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Post by rickthelibrarian on Dec 30, 2013 22:45:46 GMT 8
Getting back to the original point of the topic, the U.S. Navy had a strong force of submarines present in 1941, including some of the most modern. Had they possessed a reliable torpedo, they could have seriously derailed the Japanese invasion. Whether the end result would have been changed is probably doubtful. As one poster said, the fate of the Philippine garrison was sealed when the Arizona blew up, figuratively speaking.
I just finished an excellent book on the torpedo problem, "Iron Men and Tin Fish" by Anthony Newpower. There was a plethora of problems with the Mark 14 torpedo and the Mark 6 exploder: a) the torpedo ran about 10 feet too deep; b) The sensitive nature of the Mark 6 resulted in numerous prematures; c) even after the magnetic feature of the Mark 6 was deactivated, the contact exploder produced numerous duds. The problem was that the magnetic exploder was kept under wraps and virtually no "live" testing was done. The torpedo was not completely fixed until late 1943, after nearly TWO years of war!!
However, to this, you would have to add timid sub commanders and lack of knowledge of Japanese anti-submarine tactics. Had the Japanese invasion occurred in 1944 with a similar number of American submarines with aggressive commanders and a reliable torpedo, the Japanese might have suffered serious losses. As it was, ONE Japanese ship was sunk out of the 80 that participated in the Lingayen landings in 1941.
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Post by fortman on Dec 31, 2013 2:28:34 GMT 8
To get back to the torpedo issue: The same problem beset the US Navy torpedo plane squadrons in 1942-43. The torpedoes they carried, Mk 13s I think, were quite unreliable and you had the tragic situation of brave attacks being made on Japanese ships, only to have the torpedoes fail in many cases. The Battle of Midway comes to mind.
fortman
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