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

[DaveJ576]

I do not claim to be all knowing or all seeing. I am always open to new information. McPherson, thank you for the link. I can honestly say that I had not seen that one before. It is good info! As a submariner, you will never get an argument from me about circular or erratic runs. It could have been, and should have been fixed. My earlier post did not mean to say that I thought it was okay, it was merely an attempt to get inside the head of the designers and speculate as to why such a seemingly obvious feature would have been left off the weapon.

The staff of Newport made some unforgiveable mistakes of judgement, vanity, and hubris. But these were not stupid men, and they certainly were not imbeciles. The Mk 14 and the rest were weapons of remarkable technological sophistication which pushed the boundaries of the state of the art in the inter-war period. These were the "smart weapons" of their day, in essence they were UAV's built without a single integrated circuit or computer processor chip, in the 1930's! I find that quite remarkable. Any time you engage in a high technology development program that pushes the boundaries (consider SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket) you will run into bugs and issues that need to be fixed. I can forgive the techies at Newport for that.

What I can't forgive is their single minded belief in their own infallibility, a stodgy, inflexible conviction that they were right and everyone else is wrong. I also can not forgive their unwillingness to undertake even the most basic of scientific based testing programs, which would have uncovered the flaws in the weapons long before anyone had to die because of it!

What I am attempting to do here is present a scenario under which that hubris could have been checked and corrected, or maybe even prevented, then take some WAG's as to how the war may have progressed.

I appreciate all of your input. Learning and understanding is sometimes a group thing and I value it! The Navy is keeping me busy next week, but I am still refining the next chapters. I will get them out soonest.

 

[McPherson]

I do not claim to be all knowing or all seeing. I am always open to new information. McPherson, thank you for the link. I can honestly say that I had not seen that one before. It is good info! As a submariner, you will never get an argument from me about circular or erratic runs. It could have been, and should have been fixed. My earlier post did not mean to say that I thought it was okay, it was merely an attempt to get inside the head of the designers and speculate as to why such a seemingly obvious feature would have been left off the weapon.

Actually from you, I've learned a few things I thought I knew were errors, so I return the compliment in kind with interest.

The staff of Newport made some unforgiveable mistakes of judgement, vanity, and hubris. But these were not stupid men, and they certainly were not imbeciles. The Mk 14 and the rest were weapons of remarkable technological sophistication which pushed the boundaries of the state of the art in the inter-war period. These were the "smart weapons" of their day, in essence they were UAV's built without a single integrated circuit or computer processor chip, in the 1930's! I find that quite remarkable. Any time you engage in a high technology development program that pushes the boundaries (consider SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket) you will run into bugs and issues that need to be fixed. I can forgive the techies at Newport for that.

I use to make a villain out of the luckless Ralph Christie. I was mucho guilty of such 20/20 hubris. He had a hard time with the magnetic influence feature (Mark V component of the Mark VI exploder.). And it is not as if the USN did not try to anticipate some of the issues with their new magnetic influenced exploder.^1 That same man who would stubbornly insist on his sub crews using the magnetic influence feature when he commanded Southwest Pacific submarines, had the foresight (1933?) to insist the USN conduct live testing of the feature aboard the USS Indianapolis. These were 100 exercise torpedo shots he supervised to calibrate the magnetic influence feature, with some 7000 readings taken. It is roughly akin to attempting to compile a ballistics table for a new gun. Conducted at the equator between 10 degrees north and south latitude, it was probably the most comprehensive testing of such a feature conducted by any navy in that era. Christie came away from the tests with the firm hunch that a tuner (rheostat) needed to be incorporated into the Mark V to set to local conditions. He was overruled by his superiors who looked at the same results (mostly successful along the equatorial route with little variation in the influence feature's function.) and were convinced that the discovered variations in the Earth's magnetic field in the area tested was too insignificant to merit such a costly and time delaying modification. I do not know what made Christie so stubborn and different in opinion about what he suspected at the time later during the war. Maybe there was the war on and he knew he did not have the time or resources to map the Earth's magnetic field, or install a rheostat circuit as was done postwar when the navy finally had the time, admiralty wisdom (bloody price paid), and incentive to fix their last mistake. Whatever his inexplicable reason was, this was the main folly that damns him in some quarters. I do not criticize him now, because I knew he at least tried.

