1968 Sub vs Sub tips?

[The Bandit]

Originally Posted by CaptainCruise

Maybe I read this too quick and missed something.

Yeah kind of. The Mk 16 was never considered an ASW weapon and wasn't designed with that in mind. As I mentioned earlier, it was limited to a depth of 200 ft and had no seeker of any kind, unless you want to count the magnetic influence exploder(which I think was back by the time the war ended, in a much improved, non-Mk 14 debacle form).

As far as I'm able to tell the depth control consisted merely of a pre-set which was intended to run the torpedo under the keel of its intended target, so pretty much the exact same as the pre-WW2 Mk 14.

As for the Mk 48, no its not included in the 1968 campaign unless by mod. You are correct that the Mk 48 development dates back to the 1950s and some of the test fish were probably shot as early as 1968 but it wasn't really until the 72 that they started deploying them to the fleet, and even then it wasn't until about 76-78 where they became the mainline weapon as the Mk 37s began to be mostly retired.

The Mk 48 development is actually quite interesting because it was initially conceived as basically a really fast Mk 37 (would have actually had a lighter warhead than the Mk 37 but used a more potent explosive) and overtime was changed to become the new general purpose ASW/ASUW weapon of choice as the old straight runners were obsolete and aging out of service.

[CaptainCruise]

Originally Posted by The Bandit

Yeah kind of. The Mk 16 was never considered an ASW weapon and wasn't designed with that in mind. As I mentioned earlier, it was limited to a depth of 200 ft and had no seeker of any kind, unless you want to count the magnetic influence exploder(which I think was back by the time the war ended, in a much improved, non-Mk 14 debacle form).

As far as I'm able to tell the depth control consisted merely of a pre-set which was intended to run the torpedo under the keel of its intended target, so pretty much the exact same as the pre-WW2 Mk 14.

As for the Mk 48, no its not included in the 1968 campaign unless by mod. You are correct that the Mk 48 development dates back to the 1950s and some of the test fish were probably shot as early as 1968 but it wasn't really until the 72 that they started deploying them to the fleet, and even then it wasn't until about 76-78 where they became the mainline weapon as the Mk 37s began to be mostly retired.

The Mk 48 development is actually quite interesting because it was initially conceived as basically a really fast Mk 37 (would have actually had a lighter warhead than the Mk 37 but used a more potent explosive) and overtime was changed to become the new general purpose ASW/ASUW weapon of choice as the old straight runners were obsolete and aging out of service.

OK. It sounds like as far as making any big time mods to Mk16 and the '68 campaign, we're more or less out of luck except for your seeker head mod. Unless there was a way to straight up just add the earliest version of the Mk48 to the campaign and have it show up at a certain date, I don't think I have anything else to add, except maybe making the Mk37 a wee bit faster.....say 30 kts tops. Unfortunately it probably isn't very historically accurate. I dunno, this is going way above my pay grade now, I think I'll shut up and let those of you smarter than me figure this one out.

"CC"

[The Bandit]

Originally Posted by CaptainCruise

OK. It sounds like as far as making any big time mods to Mk16 and the '68 campaign, we're more or less out of luck except for your seeker head mod. Unless there was a way to straight up just add the earliest version of the Mk48 to the campaign and have it show up at a certain date, I don't think I have anything else to add, except maybe making the Mk37 a wee bit faster.....say 30 kts tops. Unfortunately it probably isn't very historically accurate. I dunno, this is going way above my pay grade now, I think I'll shut up and let those of you smarter than me figure this one out.

"CC"

Not sure it would be practical to have it "show up at a certain date" as even a war lasting a few months is probably optimistic (high chance things would escalate out of control before then, or be cooled down before they got the chance to).

As for MK 37 improvements, there is actually quite a bit of truth to that. By 1968 the Mk 37C program was running at ?Nothrop/Honeywell? This basically started with a bunch of company engineers spit-balling (they had a good idea that the MK 37 didn't cut it anymore and the USN was trying to replace it) about ways to improve the Mk 37. What they came up with (aside from some solid-state guidance improvements) was to take the otto-powered propulsion from the Mk 46 light-weight torpedo and use that to replace the MK 37's electric motor+battery. What they arrived at gave roughly 2x the range and a top speed of 36 knots (out past 20,000 yards). The trouble is the test program on the 37C started in 1968 but went on into the 70s and finished up around the same time the Mk 48 entered service.

