That is not necessarily true subs where getting hits and kills with Mk14s the entire war and alot of human error can occur with a torpedo attack there a numerous things that can cause a torpedo to miss that have nothing to do with the quality of the torpedo itself.They should have tested the mk.14 more this is true but it is very common for front line units to grossly over rate or underrate hardware.The other thing many forget to take into consideration was that there was another unrelated issue of the torpedoes not running at proper depth this was caused by the reduction in manufacturer quality from pre-war to wartime production and was unrelated to the magnetic detonator.Also the US Navy was fighting with subs in a manner and on a scale not tried previously there was alot of trail and error going on with submarine operations and not matter what you are always learning.Also they stuck with the magnetic detonator 0 days after the problem was verifiable they stopped using them.

Yeah, I did see the movie a long time ago, but I was thinking of a more "faithful" type of test. One where you had a warhead moving horizontally to impact a steel plate. (Think of a child's swing, or a ballistic pendulum.) In this way you could use any angle and check compound angles, without even getting wet. I believe it was Adm. Lockwood who ordered the drop tests done (like in the movie).

I will agree with this up to a point, but there was a long series of failures by the USN in this matter. We know comprehensive testing was possible, since it was eventually done. Lack of funds was perhaps a valid excuse in the '30's, but not in the era when the Navy was in the midst of an ambitious submarine building program. That excuses were still being made for not doing meaningful tests, after we were at war, is almost beyond belief.

I think you are being a bit harsh

Remember that after the attack on Cavite , the US Navy lost a good number of torpedoes. About half in the PTO If my poor memory serves. This meant that there was a critical shortage of torpedoes in the early years of the war.

There was a choice. Fight with the weapons you have, or keep the subs berthed. During wartime the latter is not a popular decision.

There was not a lot of money or spare torpedoes for testing, even during the war. Sure with 70 years of hindsight the decision is self-evident. But when evaluating historical decisions, it is important to only evaluate them with the data that was available to the decision makers at that time.

The Mk 14 had checked out satisfactory in testing. That is a documented fact. However, as found out later, the testing process was flawed. But at the time no one knew about it.

The Mk6 exploder also checked out satisfactory in testing. But as discovered later, the testing was not a rigorous or as extensive as was needed. But no one knew that at the time.

It is very hard to diagnose errors in a system of systems when there may be multiple things wrong with it. Also, the shooting skill of early sub captains was rightfully suspect in the early years of the war.

Early war patrol reports showed that torpedoes simply missed. Who knows of those missed torpedoes ran deep, or had a faulty pistol?

Rockin Robins and others can tell us more than we ever wanted to know about how much the captains did NOT know about their targets or how to hit them.

Given only the information available at the time, and not having the advantage of 70 years of after action research, the Navy did not do all that bad. Were there political influences concerning torpedo development. Oh boy yes (Check out the book, Hellions of the deep). Where there bureaucratic fighting between BuOrd and ops. Double oh boy yes.

But there were no traitors involved, not even Capt English. Every one involved was making the best decision based on the limited data they had access to.

That is the tricky part about historical research. It is so important to segregate any and all knowledge that the people you are studying did not have. This is party of my professional job and it is tough. We lose a lot of analysts who can't segregate. :yep:

Wrong decisions were made. That is undeniable. But they are also, at the same time understandable.

yes, hindsight is always 20/20.

We also have to remember that pre-war, few people seriously thought there would be a war with Japan or that the Japan would be a serious threat if there was one. Everyone was focused on Germany and the possible U-Boat threat. Pre-1939, there were also many USN/RN officers who thought subs were obsolete because of advances in sonar and depth charges. So even though there was more money for the Navy, the submarine service was still way down on the priority list. They had to fight just to get new subs built, never mind re-testing an existing weapon system.

Plus in 39-41, German successes seemed to prove the magnetic exploder worked. U-Boats were racking up impressive kills. It was known the Germans were using magnetic exploders. The British had captured and examined a German magnetic mine in 1939 and a magnetic mine had severely damaged HMS Belfast, so there was no serious reason to doubt the concept.

Gotta love the difference betwee perception and reality. Everything above is true, except for the Allies having no clue of the nightmares the Germans were having with those same exploders. :sunny:

Another factor to take into consideration some blame could also be laid at the feet of the SUBRON commanders they also dragged their feet a little as well they should have listened to the crews much sooner than they did and had feild tests done sooner than they did.

We also as Platapus and Bildge Rat point out have the benefit of hindsight.Also there are alot of factors not simmed in the game that give us a very opaque view.

Silent Victory - tactics discussion
 

I've just started reading "Silent Victory: The US Submarine War Against Japan" (2 volumes), 1975 by Clay Blair, Jr. The Introduction to the book pointed out that the faulty Mk-14 torpedoes were not the only problem the Navy had to explain the rather poor showing during the first year of the war. With your kind permission, I'll post some of the Introduction, and invite your discussion. Since we're getting a little off-topic with the Mk-28 torpedo, I'll also repost this under a new topic.