Blair, Clay, Jr. (1975), Silent Victory, Philadelphia: Lippincott, ISBN 0-553-01050-6 pp 61-62

What I can't forgive is their single minded belief in their own infallibility, a stodgy, inflexible conviction that they were right and everyone else is wrong. I also can not forgive their unwillingness to undertake even the most basic of scientific based testing programs, which would have uncovered the flaws in the weapons long before anyone had to die because of it!

If you qualify that statement with the proviso, that in their arrogance they thought they had already tested for everything (see above.); sure. The height of folly is to ignore persistent complaints that cover the same basic points. If over forty captains complain that their torpedoes do strange things when the fish leave the tubes during the first two months of the war, then someone had better take a look at:

a; prepping procedures.
b. crew training across the force.
c. the torpedoes.

What I am attempting to do here is present a scenario under which that hubris could have been checked and corrected, or maybe even prevented, then take some WAG's as to how the war may have progressed.

The last thing a supremely confident man (and you have to be one to stand watch or command at sea) wants to admit, is that he goofed. And the last one a skilled craftsman or engineer wants to admit, is that the machine he built or designed is a piece of junk. This is what the Mark XIV and its brethren are to the people responsible for its make, validation and issue. An indictment that THEY are no good. It might have been a beautiful Swiss watch on the bench when it is tested at Goat Island, but when it reached the fleet and the end users, it is like most GM cars that I've ever test driven for real use. Junk. And what makes it embarrassing historically is that by May 1942, the USN knew how frighteningly effective Japanese torpedoes were. (I may have something to contribute about how this was an intelligence bolo for the USN in the Solomon Islands as several of our admirals seemed to forget that the Japanese had those long runner Type 93s). So, double the embarrassment; the Japanese could plainly do what Americans could not; make an effective deadly and clearly technologically superior weapon.

Postwar, the dud history, the guidance (nose wander issues) and other (explosive) problems the Japanese had with their oxygen-boosted Type 93 and Type 95 torpedoes would become known, but during the war, all the USN recipients of these weapons saw was sunk US cruisers from a weapon that had twice the range of a Mark XV and which seemed to always work.

That hubris that leads to such errors, is not simple to overcome, because frankly that kind of humility and caution in combat leaders which would catch and correct mistakes such as the torpedo crisis entails, does not win wars. Not everyone can find the proper balance to be a Fletcher, Spruance or a Nimitz or a Lockwood. You wind up with Merritt, Connelly and the Bull. You certainly need these guys because they can lead, but they come with their blind spots, and their built in disasters that have to be borne as the price of admiralty.

It turns out that Christie was one of those kinds of officers. But not Admiral Blandy. That gentleman knew better and he did nothing when it mattered. And he should have been held accountable for it at the time.

I appreciate all of your input. Learning and understanding is sometimes a group thing and I value it! The Navy is keeping me busy next week, but I am still refining the next chapters. I will get them out soonest.

I hope I contributed in my small way. And kudos for tackling such an interesting, complex and often misunderstood (see what I wrote about Christy?) subject.

 

[Butchpfd]

One problem that cannot be fixed. By fixing the torpedos is the Navy using the 16th Naval District staff as a dumping ground for unhealthy, Or incompetent officers. Thomas Hart went through 4 District Commanders until the summer of 1941 When Adm. Rockwell took comnand. This turnover led to several projects not being completed oprior to the war. The most important to this discussion isthe new naval magazine at Mirivales on Baatan being uncompleted, and the destruction at Cavite, bythe Japanese bombing of half of the toropedo stocks available to the Asiatic Fleet.

 

[phx1138]

Four boats or possibly five boats sunk by own weapon?

Something like, yeah. Maybe more.

Why in Murphy's name was that torpedo (N0. 24210) not beached, sent to a machine shop and torn apart by ordnance to find out what caused the erratic run? If the fish was erratic in an exercise shot, with the crew who prepped the fish not being responsible for the fish's malfunction (TBD by the ordnance people and USS Tench's officers], and recovered, it is evidence of a mechanical fault that needs investigation. It would be a verified sample of a batch run that would need to be further pulled and inspected.

That is an excellent question. OTOH, "inspectors" sent (in response to the persistent complaints) to see if Fleet torpedomen were doing proper maintenance actively sabotaged the fish. (At least one case, recorded in Blair.)

If 5 US boats were killed as a result of erratic or "circular runs" of their own weapons, that is a ~ 10% kill factor and 440 trained skilled submariners lost to the imbecility of the people at Goat Island. This is the stuff of court martials and review boards to fix blame. Was it Blandy who ultimately failed here? I would not be surprised.

