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Originally Posted by clayton
[Well, how about history? The Mark 14, among other things, was known to have the weakest warhead of any nation during the war. TNT as opposed to Torpex -- something like that.
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Actually that's not true: the US invented Torpex. The Germans had what they called Hexanite. It was the British who were still using Tri-Nitro Toluene. Also the Mark 14 had 643 pounds of the stuff, which was nearly as much as the Germans' 661 pounds.
There was nothing wrong with the Mark 10 exept its age. It worked better than the Mark 14; but it only had one speed and fairly short range.
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Also, the contact exploder had issues during the early part of the war. Right angle hits and the firing pin would not engage.
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The magnetic failures were even more dramatic.
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Read about Daspit on the Tinosa, he fired a total of fifteen torpedos for no sinking on a stationary 20K Whaler. He claimed thirteen hit the target; He saw a splash! Contact exploder issue!
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Read about Prien at Norway: if the Germans had had better torpedoes they would have sunk the Warspite (3 times!), 7 light cruisers and 20 or more merchants. Prien fired all his torpedoes at anchored ships; they didn't react at all-apparently they never even knew they had been attacked.
I'm not making light of US torpedo problems; I'm just pointing out that we weren't the only ones.