Quote:
Originally Posted by TorpX
I forgot all about the "Fido". I guess I don't think of it as a torpedo.
I read somewhere recently, that the crews that used them (fidos), were not told how they work, or that they were homing torps, only that they were some kind of top secret, fast sinking, depth charge. Seems like they would've had to know how they worked, in order to use them to best advantage.
Don't worry about it. My memory isn't always up to snuff, either. 
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I find that hard to believe about the Fido because as you said it had deployment patterns that had to be followed other wise it would not work.So the air crew had to know at least that it was able to follow the sound of the subs screws in the water.They likely did not know exactly how it worked but they knew enough to employ it.
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/
It was classified as an air dropped mine to fool the Axis though fooling anyone who might have been anything other than an aircrew member or aircraft ordnanceman (who would have to know how to maintain them or at least not to damage them). The lay people in the squadron would not find anything interesting about an air dropped mine nothing to flap the gums about and if they did anyone eavesdropping would not be too interested in an air dropped mine they would however be very interested in a homing weapon of any kind and would have reported this with much emphasis.
On this site some place is a library of audio from actually combat that later had someone record sound over to explain at points what was going on.In one of these recordings is the sinking of an IJN submarine via Mk.24 this was in the Atlantic Ocean in the recordings it is fairly clear that the pilots understand the operation of the Fido they also made use of early sonar buoys used these to triangulate the subs location and they then attack with MK.24s and sink it.
Give me an hour or so to find the exact recordings and i will post the link it is very interesting.
EDIT: http://www.hnsa.org/sound/ roughly half way down the page Control F and search for I-52 the entire page is pretty wicked though search for "search problem" it explains how they used the buoys to triangulate the buoy technology entered service about the same time as the Fido surely not a coincidence I suspect.At the top of the page are real sound recordings of an attack on the IJN Kongo by USS Sealion.Enjoy in the words of the TBM pilot "Got that son of a b.....!" still also a little creepy because you are also hearing 60 or so men die.