Its quite likely that the Mk 37C wasn't seriously pursued for fear that it could end up cannibalizing the Mk 48 program due to its cheaper cost and retrofit nature (the 37C was intended to be deployed in kit-form, so Navy personnel would use the kits to upgrade existing Mk 37s at base or even on tenders vs. sending the weapons back to the manufacturer). At the time (late 1960s) the defense budget was under-seige due to the massive expenses from the Vietnam war, had the 37C development been accelerated the Navy may have found themselves saddled with a "good enough in 1968" weapon vs the amazing improvements / capabilities brought by the Mk 48. Eventually the Mk 37C was developed as the NT-37 which was sold to a number of foreign allies as well as the USN.

The Mk 37C is featured in the Omitted American Submarines mod as available to most boats in the 1968 campaign.

[Capt Jack Harkness]

Originally Posted by The Bandit

Not sure it would be practical to have it "show up at a certain date" as even a war lasting a few months is probably optimistic (high chance things would escalate out of control before then, or be cooled down before they got the chance to).

As for MK 37 improvements, there is actually quite a bit of truth to that. By 1968 the Mk 37C program was running at ?Nothrop/Honeywell? This basically started with a bunch of company engineers spit-balling (they had a good idea that the MK 37 didn't cut it anymore and the USN was trying to replace it) about ways to improve the Mk 37. What they came up with (aside from some solid-state guidance improvements) was to take the otto-powered propulsion from the Mk 46 light-weight torpedo and use that to replace the MK 37's electric motor+battery. What they arrived at gave roughly 2x the range and a top speed of 36 knots (out past 20,000 yards). The trouble is the test program on the 37C started in 1968 but went on into the 70s and finished up around the same time the Mk 48 entered service.

Its quite likely that the Mk 37C wasn't seriously pursued for fear that it could end up cannibalizing the Mk 48 program due to its cheaper cost and retrofit nature (the 37C was intended to be deployed in kit-form, so Navy personnel would use the kits to upgrade existing Mk 37s at base or even on tenders vs. sending the weapons back to the manufacturer). At the time (late 1960s) the defense budget was under-seige due to the massive expenses from the Vietnam war, had the 37C development been accelerated the Navy may have found themselves saddled with a "good enough in 1968" weapon vs the amazing improvements / capabilities brought by the Mk 48. Eventually the Mk 37C was developed as the NT-37 which was sold to a number of foreign allies as well as the USN.

The Mk 37C is featured in the Omitted American Submarines mod as available to most boats in the 1968 campaign.

All that said, it seems like the kit-bashed Mk 45 that Killerfish made is closer in terms of plausibility than anything else suggested so far. They had the same body diameter as the 37 and the 45 already had wire guidance. Now whether that seeker would function at all at the higher speed is beyond me...

[The Bandit]

Originally Posted by Capt Jack Harkness

All that said, it seems like the kit-bashed Mk 45 that Killerfish made is closer in terms of plausibility than anything else suggested so far. They had the same body diameter as the 37 and the 45 already had wire guidance. Now whether that seeker would function at all at the higher speed is beyond me...

It depends on how you look at it. One of the reasons the Mk 45 was created in the first place is because at the time the US Navy didn't have a seeker / couldn't make a homing torpedo which would work at that speed. While the later mods of the Mk 37 (2 and 3) did receive upgraded transducers, their speeds were unchanged so its hard to say whether this would have been addressed by that upgrade.

That said, the Mk 46 was in service by that time, and it had a seeker that would function at or beyond that speed so its not like it would have been impossible to achieve such a thing at that time. As far as I know though there was no consideration given by the Navy for a conventional Mk 45, the later "Freedom torpedo" program apparently used a type of wake-homing guidance and from what I can piece together wasn't intended for ASW use.