[White Owl]

I recently read We Were Pirates, detailing the service of Bob Hunt as a torpedoman on the Tambor for twelve war patrols. The chapter about Midway talks a little bit about the Nautilus.

Brockman, having shadowed the Japanese Striking Force all day, and having been attacked repeatedly, climbed to periscope depth yet again and sighted a burning carrier eight miles off. Creeping forward submerged at three to four knots, he closed on the motionless ship, then set up carefully for his shot. At 1359 he ordered four torpedoes away. One failed to leave its tube, but the remaining three sped toward their target. Through the periscope Brockman watched his fish cover the 2700 yards between him and the carrier, then observed: "Red flames appeared along the ship from bow to amidships [and] many men were seen going over the side." Then destroyers charged him and he took his boat down to three hundred feet, satisfied that he'd sunk his carrier. After the war, however, when American and Japanese records were correlated, the sinking was erased. The ship had been the Kaga, and surviving crew members recalled that two near misses had passed the bow and stern. Only the middle torpedo struck the ship, but it failed to explode and broke in two. The warhead sank and the after body bobbed to the surface, where sailors thrown into the water by the dive-bomber hits used it as a life buoy. One climbed up and straddled it like a cowboy, making the others laugh despite their peril.

So at first glance this looks like two malfunctioning torpedoes and two clean misses... But I have to wonder just how Nautilus' skipper could have missed a stationary aircraft carrier at 2700 yards; missed it not once, but twice! Is it possible those torpedoes didn't run quite straight?