Quote:
Originally Posted by sharkbit
I don't know if this has been asked yet, but...
Were torpedoes able to be reloaded while on the surface or did they normally dive to reload?
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It was done quite often on the surface, but as you surmised, the more the boat moved the harder it was to load the fish. A rope and pulley system was used to pull the weapon into the tube. It was 100% muscle powered and with a weapon that weighed in at 3000 lbs a lot of Armstrong Engineering (
) was needed to wrestle the fish around. If the boat was submerged, the diving officer would quite often put an up or down angle on the boat to give the TM's a hand.