Quote:
Originally Posted by TorpX
Many ships were sunk by steam torpedoes, so the bubble track didn't seem to do the target ships much good.
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I cant find any solid information about the Mk.16 so you may be correct and no place with more reliable technical data does it imply that this was an feature or advantage.
However simply because many ships where sunk by steam torpedoes does not prove that the disadvantage of a track is overblown.For starters in many cases during WWI and WWII(depending on date and navy) they where the only type of torpedo available so of course they are going to sink a lot of ships being the only torpedo available.
If there was no chance of spotting a wake or that it made no difference then it would have made little sense to have the lookouts look for wakes it the first place.Navies the world over trained with dummy torpedoes that passed under hulls of course this was dual training because the sub is trying to attack without getting spotted and the ship to spot the wake of a torpedo or a periscope in time to evade if one spotted a periscope the vigilance for wakes of torpedoes would greatly increase.Why they would spend so much time and effort on this if it did give some obvious advantage seems strange.
I think that you underestimate the disadvantage of a wake and it seems evident that many ships did in fact spot wakes and take evasive action.
Many US submarine where attacked or witnessed targets firing at the wakes of their torpedo tracks so they where obviously fairly visible and from a greater range it is very feasible for a ships lookouts to spot and report a track and for the ship to counter in time this is part of the logic for firing a spread of torpedoes the is to account for any possible errors in aim.