Most of you probably now this, but:
The history on the MK14 torpedo problems was almost criminal. The torpedoes had 3 problems:
1. They ran too deep, because they were tested without the explosive charge in the warhead. The "gun club" (Bureau of Ordnance) insisted that nothing was wrong with the running depth of the torpedo. It took a covert "testing", authorized by Admiral Lockwood to determine that the torpedoes were in fact running too deep.
2. The magnetic exploder did not function as it should. The "gun club" insisted that the magnetic exploder worked as design. Admiral Christie, in charge of sub operations in Australia, was part of the design team of the magnetic exploder and was adamant that there was nothing wrong. He even accused some of his skippers of incompetency Even after the light started shining at Pearl Harbor, and Nimitz ordered the magnetic exploder be deactivated, Christie still insisted that the exploder work fine and threatened his skipper's with disciplinary actions if they disengaged the exploder.
3. The contact exploder did not work 100% of the time. There were numerous complaints of this early in the war. As with the magnetic exploder, the skippers were accused of poorly executed attacks. After reknown skippers started to adamantly complain, the torpedo was dropped straight down from a crane. The discovery was that with a "perfect" 90-degree firing solution, the firing pin would not activate the explosives. The pin would only activate the explosivies if the torpedo hit the target at an angle. So in other words, the better your solution, the higher chance of a dud.
As I said, most of you probably already know this. To me, it is amazing that the Mk14 torpedo had so many problems and the "higher ups" not only ignored the reports of their skippers, but accused them of not being good at their jobs. If it wasn't for Lockwood, the problems would not have been corrected until even later.
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