Not sure how far the torpedo went ... you see they didn't tell me about the record or the complete job description of the duties of the ship's swimmer till I was topside and being lowered into the raft.
But the record was for our boat and it didn't start till we surfaced. We had four big fairbanks morse diesels that could move the boat at 25 kts on the surface and we were using the old steam Mk 16's that could really boogie somewhere around 40kts.
Which reminds me of another sea story by the way ... We also fired live fish. We tried to sink an old WWII destroyer one time. They towed it out to the firing range and we lined up the shot, but the Mk 16 blew up right after it left the tube, raising the deck plates a few inches.
So the captain lines up for another shot, taking different angles and lets the second one go, right? The Mk 16 was traveling so fast it hits the destroyer and goes right through the ship blowing up after it comes out the other side.
The ship is still just sitting there dead in the water ... We secured from battle stations and spent the night checking out the remaning fish.
We come back at it the next day and fired an electric Mk38 ... blew her out if the water and she sank right away.
Not the end of story however, just a few weeks later we go out on a special run to test the crews skills, called battle efficency "E's" ... This one was for our fifth in a row which would be a first for subs and earn us a gold "E".
We had observers and everything ... We fire two Mk38 electric fish at the same time, set for passive homing and they both came back and skimned the teak decks behind the sail , crossing each other and kept on going. Scary and glad that it didn't happen when it was live fire exercise.
They gave us the fifth "E" anyway ... we had a skipper that was all american halfback at Navy called, "Big Daddy" later to become Admiral Liscomb.
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