minesweeper

[hcs53]

I am close to an harbor and see a minesweeper,I wait for a 90 degrees shot and fired when the triangle went green(auto targeting).
Draft of the ship 2.9m,torpedodepth 2m...............torpedo too deep.:oops:
I set the torpedo depth to 1m.................too deep:oops:
What is wrong???
USS Narwhall (SS-167)

A sec.question:what do you do when you are on patrol with only sonar and no radar,do you dive every 4 houres to use the sonar,I read, to use the sonar,go to a few meters below periscope depth.

Henny

[Anthony W.]

How rough is the water?

[Rockin Robbins]

Especially in the early war, torpedoes in the game imitate the torpedoes fired in real life. See, the Navy figured that it was so expensive to shoot real warheads, that they just didn't do it! Instead they filled the warhead container on the front of the torpedo with water. The torpedoes worked perfectly.

Unfortunately nobody weighed a live torpedo and found that the warhead was heavier than water. Unfortunately, nobody thought it was necessary to weight the front of the torpedo to match a real warhead. Oops.

The result was when torpedoes were fired early in the war the size of the control surfaces and the amount of their deflection was not sufficient to force the torpedo to follow its set depth. And since the real warhead was heavier than the calibrated weight, the nose pointed downwards and the torpedoes swam too deep. Lots of targets were missed that way.

Unfortunately when you are sitting in a submarine you can't possibly see why your torpedoes are missing. You just don't hear a boom and you speculate why. The shore officers decided our sub jockeys couldn't shoot straight. Some of the sub jockeys like Commander Joe Enright of the Archerfish, the only submarine in the Navy ever renamed by her crew by the way, were convince themselves that they couldn't shoot. Many, like Enright, asked to be transferred off the boats so somebody with their head screwed on straight could command their sub.

Finally, Admiral Lockwood did some torpedo firing through a fishing net dangled down between two buoys. The torpedoes ripped holes in the net and by measurement they could tell whether the torpedoes were running at their set depth. They weren't. And we had been shooting torpedoes that wouldn't hit their targets for months....

Enright worked for Admiral Lockwood as senior desk jockey now. Enright found out about the SNAFU first hand. Enright was not a happy camper.

[Anthony W.]

Somebody posted a link to a 10 or so page account of it. It was gripping.

[Bubblehead1980]

Especially in the early war, torpedoes in the game imitate the torpedoes fired in real life. See, the Navy figured that it was so expensive to shoot real warheads, that they just didn't do it! Instead they filled the warhead container on the front of the torpedo with water. The torpedoes worked perfectly.

Unfortunately nobody weighed a live torpedo and found that the warhead was heavier than water. Unfortunately, nobody thought it was necessary to weight the front of the torpedo to match a real warhead. Oops.

The result was when torpedoes were fired early in the war the size of the control surfaces and the amount of their deflection was not sufficient to force the torpedo to follow its set depth. And since the real warhead was heavier than the calibrated weight, the nose pointed downwards and the torpedoes swam too deep. Lots of targets were missed that way.

Unfortunately when you are sitting in a submarine you can't possibly see why your torpedoes are missing. You just don't hear a boom and you speculate why. The shore officers decided our sub jockeys couldn't shoot straight. Some of the sub jockeys like Commander Joe Enright of the Archerfish, the only submarine in the Navy ever renamed by her crew by the way, were convince themselves that they couldn't shoot. Many, like Enright, asked to be transferred off the boats so somebody with their head screwed on straight could command their sub.

Finally, Admiral Lockwood did some torpedo firing through a fishing net dangled down between two buoys. The torpedoes ripped holes in the net and by measurement they could tell whether the torpedoes were running at their set depth. They weren't. And we had been shooting torpedoes that wouldn't hit their targets for months....

Enright worked for Admiral Lockwood as senior desk jockey now. Enright found out about the SNAFU first hand. Enright was not a happy camper.


I know this occured long ago and no point in being angry but the more I have read about the Pacific Submarine War and all the torpedo issues, it really makes a little angry and feel some real sympathy for the skippers and men who dealt with these issues for far too long.

Many good skippers were relieved of command and had their careers ruined because the arrogant desk jockeys could not understand what was happening.I suppose some like Enright got another chance, he did go on to command a new Balao class boat and sink the Shinano.Just feel bad for the other's who prob were never able to get another shot.

[Daniel Prates]

As I understand it, torpedoes were flawed earlier in the war, and progressively got better overtime. But we're talking in this thread about the very early torpedoes, which appear to be almost 100% flawed. Up until when they were so bad?