Historically the US mainstay torpedo, the Mark 14, had a number of technical problems that took a few years & much effort to overcome. Initially the reports from sub captains about faulty torpedoes were dismissed as crew error or some such reason. No one bothered to investigate the skippers' claims to see if there were actually any problems, until Adm Charles Lockwood, when he assumed command of COMSUBPAC, decided to conduct some tests to see if there were really problems with the Mk 14s. Even then, convincing the Ordnance Bureau that the torpedo they had developed was faulty wasn't easy.
To sum up, the Mk 14 had a number of problems:
a. They often ran deeper than the depth they had been set to run.
b. The firing pin mechanism was poorly designed, and a "perfect shot" (a hit perpendicular to target hull) could result in a crushed firing pin, and hence a dud.
c. The magnetic exploder was faulty, often resulting in premature explosions.
However in game I doubt that SH4 delves into this level of detail. It is more likely (my guess) that the game simply uses random numbers to simulate the failings of the Mk 14 especially in the early years of the Pacific war. One can only hope that the developers reduced the chances of a dud as the timeline in the game progresses to its inevitable conclusion.
For TMO, I remember reading a post by Ducimus (the creator of the mod) that he deliberately fudged the torpedo failure numbers to be somewhere in between stock (torps functioned too reliably even in early war years) to realistic, his design philosophy being that he didn't want to approach real life numbers as that would make it too frustrating for players in general.
|