A German Long Lance Torpedo

What if the Germans had developed an equivalent of the Japanese Long Lance torpedo prior to World War II? The Long Lance was long-range and deadly, though also very dangerous to use. Give the Germans something equivalent at the start of the war and what happens?

While we're at it, giving them any reasonably usable air-dropped torpedo and any reasonably usable long-range naval aircraft at the beginning of the war might be interesting. They had surprisingly little in the way of naval air early on, though they did develop some by 1942.
 
Given the German lack of a real effective surfacefleet, the only way the torpedo could be usefull was in its submarine launched variant. In such a case, it actualy did not matter much, wether the torpedo was oxigen, compressed air, or electrial type, sicne the submarine did most of its attacks at close range, to ensure a hit. The long range of the Type 95 (21 inch variant of the type 93 "Long Lance") was not realy needed therefore.

The question is however more relevant, if not foccused on the type of torpedo, but on the quality or the warhead, as this was in the early 40's a serious problem in German submarine launched torpedoes. (Faulty triggers and fragile magnetic contact pistols.)
 
Given the German lack of a real effective surfacefleet, the only way the torpedo could be usefull was in its submarine launched variant. In such a case, it actualy did not matter much, wether the torpedo was oxigen, compressed air, or electrial type, sicne the submarine did most of its attacks at close range, to ensure a hit. The long range of the Type 95 (21 inch variant of the type 93 "Long Lance") was not realy needed therefore.

The question is however more relevant, if not foccused on the type of torpedo, but on the quality or the warhead, as this was in the early 40's a serious problem in German submarine launched torpedoes. (Faulty triggers and fragile magnetic contact pistols.)

Um, that should be faulty mag triggers and fragile contact pistols, actually...:p

The Long lance would actually have been detrimental to German U-boat ops.
First it meant less torpedoes could be carried (and against the merchant targets the increased warhead wasnt the point).
Second oxy torps are temperamental buggers, and its likely that the (often not too well trained ( U-boat crews would have had a numevr of own goals
 

Paul MacQ

Donor
While we're at it, giving them any reasonably usable air-dropped torpedo and any reasonably usable long-range naval aircraft at the beginning of the war might be interesting. They had surprisingly little in the way of naval air early on, though they did develop some by 1942.

Well you do not have to go as large as the 24"( actually 23.6") Long Lance the Type 95 was a 21” version used in subs that had amazing performance compared to say the US weapon mentioned in http://www.combinedfleet.com/torps.htm

The Type 95 had some problems with quality control and corrosion caused by the Pure Oxygen, Could be fixed,

The Axis Navy that needed a Better Doctrine for it's surface Fleet being the Italians. 52 Destroyers , Good gun platforms and did well considering no Radar. Maybe if the had half the Night fighting performance the Japanese had in the first Year ( Always thought that a Long Lance would have been useful at Battle of Cape Matapan with reasonable Electronic Warfare and Passive Radar Detection ) Those British Battleships came real close before opening fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Matapan

The Type 97 17.7" seems to be what you’re looking for in Air Droppable size and weight
 
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Bearcat

Banned
The range of the Long Lance made it devastating when launched by destroyers. Far less useful for subs as pointed out, and adds safety issues and reduces weapons carried.

The US or UK could have benefited from a similar weapon on their destroyers. Maybe even the Italians. The Germans, with few destroyers and fewer strategic surface options, would not.

Note also that while the IJN had a fearsome offensive weapon, it also had a liability aboard ship. More than one IJN DD blew up unceremoniously (starting with the 1st Wake Island battle), and some of those probably can be attributed to Long Lances getting hit or cooking off.
 
Note also that while the IJN had a fearsome offensive weapon, it also had a liability aboard ship. More than one IJN DD blew up unceremoniously (starting with the 1st Wake Island battle), and some of those probably can be attributed to Long Lances getting hit or cooking off.


The post-war memoir by Captain Tameichi Hara points to all those problems and more with the Long Lance. He believed that both commanders and crews were often times afraid of having them aboard and felt that rapid reloading systems gave no real tactical advantage while also being unnecessarily dangerous.

The fact that Hara also wrote the IJN"s torpedo manual makes his opinions all the more damning.
 
The HMIJS Hayate lost at Wake was a Kamikaze Class Destroyers, not fitted with the new torpedoes, as this class was still using the old 8th year compressed air torpedo of 21 inch. The sistership, also lost likely lacked the "Long Lance" too, since no Kamikaze Class DD was ever fitted with this weapon (and neither the simmilar Minekaze and Mutsuki, although the later had the heavy 24 inch tubes, for the older Type 8,no. 1 and no.2., both Compressed Air types.
 
The HMIJS Hayate lost at Wake was a Kamikaze Class Destroyers, not fitted with the new torpedoes, as this class was still using the old 8th year compressed air torpedo of 21 inch. The sistership, also lost likely lacked the "Long Lance" too, since no Kamikaze Class DD was ever fitted with this weapon (and neither the simmilar Minekaze and Mutsuki, although the later had the heavy 24 inch tubes, for the older Type 8,no. 1 and no.2., both Compressed Air types.

