At 8:26 PM +0000 1/10/04, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 11:21:57 -0500
>From: Rand E <rtomcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: Subject: Re: [OM] OT: Naval museums now (US WW2 Subs)
>
>Joe, what you say is true, but it only tells part of the story. Being a
>former submariner, I have little sympathy with any organization that
>would put out a product like the torpedoes that we went into W.W.II
>with. That being said, and being aware of quite a few of the details on
>this topic, it was primarily the fault of the pre-war politicians and
>their severe under funding the military (in general) that did not allow
>actual real life testing of these torpedoes. The torpedoes in question
>actually went from drawing board to production and then issue to the
>fleet - no funding to do any testing. This is also true of our recent
>administration in this country.
I agree that underfunding by the usual foolish politicians was and is a
problem, but there is simply no way one can go from drawing board to use in the
fleet, all without testing, and expect it to work. The incompetence is amply
evidenced by their allowing themselves to be talked into skipping the testing.
This never works, and never has. Something else should have been cut.
The then Navy Brass had their share of the blame though, as they compounded the
problem by forcing the sub captains to keep using the torpedos long after it
was quite apparent that they weren't working correctly.
What broke the dam was when their top captain (most tonnage sunk) came back to
Pearl Harbor to report his attempts to sink a 19,000 ton freighter (considered
quite large back then). Not one of his twenty-one torpedos exploded, even when
fired at point-blank range into the side of the target. Before, the claim had
been that the capitans were simply poor shots, but one couldn't claim that the
top capitan had that problem, 20 times in a row. Halfway through, the sub
surfaced and fired from point-blank range. The crew could see and hear the
impacts, but the warheads didn't go off. Not one.
One imagines that the crew of the target ship all had sudden religious
conversions.
The test later carried out at Pearl Harbor was blood chilling: They fired a
live torpedo at a hanging steel plate, in three feet of water. The torpedo hit
the plate and was stopped, but did not explode. The top captain waded up to
the torpedo and dismantled the warhead by hand. It did not go off; he lived.
The problem turned out to be that the fuze was misdesigned, and in a square-on
hit was mechanically destroyed before it could set the warhead off. The fix
was to shoot slightly to one side, so the hit would be glancing. It worked
well enough, but still....
Joe Gwinn
>Joe Gwinn wrote:
>
> >At 7:59 PM +0000 1/9/04, olympus-digest wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 21:52:00 -0700
> >>From: "James N. McBride" <jnmcbr@xxxxxxx>
> >>Subject: Re: [OM] OT: Naval museums now (UK SSNs)
> >>
> >>Early in W.W.II about half the US torpedoes failed to operate properly. One
> >>of
> >>my uncles was a destroyer torpedo man and was taken off ship and sent to
> >>Penn State University to work on this problem. They built a water tunnel
> >>there (like an aircraft wind tunnel) to do torpedo development work. After
> >>he left the Navy he stayed there and managed that facility until he died at
> >>the ripe old age of 46. /jim
> >>
> >>
> >
> >For those that are interested in this, I read the story of the subs and
> >their terrible torpedoes in "Silent Victory" by Clay Blair. It recounts the
> >story of an incompetent organization (the US Navy's then torpedo design and
> >production apparat) suffering the misfortune of being publically found out,
> >along with the hideous costs their incompetance imposed.
> >
> >There seems to be a March 2001 reissue of Silent Victory by one Clay Blair,
> >Jr., who I assume to be the son of the original author. Silent Victory sold
> >many copies.
> >
> >Silent Victory is the story of the submarine war, mostly in the Pacific.
> >The stuff about the torpedoes is a small part of the book. As RandE said,
> >subs were it for about two years, and submariners were like RAF pilots in
> >their average survival time.
> >
> >Joe Gwinn
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