Forgot to mention... It seemed that the brits also had problems with their torps. From what I could make out in the book, only about 25% worked properly.
as an example:
They estimated ship speed the usual way, and from 1000 yards sent a salvo of 6 torps. The second one hit and blew the ships bow - nothing else happened and the ship never sank.
Puzzled by what happened to torps 3 - 6, they sat down for an hour or so working this one out - checking their calculations a few times.. etc.
They worked out that torp 1 was ahead of the bow, and the rest should have hit. According to the author the captain was not happy with the company chosen to manufacture the torps, as they were an appliance manufacturer before the war and did not have the necessary weapons production experience.
Makes sense
