Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCruise
Anyway, what about the other 1968 torp, the Mk17 I believe it is? That one is basically a WW2 leftover. Did we really use those things in our early nuke boats back in the 60's? How the heck did we hit anything especially a submerged sub?!? I would imagine they did some sort off mod to the torp as a stopgap until the Mk48 was developed. Curious to hear your thoughts.....
Thanks...
Tom "CC"
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Your thinking of the Mk 16, and you are partially right, they were a little bit more sophisticated vs. what is currently in the game, they had a pattern-running mod added to them some time shortly after WW2 (similar to the German FaT and LuT torpedoes) although I'm not sure of the exact nature of the patterns (circle, long and short legs, bearing restrictions ect.)
However, for the most part, the intended primary anti-ship torpedo was the straight running Mk 16, with the even older WW2 era Mk 14 (which had all the infamous exploder and depth control issues for the early part of the war) being brought back into service I believe due to serviceability issues / low numbers of Mk 16.
While at some points early after the war there were other guided torpedoes (off the top of my head the small Mk 27 Cutie, the Mk 39 which was a wire-guided Cutie, Mk 35 active homer, and finally the Mk 28 which was based on the wartime Mk 18 electric torpedo) some of which were bigger than the Mk 37, I think they were all slower and shorter ranged and all out of service by 1960. Another thing to note is that basically ALL of these were considered "anti-escort" weapons in a similar vein to the German T4 GNAT homing torpedo.
The only reasoning I can come up with to support this line of development / thinking was that, from the time the USS Nautilus was introduced, in wargames and testing, American nuclear submarines were essentially Spiderman (you didn't know what he was going to do next or where he was going to be and you sure couldn't catch him). This was especially true with the Skipjack which basically made a fool out of an entire CVBG escort. Again, the line of thinking seems to be that submarines could fight their way through anything small enough to require a homing torpedo and set themselves up to fire straight-runners / pattern runners at anything bigger, like a cruisers or support / amphibs.
The important thing to dwell on here though is that almost all of these exercises were against ASW forces using RBU type ahead throwing mortar weapons like Mouse and Weapon Alfa (but probably less effective) and among other things lead to the creation / acceleration of ASROC and the Mk 46 torpedo along with better sonar for escorts. From what I can tell though, this perceived superiority of american submarines, coupled with the Soviets developing high-performing weapons and systems much sooner than expected lead to the somewhat perilous situation of having something less than satisfactory (the Mk 37) as your primary weapon for so many years (1960s through to the early-to mid 70s before the Mk 48 was fully accepted into service).
As far as the interim solution you speak of, that is exactly why the Mk 45 ASTOR, which is a brutally simple solution to this problem, was quickly developed in the late 1950s. Because of speed and diving depth issues, it was feared that the Mk 37 would be quite ineffective and have a very low kill probability vs. Soviet nuclear boats. Solution, nuclear torpedo which guarantees a kill within 4500 yards probably / possibly more depending on some conditions. Obviously there are all kinds of flaws here (namely that the use of such a weapon would trigger a nuclear war, along with the fact that it quite possibly would take the firing sub to the bottom right along with the Russian) but from what I can tell that was the thinking behind producing and deploying this weapon, and why they retired it so quick once the Mk 48 was in service.