Hayate was sunk by at least 2 hits to the magazines from the 5" guns (5"/51 removed from old battleships) of Battery L ofthe Marines' coast defense guns at a range at a range of about 4000 yardss, setting them off in a fatal explosion. The other Japanese destroyer lost at Wake, Kisaragi of the Mutsuki class, was hit by bombs & machinegun fire from a Wildcat piloted by Capt. Henry Elrod, which was one of the acts for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. The exact cause of the sinking is somewhat disputed- many accounts claim that the hits detonated Kisaragi's depth charges, but according to her entry on combinedfleet.com, many eyewitness accounts state that she didn't sink immediately, but was disabled and suffering from fires that ultimately proved to be uncontrollable, as the ship according to those accounts suddenly suffered a massive explosion amidships and sank- possibly the magazines for the amidships guns or torpedos cooking off.

One example of how serious of a damage control issue the Long Lance could be to ships under air attack or otherwise being damaged/on fire amidships can be seen in the fate of the cruiser Mikuma at Midway. Other examples of catastrophic damage from exploding torpedos can be seen in the cases of Suzuya & Chokai at Samar.
 
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One example of how serious of a damage control issue the Long Lance could be to ships under air attack or otherwise being damaged/on fire amidships can be seen in the fate of the cruiser Mikuma at Midway. Other examples of catastrophic damage from exploding torpedos can be seen in the cases of Suzuya & Chokai at Samar.
And this was the perfect argument against mounting torpedoes (especially heavy torpedoes) on any ship larger than a destroyer (in fact, on any ship larger than a Fleet Torpedo Boat). Sadly, pretty much nobody bothered to think about the risk-benefit balance of putting torpedo tubes on light cruisers and upwards.

Anyway, as for the original topic, yes, maybe, if they had them since the early-mid thirties and designed their High Seas Fast Attack Boat arm around them. They could've done quite a bit of damage to the British.
 
And this was the perfect argument against mounting torpedoes (especially heavy torpedoes) on any ship larger than a destroyer (in fact, on any ship larger than a Fleet Torpedo Boat). Sadly, pretty much nobody bothered to think about the risk-benefit balance of putting torpedo tubes on light cruisers and upwards.

To be fair, a lot of that had to do with the highly volatile nature of the oxygen used by the Type 93- I don't recall hearing about anything quite so spectacular ever happening on British, Italian, German, or French cruisers that had been hit in action.

The justifications for arming cruisers with torpedoes, according to the US Naval War College analysis on the subject, were that cruisers as scouting & heavy screening units could very well face a sudden, close-range encounter with enemy capital ships, carriers, or cruisers in bad weather or at night, where a snapshot torpedo launch could produce big results, and also in trade warfare (for dispatching captured enemy merchant ships). However, that analysis also found that given US tactical doctrine which concentrated ships into the main battlefleet and emphasized long-range daytime gunnery actions, US cruisers would have little opportunity to employ torpedoes, and made the unique decision to remove torpedoes from cruisers (except for the 2 classes that would work closely with destroyers, the Omahas, & the Atlantas (designed after the decison but partially intended as an Omaha replacement), reasoning that with tight, treaty-limited designs, the space & weight could be better used on additional 5" AA guns. Interestingly, according to the data in Friedman's US Cruisers & some springstyles once posted on the Naval Historical Center's website, the USN was planning on restoring torpedoes to cruisers in the abortive post-treaty generation of cruisers, that could be built as large as deemed necessary to provide the desired operational attributes, that were to have followed the Clevelands & Baltimores but for the demands of mobilization requiring concentraiton on those two designs.
 
I don't recall hearing about anything quite so spectacular ever happening on British, Italian, German, or French cruisers that had been hit in action.
IIRC several Italian Condottieri-class light cruisers suffered from secondary torpedo explosions. Although it tended to vary according to number, size and disposition of torpedo tubes.

The justifications for arming cruisers with torpedoes, according to the US Naval War College analysis on the subject, were that cruisers as scouting & heavy screening units could very well face a sudden, close-range encounter with enemy capital ships, carriers, or cruisers in bad weather or at night, where a snapshot torpedo launch could produce big results, and also in trade warfare (for dispatching captured enemy merchant ships).
The introduction of radar made all those reasons obsolescent. And trade warfare is best executed with submarines (or purpose-built surface raiders). All the potential situations where light cruisers and above mounting torpedoes would have been useful were, in fact, non-existent. Whereas the presence of torpedo tubes violated the survivability rule-of thumb.
 

Markus

Banned
What if the Germans had developed an equivalent of the Japanese Long Lance torpedo prior to World War II? The Long Lance was long-range and deadly, though also very dangerous to use. Give the Germans something equivalent at the start of the war and what happens?

Nothing! Besides the fact that the already weak German surface forces were even weaker post-Norway, the LL frankly sucked in a long-range daylight battes and at night ranges are so short that conventional fish are just fine.


While we're at it, giving them any reasonably usable air-dropped torpedo and any reasonably usable long-range naval aircraft at the beginning of the war might be interesting. They had surprisingly little in the way of naval air early on, though they did develop some by 1942.

