shells did not explode, because they felt no "contact" with the super lightweight construction of the Swordfish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#74

Post by rmattes »

ryanmercer wrote: post #27
MrZander wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is incredible. I had no idea they were that complex, or even that big.

The length was a bit hard to accept. Later I started looking into torpedoes and there are some real monsters that have existed, the Japanese Type 93 used in WWII is almost 30 feet long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo . The more modern Russian Type 65 is roughly the same size as the Type 93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo Russia also has that 'Poseidon' unmanned mini sub that's basically th…

If you're into this stuff and ever in the Seattle area I recommend visiting the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport. They have a good collection of torpedoes on display, including a Japanese Kaiten manned torpedo.

http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#75

Post by csours »

Smoosh wrote: post #42
stcredzero wrote: post #5

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — The Department of Energy said tonight that approximately three‐quarters of the A‐1 model Polaris nuclear warheads deployed on submarines in the mid‐1960's were probably “duds” because of mechanical defects. https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris-mi... To be fair, the Japanese had really good torpedos at the start of WWII, but there were other things which were just as unproven…

Another example is when the M16 rifle was first introduced in the Vietnam War, it was unreliable due to fouling.

To be rather pedantic, the very first AR-15 rifles in the Vietnam theater worked very well. It was after the Army Ordnance Corps removed the chrome lining from the spec and changed the ammo from stick to ball powder that the rifles failed in the field. (the story is more complicated than that)

Skip to 46:30 for summary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYar4Zf8jH8

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#76

Post by csours »

DuskStar wrote: post #15
rocketpastsix wrote: post #2

They talk about it in the movie "Midway" (2019). It's definitely one of those things a lot of people thought was embellished to make the incoming battle of Midway look more drastic. However it was absolutely true. Without the dive bombers and code breaking they were able to do in the lead up Midway would have been a disaster for the Americans.

Ehhh. There's a lot of people that seem to think that Midway would have been a disaster for the US if they lost, but there's not much reason behind this. The only thing the US was really risking that had a significant strategic impact were the carriers - if the island of Midway fell it would have been essentially unsupportable by Japanese forces (being far past Japan's supply lines, when Japan was already facing logi…

I agree about the material (and materiel, heh) impact, but I wonder about the psychological impact. The US could absolutely outproduce and eventually outfight the Japanese, but how would the populace react to the loss of 3 carriers?

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#77

Post by csours »

ryanmercer wrote: post #7

It doesn't surprise me. I've seen WWII-era torpedoes and their innards at the Science of Museum and Industry in Chicago in the U-505 exhibit (seriously, if you're ever in Chicago to to the museum and pay the extra fee to go aboard U-505. Totally worth it) and there is a lot going on in one of those. Here's a low-ish quality photo of the innars of a torpedo in the exhibit (not mine) https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutI…

If something is complicated, it probably needs more testing. Unfortunately, this was not done well for early US torpedos, mostly due to costs and overconfidence.

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#78

Post by segfaultbuserr »

When I was a child, I played a DOS game called Silent Hunter I. Basically, it's a submarine warfare game which you play as a U.S. Navy submarine in World War II, cursing the Pacific Ocean and attacks Japanese warships. When playing the game, I was extremely frustrated about the Mark XIV torpedo onboard - After going through the painstaking process of calculating the projectile, hitting the fire button, I would watch the stopwatch and hoping for the best that the target won't change its course... finally it was the time... nothing! For every five fires or so, there would be one or two torpedoes that never explode - when you need it the most. I was not playing the "hard" mode, it happens even in a "moderate" difficulty setting.

I thought the game developers were making it unreasonable. And a few years later, I learned from a history book about the early unreliability of the torpedoes, and realized the torpedoes in the game were an accurate and realistic depiction of its historical performance. Kudos to the game developers.

Another tool in the game I felt strange was the "Torpedo Data Computer", which is something that you can simply enter the bearing, speed, etc., of your target via its tuning dials, and the machine automatically calculates the firing position for you. I thought it was just the hand-waving of the game developers to make the game more playable while making it unrealistic - why would a computer even exist in the 1940s? I believed it was all pencil-and-paper.

Later I learned it was real as well - totally mind-blowing. When I was a kid, I had no idea about the sophisticated historical mechanical fire control computers in the 1930s-1940s. There is a Hacker News submission of the documentation of the computer. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#79

Post by AlexCoventry »

csours wrote: post #76
DuskStar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh. There's a lot of people that seem to think that Midway would have been a disaster for the US if they lost, but there's not much reason behind this. The only thing the US was really risking that had a significant strategic impact were the carriers - if the island of Midway fell it would have been essentially unsupportable by Japanese forces (being far past Japan's supply lines, when Japan was already facing logi…

I agree about the material (and materiel, heh) impact, but I wonder about the psychological impact. The US could absolutely outproduce and eventually outfight the Japanese, but how would the populace react to the loss of 3 carriers?

Yeah, it's easy to forget now how demoralized the US was for the first six months or so. Japan was really kicking ass at first.

Re: U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

#80

Post by [deleted] »

dralley wrote: post #68
m4rtink wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to note that the torpedoes Japanese generally used we powered by compressed pure oxygen, making them faster & giving them more range. But it also turned them into even bigger explosion hazard than normal torpedoes when the ship caring them is hit. As a result many Japanese ships are documented going down after what would normally be minor hits due to their oxygen torpedoes exploding and causing massive…

Why pure oxygen?

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