...Those Marvelous Tin Fish: The Great Torpedo Scandal Avoided

McPherson

Banned
1. The camera only runs when the periscope is raised. That is why I said there had to be an automatic switch.
2. Gun cameras took lousy pictures. They were movie cameras. And yet, any picture is better than no picture.


As you can see, it was possible and it was done.

Blandy? Throw a fit. Yup. And be overruled.
 
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These days if using a periscope the idea is do a very quick peek, then check the video to see if you missed anything.
 

McPherson

Banned
Duh. You've still got to have it raised when the fish reaches the end of the run, which means any number of the enumerated problems arise.

Captain with stop watch, target tracking party and sound man. All three people and groups should have a good idea of time of run to intercept. If not, they collectively have no business aboard a sub.
 
It wasn't called the Mark 24 Mine because the designers were clueless.;) It was because torpedo design was a specific area "owned"...& mines weren't in it.

And here I was thinking it was labelled a mine for security reasons. But yes, I agree. The rapid and successful development of the Mark 24 suggests that the wrong people were kept well away from the project.
 
Captain with stop watch, target tracking party and sound man. All three people and groups should have a good idea of time of run to intercept. If not, they collectively have no business aboard a sub.

Getting a confirming photo of a sinking is a good thing providing they don't have evade the escorts.
 

McPherson

Banned
And here I was thinking it was labelled a mine for security reasons. But yes, I agree. The rapid and successful development of the Mark 24 suggests that the wrong people were kept well away from the project.

Have to take some of the official and unofficial historical remarks with due caution. But, yeah, Bu-Ord was a problem.
 

marathag

Banned
Good luck with that.:rolleyes: You'd need the torpedo to trigger the camera when it exploded, or have Tony Stark's reflexes.:rolleyes:

Kodak released 8mm film in 1932, and sold a movie camera for it for $34.50

That was nothing vs what a torpedo cost. You think they would have wanted a record for each one used
 

McPherson

Banned
Give you an idea of what a couple of decades matter.

411f94a9d07896836b670f0c04bc3014.jpg


That is USS Growler (577). Currently moored at the USS Intrepid Museum, NYC. She was ordered a decade after the end of WW II and was of the Grayback class. What do you not see attached to the periscope?


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That one is a Foxtrot moored in Great Britain. She was built in Russia in 1967. What fittings do you see on this periscope? Hint: you can mount a camera to it.

This is what one looks like inside.


That is a Foxtrot moored in New Westminister, British Columbia. I don't know exactly when she was built. I believe she was 26 years old at the time of the tour which means she was built around 1983?

I have only one comment. Russian submarines, at least the postwar ones, were and are not as "primitive" as some people like to believe.
 
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This is all good stuff here everyone, but it is off topic. It makes it hard to follow for new readers. Thank you.

Getting back on topic regarding those magnetic exploders they were an excellent idea if they could have been made to work. Detonating the torpedoes under the hull of major warships or large freighters therefore bypassing the armour and torpedo blisters and likely breaking the ships' back.

Fixing the depth keeping ability and ensuring the reliability of the contact exploder is good and necessary. But do you think it was possible with the technology of the day for the Americans to have built an effective and reliable magnetic exploder?
 
But do you think it was possible with the technology of the day for the Americans to have built an effective and reliable magnetic exploder?

Actually, with the path that Christie and his team chose, no. It was overly complicated and was way too sensitive to natural variations in the earth's magnetic field. The science was not well enough understood at the time and required more basic research. Even the simpler compass type actuators where subject to magnetic variation. Ultimately the solution is...

And I will leave it at that for now. I don't want to give away too many secrets! ;):)
 

McPherson

Banned
Nope. Dave said it. However, if you followed the wake homer explanation and are imaginative, you will deduce an alternate WW II method. Home on screws is a good way to bypass the torpedo defense in use at the time.
 
Getting back on topic regarding those magnetic exploders they were an excellent idea if they could have been made to work. Detonating the torpedoes under the hull of major warships or large freighters therefore bypassing the armour and torpedo blisters and likely breaking the ships' back.

