... and if you neglect to open the torpedo doors prior to firing, and let the game open them for you, you lose a couple of seconds on the solution, and will miss behind... Not forgetting to mention that if you have the "Duds" activated in the game, when the 18s come out in 1943/4, they were actually worse than the 14s, as far as speed, accuracy, and even failures of their motors to start up, resulting in torpedoes barely making it out of the tube, and then dropping to the ocean floort... Even after they were through their "teething" period, they had a nasty tendency to run erratically, in spite of checking, double- & triple-checking them, even to the point of pulling them out of a tube if not fired, and pulling routine maintenance and charging of the battery - which could make hydrogen and then catch fire / explode. Read up on the Tang sometime, to find out about the 18 torpedo. When they work and you allow for their slower speed, you can really take out some ships, but they do have a tendency to turn around (literally), and bite you. Of course, the 14s could do that trick also.. One of the main problems with the 18 was that it was an exact copy of the German G7e, warts and all...