Bear in mind, tho, that's out of something like 10,000 fired for the duration. (I'm too lazy to go get Blair & do the actual math.)

As for Blandy, yeah, I think he deserves roasting, but IMO that list should be a lot longer. Starting with Christie...

It should be mentioned that this erratic run problem was only one of about a dozen problems with the torpedoes. Perhaps, spending the US navy's athletics budget of the 1930s on weapon testing might or could have saved a lot of grief, but I still suspect that somehow the same problems or similar ones would have confounded the operational forces. The leadership of the 1930s USN was not all the perfection that the popular histories of WW II make it out to be. There were a host of dud officers in that service. In the end, if the torpedo scandal is to be avoided, there has to be a drastic culture shift in the United States Navy to go with the mechanical fixes we enumerated above.

Absolutely right. Fixing this problem may change USN in ways we wouldn't recognize, maybe enough to change how WW2 is fought.

 

[McPherson]

One problem that cannot be fixed. By fixing the torpedos is the Navy using the 16th Naval District staff as a dumping ground for unhealthy, Or incompetent officers. Thomas Hart went through 4 District Commanders until the summer of 1941 When Adm. Rockwell took comnand. This turnover led to several projects not being completed oprior to the war. The most important to this discussion is the new naval magazine at Mirivales on Baatan being uncompleted, and the destruction at Cavite, by the Japanese bombing of half of the toropedo stocks available to the Asiatic Fleet.

While the history of the 16th Naval District as a dumping ground for dud naval staff officers is accurate, I remark that these same duds actually present in and around Manila at the time of 7 December stepped up and performed rather better than their army compatriots (Remember, MacArthur, Brereton and Sutherland and the disaster of Clark air base?) once the shooting started. And it must be remarked, that Pearl Harbor, the 14th Naval District, also left a great deal to be desired as to leadership, projects undertaken and general naval efficiency at about that same time. One can only go so far in isolating the human factors present. Goofballs there were aplenty everywhere. Ghormley and Pye are not at Manila in the weeks that follow, Guess where they were screwing up? They had some negative effects during the confusing weeks while the US Pacific command dislocation was repaired.

Thomas Hart and his crew actually come off rather well, given what they had to work with and whom they had to cooperate. ABDA and the Dutch, Arthur Percival and his lot, Sir Tom Phillips and the RN in its entirety, Sir Conway Pulford and after he died of malaria Sir Paul Copeland Maltby ( a real winner for the RAF Far East) the British colonial administration in general in Malaysia, etc., make the American command Pacific shambles look brilliant by comparison.

And if we want to discuss infuriating, incomprehensible, bollixed-up, inefficient, misbegotten almost Japanese like American snafus, can I recommend the inter-service shenanigans of the Alaska Defense Command, that amorphous nightmare jointly shared by the irascible Admiral Robert A. Theobald and the equally does-not-play-well-with-others and somewhat inept General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Theobold's reporting HQ was the 14th Naval District at Pearl while Buckner's immediate higher HQ was located at the Western Defense Command at the Presidio in San Francisco. During the Battle of Midway, the combination was so deleterious that the only reason the Japanese did not take all of the Aleutians was because they found an opposing team of commanders (Hosagaya, Kakuta, Akiyama, and Yamasaki) who were even more inept.

What I am trying to illustrate is how complex the jigsaw puzzle is, how vast, in time and space the distribution of military actions is, and how befuddling little things like malaria (Maybe MacArthur?), mental illness (Pye) and dental disease (Ghormley) can affect outcomes in war. And let us not forget the politicians. They did not help matters on either side. And by politicians I include Admiral O'Richardson and his Japanese counterpart Isoruku Yamamoto. There is no easy hardware fix, or administrative remedial action when fallible human beings become involved.

=========================================================================

Own subs sunk by own torpedoes.

Something like, yeah. Maybe more.

I used five (5) because that is the number that can be probably confirmed by the Japanese or American survivors. To show how good American reporting on this can be, I cite the USS Dorado, lost off Panama to mines about October 1943, laid by U-214. That is incredibly precise reportage by the silent service of a navy that didn't even know where a whole desron was during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. (Surigao Strait was confusing.)

Why wasn't torpedo 24210 (USS Tench) pulled and inspected?

That is an excellent question. OTOH, "inspectors" sent (in response to the persistent complaints) to see if Fleet torpedomen were doing proper maintenance actively sabotaged the fish. (At least one case, recorded in Blair.)

