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Originally Posted by Admiral Von Gerlach
The IJN had worked hard to develop good torps to overcome the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty, and their torps were superior in both power and speed to USN. they used the following:
Type "93" what we called the Long Lance Oxygen powered 24" torpedo was launched by surface ships both DD and CL CA, not subs.
Type "95" Mod 1 were 21 inch oxygen powered launched by subs, the Long Lance ran for 22,000 yards at 49 knots, and had 1,078 pounds of high explosive in its warhead. The shorter Type 95 was not nearly so powerful, able to travel 13,000 yards at 45 knots, with 891 pounds of explosive in its warhead. The 95's were shorter and smaller in diameter to allow handling in subs.
The Japanese worked hard on their torpedo doctrine and training, using real life conditions, in the North Pacific, and had extensive recovery and reuse of training torps...both subs and surface...while the USN had removed most torp launchers from the cruisers and neglected to train with them as much. The Japanese DD's could btw carry more reloads, often being able to reload twice.....and torps were taken very seriously and their direction was part of the gunnery control not just a poor add on.
A key factor about IJN torpedoes was as noted in this thread, the speed...ys 50 knots ....
Partly this was due to two factors...and let me quote a man who i greatly respect who knows this aspect very well, PDC Sensha...." the Oxygen torpedoes have two benefits: lack of combustion byproducts that leave a wake (most notably nitrogen; air torpedoes have less oxidizer (oxygen) and more inert gasses (nitrogen primarily) in their air flasks), and range (pure oxygen takes up less space than the same amount of oxygen as a component of air (tops of 20% by volume); more space for fuel and oxidizer. Oxygen oxidized flames also burn hotter (better combustion), so a given amount of fuel could stretch farther. All this translated out into going further faster.
I don't have the figures with me, but I think that the top speed on our torpedoes (which only allowed a very short range) was well below the lower speed on the Japanese torpedo (which allowed a range that was so great we had trouble believing that it actually could occur). At their top speed, the things zipped along near 50 knots (compared to a top ship speed of 37 knots or so) out to a distance that was greater than our "close range". Faster to the target means less time to evade, hence more accurate."
In fact the IJN torpedos were so good, and the USN so slow to accept this for far too long that they the IJN surpirsed the USN on more than one occasion and left the US commanders looking around for mines or other reasons for damage when it was the IJN fish that did the trick.
all of this was confirmed by the Naval Intelligence Misiosn to Japan after the war which makes very interesting reading.
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