1941 IIRC. In 1940 this might have been a nasty surprise for RN units off Norway but Force Z would have not been sunk by the Japanese on the other hand.
 
Sadly, pretty much nobody bothered to think about the risk-benefit balance of putting torpedo tubes on light cruisers and upwards.


The IJN had an operational myopia verging on monomania. Not only was a war with the US going to play out precisely as the Naval Staff planned, the IJN went as far as to design ships which would play precise roles in that war.

The USN was supposed to lumber westwards towards the Philippines while the IJN's light forces slowly attrited it's strength in time for the big battleline showdown. It didn't matter that Plan Orange had been unofficially abandoned in the early '20s just as it didn't matter that Plan Orange was officially abandoned in the early 30s. Japan counted on the US doing exactly what Japan wanted and then built extremely specialized vessels to play extremely specialized roles in that fantasy. Subs, carriers, escorts, aircraft, and battleships were all designed with that one course of action in mind: Attrit the USN as it advanced and smash the remnants in a gunline showdown.

The Long Lance armed destroyers and cruisers of the IJN were designed solely to make massed nighttime torpedo attacks against the US battleline. No other role was even envisioned and no flexibility in the designs even considered. It was massed nighttime torpedo attacks and nothing but massed nighttime torpedo attacks.

Then, when Japan began the war and the US refused to play it's part as written in Japan's script, the IJN found itself, well, flummoxed is the best word I can use. The Naval Staff drifted into a policy of piecemeal commitments which resulted in a naval war of attrition that Japan had known for decades it could not win. They ended up fighting precisely the kind of war they didn't want to fight because they had only planned on fighting a war which solely existed in their fantasies.

Anyway, as for the original topic, yes, maybe, if they had them since the early-mid thirties and designed their High Seas Fast Attack Boat arm around them. They could've done quite a bit of damage to the British.

The construction of such an arm, as is with all such similar suggestions, would have led to a reaction by the UK along with changes to and different construction choices for the RN. Programs like those don't exist in a vacuum.
 
The construction of such an arm, as is with all such similar suggestions, would have led to a reaction by the UK along with changes to and different construction choices for the RN. Programs like those don't exist in a vacuum.
Except that a navy built around torpedo boats (light or Fleet), frigates and other such Jeune Ecole-style Green Water Navy ships, with no single class bigger than a leader, is inherently defensive in design. A fact which the Germans would've repeatedly pointed out whenever the issue of rearmament would come up.
 
The introduction of radar made all those reasons obsolescent. And trade warfare is best executed with submarines (or purpose-built surface raiders). All the potential situations where light cruisers and above mounting torpedoes would have been useful were, in fact, non-existent. Whereas the presence of torpedo tubes violated the survivability rule-of thumb.

Those analyses & design decisons (which in the USN didn't consider survivability, but rather the usefulness of alternate kinds of weapons & impact on the ship in terms of internal volume & weights) were all made during the 1930s, well before radar came along, while the naval treaties in effect at that time forced submarines to abide by the cruiser rules while attacking merchant ships effectively outlawed commerce raiding by submarines, & trade warfare was still seen as a possible cruiser mission. The type of naval warfare that these ships actually faced did turn out to be different than what the designers thought would happen, and compromises between offensive capabilities & durability that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time the ships were built didn't quite pan out because the underlying assumptions changed during the war.

Post war, the USN concluded that although torpedoes probably wouldn't have helped US ships much, the resulting ignorance of torpedo, close-quarters & low-visibility tactics and emphasis on daylight gunnery caused a lot of problems off Guadalcanal & the upper Solomons. IIRC, British cruisers had several occasions to use their torpedoes, either offensively, or as a deterrent, as did the Japanese (their pre-war doctrine had cruisers firing off their torpedoes in the preliminary stages of a battle as part of their asymmetric tactics to cut down the US fleet at night), & several of the Italian ships had the misfortune to get surprised & caught in knife-fights with multiple RN cruisers & battleships
 
Except that a navy built around torpedo boats (light or Fleet), frigates and other such Jeune Ecole-style Green Water Navy ships, with no single class bigger than a leader, is inherently defensive in design. A fact which the Germans would've repeatedly pointed out whenever the issue of rearmament would come up.

A fact that would known as a lie thanks to the actual name of the program: the High Seas Fast Attack Boat Arm.

As you know, in the OTL the UK and Germany signed a naval agreement in 1936. Everything naval was covered in that treaty. There were no loopholes like those in the London Naval Treaty which allowed Italy to build scores of 650 Spica-class torpedo boats for example.

If there is no Anglo-German Naval Treaty or an equivalent, Britain will still work to maintain it's naval advantage over Germany. If Germany begins violating the clauses of any naval treaties, Britain will renounce the agreement and build accordingly. If Germany begins exploiting any loopholes in a treaty, Britain will react with it's own building programs to counter Germany's construction.

You aren't going to be able to "hide" the real threat to British seaborne trade and naval forces posed by a "high seas fast attacks boat" program behind a few kilometers of sisal matting, vague treaty clauses, or tortured semantics. Once Germany begin building, once Germany begins working out the tactics involved, once Germany begins training the crews, Britain will react.
 
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