Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
The reference given was to the outer doors. Only the inner doors need to be closed to load the torpedoes. On the other hand the purpose of the outer doors is to streamline the hull. Leaving them open creates a lot of drag, and slows the boat down.
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Ummmm... lets take a minute here. I will absolutely guarantee that the outer doors of the torpedo tubes HAVE TO BE SHUT and the tube drained before you open the breech doors inside the boat to load torpedoes. Failure to do so would result in a 21 inch diameter stream of solid seawater entering your boat, the result of which would be nothing short of catastrophic. There is an interlock mechanism in place that prevents opening both the outer (muzzle) door and the inner (breech) door at the same time. Overriding this mechanism requires a deliberate act of disassembling the mechanism. It can not be done accidentally. Disabling the interlock was only done when the boat was high and dry in a drydock.
There are shutters attached to the muzzle doors that slide into place when the door is shut. These shutters do smooth the flow of water over this area, but the effect is negligible. Opening the muzzle doors does not create "a lot" of drag, only a small amount. Even if you had all six forward tube doors open at the same time, you would only see maybe a half to one knot speed loss.
I am not familiar with the reference attributed to O'Kane concerning leaving the outer doors open all the time. Quite frankly I will say that this did not happen. The reference may have been misinterpreted. As I stated before, you have to shut the outer doors in order to reload the tube. In addition, the Torpedomen liked to periodically "routine" the fish, i.e. run maintenence checks to ensure they will run properly. The weapon has to be removed from the tube and placed on a skid in the torpedo room in order to accomplish this. The afterbody of the Mk 14 torpedo (which contained the engine) had a nasty habit of flooding when subjected to sea pressure for long periods of time, rendering the engine useless.