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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
All of the above is true. there was no switch to turn magnetic pistols on and off. There is even some question as to whether the Germans had such a switch. Some skippers did have their chiefs disable them, but it also required recognizing that that was the problem, and having the skills to actually do the job; otherwise every one of them would have done it.
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I don't know about his. Skippers read each other's patrol reports before going out themselves, and the silent services was (is) such a close-knit community that I'm going to bet that it was within the first couple months of the war that the general consensus was that the torpedos were junk. And it wasn't much longer before plenty of good skippers were reporting that their torps were running directly under their targets. The fact that BuOrd and ComSubPac were ordering skippers to shoot the torps as they had been designed (under the keel) and to not disable the magnetic exploders would seem to indicate that pretty much everybody knew that they ran deep and that the magnetic exploders were crap and that people were actually shooting shallow for contact, and moreover that this was reportedly working better than the ordered tactics. Otherwise, why tell everyone not to do it? Since the torps required routine maintenance and navy torpedomen were well trained, actually disabling them was more time consuming that difficult.
I think that pretty much everyone knew that they didn't work right, but some skippers were just more adept at discerning which orders should be followed and which shouldn't. Let's not forget that most of the early war skippers were older, peace-time navy skippers, who had risen to their positions by playing the game. It took a while for the maverick, do whatever it takes-type of skipper to become commonplace.
That and at least a certain number of torps worked just fine, which would dissuade some skippers from using non-approved tactics since their buddy so-and-so had just come back from a patrol with a few ships sunk and everything had worked well for him.
There was immense pressure on skippers to sink ships. Those that didn't were replaced. Yet there was also immense pressure to operate exactly as ordered. This affects different people differently.