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Old 05-08-11, 10:38 PM   #3
Stealhead
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The Mk.14 until fully fixed later in the war ran about 10 feet deeper than set on average(notice "about" they might run deeper than +10 or less you cant know for sure) which was one reason that the magnetic mode failed (running too deep to sense the ships field) the other problem was that the magnetic exploder itself failed often to detect magnetic fields properly in the first place and got thrown off by all sorts of things causing it to explode early because they ran only a few highly controlled unrealistic tests with them before the war.There are tons of articles on the web about the whole Mk.14 affair.

Another issue was that the torpedoes contact detonator tended to get crushed before it was able to fully set it self off or was unable to set off at all. This was cured by using only the low speed setting and avoiding certain AOBs. So there where 3 different things wrong with the original mk.14 in its original form and they where not confirmed until 1943 after tests that Lockwood ordered.

Because of deep running and the flaky magnetic dets this makes the failure rate of a magnetic mode mk.14 pretty high so just dont bother with them.Best bet set you torps to around 5 feet contact low speed that way they are most likely to go boom against a ships hull.
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