During the naval conflict in the Pacific between the United States and Japan, 1941-1945, there was a little-known war-within-a-war: the US submarine offensive against Japanese merchant shipping and naval forces. A mere handful of submariners, taking a small force of boats on 1,600-odd war patrols, sank more than 1,000 Japanese merchant ships and a significant portion of the Japanese navy, including one battleship, eight aircraft carriers, three heavy cruisers, and eight light cruisers.
A strong merchant marine was vital to the economy and war making potential of the island nation of Japan. Its ships imported oil, iron ore, coal, bauxite, rubber, and food stuffs; they exported arms, ammunition, aircraft and soldiers to reinforce captured possessions. When submarines succeeded in stopping this commerce, Japan was doomed.
. . . .
Even so, it was no easy victory. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had sworn in various international treaties never to engage in "unrestricted submarine warfare," that is, submarine surprise attacks against merchant vessels. During peacetime years, U.S. submariners hoped to become part of the US battle fleet mostly concentrated their training on tactics aimed at sinking important enemy men-of-war - carriers, battleships, cruisers - and their boats known as fleet submarines, were designed with this goal in mind. After December 7, 1941, however, the United States abandoned its high-minded moral position and ordered unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan. By an accident of history, the fleet submarine proved to be the ideal weapon for war against the Japanese merchant marine. However, the shift in missions caught the submarine force flat-footed. It required new strategy and tactics. Many months went by before the submarine force got the hang of this new role.

There were other problems. Peacetime exercises, most of them unrealistic and artificial, had let submariners to believe that aircraft, sonar gear, and powerful depth charges made the submarine highly vulnerable to enemy counterattack. This belief in turn had led to extreme caution in the submarine force. The best way to survive, the peacetime submarine commanders believed, was to make an attack from deep submergence, using sonar apparatus. The daylight periscope attack, the night periscope attack, and the night surface attack were considered hazardous, and for a submarine to operate on the surface within 500 miles of an enemy airbase was considered fatal. Too many months went by before submariners discovered these preconceptions to be wide of the mark.

The cautious peacetime training leg to serious personnel problems in wartime. In peacetime bold, reckless, innovative skippers who were "caught" in war game maneuvers were reprimanded, and older, conservative, "by-the-book" officers, who were strict disciplinarians and conscientious with paperwork, rose to command. When war came, too many of these older men failed as skippers. During the first year and a half of the war, dozens had to be relieved for "lack of aggressiveness" (a disaster, both professionally and emotionally, for the men involved) and replaced by brash and devil-may-care younger officers, some of whom would never have attained command in peacetime. This general changeover took months to accomplish, and many valuable opportunities were lost before it became effective.

The failure in leadership extended to the highest levels of the submarine force. When the war began, the forces were commanded by officers who had risen to the top by the safest and most cautious routes, who did not understand the potential of the submarine. They placed a premium on caution; bring the boat back. Yielding to higher authority, they allowed their forces to be fragmented and employed in marginal, fruitless diversions. At least a year and a half went by before these command problems were ironed out and men with a good grasp of how submarines could be most profitably employed took over the top jobs.

. . . . Countless times, US submarine captains were vectored to such (high value military) targets only to find that, because of navigational errors on the part of the Japanese or themselves, these high-speed prizes passed just beyond attack range and could not be overtaken. Months went by before it dawned on the force commanders that a Japanese tanker - easier to find and sink - was as valuable to the overall war effort as a light cruiser.

Last - but not least - the submarine force was hobbled by defective torpedoes. Developed in peacetime but never realistically tested against targets, the US submarine torpedo was believed to be one of the most lethal weapons in the history of naval warfare. it had two exploders, a regular one that detonated it on contact with the side of an enemy ship and a very secret "magnetic exploder" that would detonate it beneath the keel of a ship without contact.

After the war began, submariners discovered the hard way that the torpedo did not run steadily at the depth set into its controls and often went much deeper than designed, too deep for the magnetic exploder to work. When this was corrected, they discovered that the magnetic exploder itself was defective under certain circumstances, often detonating before the torpedo reached the target. And when the magnetic exploder was deactivated, the contact exploder was found to be faulty. Each of these flaws tended to conceal the others, and it was not until September 1943, twenty-one months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that all the torpedo defects were corrected.

Had it not been for these command weaknesses, misconceptions, and technical defects, the naval war in the Pacific might have taken a far different course. Intelligently employed, with a workable torpedo, submarines might have entirely prevented the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and the Netherland East Indies. Skippers emboldened by swift and certain torpedo success, instead of puzzled and dismayed by obvious torpedo failure, might have inflicted crippling damage on the Japanese navy much earlier. The war in the Pacific might have been shortened by many, many months.

Clay Blair, Jr. (May 1, 1925 - December 16, 1998) was an American historian, best known for his books on military history. He served on the fleet submarine Guardfish (SS-217) in World War II.

I'm not sure, but posting entire sections of a book may be considered a copyright infringement.

Nah, looks like fair use to me.
Especially when you post the reference.

I'm not sure on that to be honest it is word for word you would not be allowed to do that in a paper or separate book by a different author use a citation like that.

I dont know what the forum rules are about this sort of thing though.

The tragic thing is that compared to the Mk 13, the Mk 14 was a work of perfection. :D

For anyone interested in reading about torpedoes I can highly recommend

- Hellions of the deep by Gannon - Nice coverage of political influence on torpedoes
- Iron men and tin fish by Newpower - nice description of Germany's problems with torpedoes (almost identical to our problems)
- Ship killers by Wildenberg and Polmar - The best book I have read so far on the history and especially the Navy policy on torpedo development and implementation.

There is also

Slide rules and submarines: American scientists and subsurface warfare in world war II by Meigs. But I warn you, this was written with a rather snarky bias and is definitely an example of revisionist history based on hindsight. But still an interesting read.