Quote:
Originally Posted by propbeanie
In my opinion, the dangerous part of the Mark 14 and the Mark 18 was the failure to have vane limiters for the rudders. Cost saving... Spend all that money on a weapon, and especially the 18, the vane could lock full-over, especially if shooting with a higher angle.
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That is what caused the circle runs yes? Rudder locked hard over..
Quite infuriating to think how many lost their lives and the boats lost due to the torpedo issues...especially circle runs. We know of two for sure (Tang, Tullibee) and appears Grunion was lost to a circle run as well. Likely some of those unexplained losses were due to circle runs. Then all the close calls.
One that always sticks out to me is from the book "The Luck of the Draw", USS Pollack in 1943. Night surface attack on a convoy...this was before magnetic features were disabled. They fired MK 14's are convoy, one (unobserved) circled back and exploded directly below Pollack. Knocked her systems offline, she went dead in water. Only thing saved her is torpedo ran deeper than set, so they do not catch the full power of the explosion. However, this explosion alerted a nearby escort, which promptly spotted Pollack and began closing at high speed, while Pollack's engine and maneuvering rooms worked to get things back on line, which they did, barely in time. Two failures, but one actually saved the one (running deep).