Fixing the depth keeping ability and ensuring the reliability of the contact exploder is good and necessary. But do you think it was possible with the technology of the day for the Americans to have built an effective and reliable magnetic exploder?
Well, not sure if the american's bothered fixing theirs during WW2 but the RN and German's had fixed theirs by about 1944. Everybody had working ones just after the war. It does not seem to need a breakthrough in technology just money and testing. Gets a bit murky as by the time they are fixing the exploder they were moving to homing torpedoes so it may be they just did not fit them to the old torpedoes as they were working OK without them and just fitted to the new.
 
I have to wonder why they didn't take the obvious expedient & just make the damn warhead bigger.:rolleyes: Sacrifice range? Delete the two-sped feature? You're starting with a clean sheet of paper, after all.

(Maybe I'm thinking too much like a Russian...;) Make it work & make thousands.:))
 
It does not seem to need a breakthrough in technology just money and testing.

I agree, but not with the ultra-sophisticated path that Christie and his team used. It fit with the ridiculous mindset at Newport at the time to try to make a Rube Goldberg type device work, rather than follow a more simple path. That way they could puff out their chests and harrumph about how they had conquered science and mother nature, and be able to brag about how awesome they were to each other over brandy in the smoking room. It was a very elite and arrogant blue blood culture there and simplicity didn't fit into that mindset. Also, in fairness, the money just wasn't there OTL and they labored under that too. Ultimately their path would be proven out, but not until after the war. The Mk 48 torpedoes that my boat used in the Cold War used a magnetic influence exploder and they were terribly deadly.
 
I have to wonder why they didn't take the obvious expedient & just make the damn warhead bigger.:rolleyes: Sacrifice range? Delete the two-sped feature? You're starting with a clean sheet of paper, after all.

(Maybe I'm thinking too much like a Russian...;) Make it work & make thousands.:))

It makes sense to me. Using the torpedo with only the contact exploder. Fit more Torpex where the magnetic exploder was fitted. Why not?
 

McPherson

Banned
It makes sense to me. Using the torpedo with only the contact exploder. Fit more Torpex where the magnetic exploder was fitted. Why not?

The Mark 6 exploder assembly (magnetic influence section Mark 5 and firing mechanism.). Note the direction of the firing pin.

Torpedo_exploder_Mark_6_early.jpg


and (later version). Different (front) view.

Torpedo_exploder_Mark_6_Mod_1.jpg


and yet a later version, designed to overcome a mechanical acceleration fault. (Ball electrtrical contact switch instead of firing pin.)

Mk6-mag-exploder.gif


And some idea of how the arming safety feature worked and where the Mark 6 assembly sat in the warhead section.

Mark_15_torpedo_warhead.png


It was Rube Goldberg, extremely complex with at least three "fail paths" built in. The mods are progressive work arounds that appear to cure the symptoms and not the basic problem.

A quick look at the British contact pistol in use at the same time.

British_contact_pistol_torpedo.png


And here is what the Germans developed.

Pi_2_exploder_German_torpedo.png


The interesting thing is that the engineering in the British design is straightforward. The German design is more Rube Goldberg than the American design, but neither has the built in fail paths of the Goat Island device.
 
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It makes sense to me. Using the torpedo with only the contact exploder. Fit more Torpex where the magnetic exploder was fitted. Why not?
The whole rationale for the magnetic influence exploder was the concern that anti-torpedo bulges and armor on modern (i.e. WW1 and after) battleships would render torpedoes less effective, due to the fact that TNT was used as the primary explosive. TNT was the common explosive of the era and was used by most navies. Its properties were well known and it could be easily produced in large quantities. But it lacked the oomph that many felt was necessary to defeat armored warships. Thus the idea of getting a torpedo to explode under a warship, where there was no armor or bulges. This technique also took advantage of the incompressibility of water, using the magnified explosive effect to (theoretically) break the keel of the ship.

With all this in mind the concept of the magnetic exploder made a lot of sense and it is understandable why it was pursued. The chief problem laid in the fact that the science of the Earth's magnetic field and the geographic variations involved was not well understood in the 1920's and 30's, and when combined with the mindset that I described above a Frankenstein's monster of a device was born.

It seems quite obvious now that the solution was to use brute force and get a more powerful explosive. That, unfortunately is much easier said than done and will take some time. There is a movement afoot in my timeline here to rectify that problem, so... just be patient!
 
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