Yeah, and since there IS a paper trail that he, Blair, found to prove it, there should have been a prosecution even at that late date. Sabotage is hard to prove. Falsification of documentation is not.

Torpedoes defective versus torpedoes fired as total:

Bear in mind, tho, that's out of something like 10,000 fired for the duration. (I'm too lazy to go get Blair & do the actual math.)

Someone did that work for us.

As for Blandy, yeah, I think he deserves roasting, but IMO that list should be a lot longer. Starting with Christie...

Blandy sat on his duff as a rear area Washington admiral, during the torpedo crisis, not really under combat pressure until 1943, (took command of an amphibious force and managed it reasonably well.) and was in a sinecure [BuOrd 1941-1943] where he could afford to take a cautious risk to check things here and there. It was not just torpedoes he screwed up during the war-time operational emergency while he was BuOrd: there were problems with naval artillery that can be laid at his feet. Yet, even he can get a pass for some of the good things he did while he sat there, (proximity fuse). This game-player was involved in Operation Crossroads and demonstrated to the public, the same careless attitude toward concerns about what he was doing with atomic bombs that probably shows the character defect underlayment for the Mark XIV and Mark XVIII debacles he aggravated, during his watch.

He wasn't called the Atomic Playboy for nothing.

Of course he was right on the physics, he cited, but he was wrong about the concerns (FALLOUT) expressed about the tests he supervised. In other words he was incompetent to notice the problem's nature in front of him and would not brook criticism or advice from people who did .

==============================================================

I've made my current opinion clear about Christie. He made mistakes not involving the Mark XIV, while he was Southwest Pacific Submarines for which he can be second guessed, like the awarding of medals to crews that could have tipped off Magic and Ultra to the Japanese, and his failure to play well with Thomas Kinkaid and Uncle Chuck (Lockwood) which is incredible considering that those guys were rather easy-going. And then there is the Dealey affair, (Kinkaid's nephew went down with the USS Harder, too) with the medals again, the damned telegram about Kinkaid and his chummy relationship with MacArthur that did not sit well with the USN. He had to go. Not because he was a poor operational commander, but because he did not understand how to play the game within the war that is service politics. Basically he torqued off the wrong people. Fife, his replacement, was an utter disaster as an operator. Postwar, when Sublant came up, guess who got that flag? Fife could play the politics game.

Absolutely right. Fixing this problem may change USN in ways we wouldn't recognize, maybe enough to change how WW2 is fought.

Tough to do. Admiral Blandy and Admiral Fife are prime examples of why that would be so.

 

[phx1138]

While the history of the 16th Naval District as a dumping ground for dud naval staff officers is accurate, I remark that these same duds actually present in and around Manila at the time of 7 December stepped up and performed rather better than their army compatriots (Remember, MacArthur, Brereton and Sutherland and the disaster of Clark air base?) once the shooting started. And it must be remarked, that Pearl Harbor, the 14th Naval District, also left a great deal to be desired as to leadership, projects undertaken and general naval efficiency at about that same time. One can only go so far in isolating the human factors present. Goofballs there were aplenty everywhere. Ghormley and Pye are not at Manila in the weeks that follow, Guess where they were screwing up? They had some negative effects during the confusing weeks while the US Pacific command dislocation was repaired.

Thomas Hart and his crew actually come off rather well, given what they had to work with and whom they had to cooperate. ABDA and the Dutch, Arthur Percival and his lot, Sir Tom Phillips and the RN in its entirety, Sir Conway Pulford and after he died of malaria Sir Paul Copeland Maltby ( a real winner for the RAF Far East) the British colonial administration in general in Malaysia, etc., make the American command Pacific shambles look brilliant by comparison.

And if we want to discuss infuriating, incomprehensible, bollixed-up, inefficient, misbegotten almost Japanese like American snafus, can I recommend the inter-service shenanigans of the Alaska Defense Command, that amorphous nightmare jointly shared by the irascible Admiral Robert A. Theobald and the equally does-not-play-well-with-others and somewhat inept General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Theobold's reporting HQ was the 14th Naval District at Pearl while Buckner's immediate higher HQ was located at the Western Defense Command at the Presidio in San Francisco. During the Battle of Midway, the combination was so deleterious that the only reason the Japanese did not take all of the Aleutians was because they found an opposing team of commanders (Hosagaya, Kakuta, Akiyama, and Yamasaki) who were even more inept.

What I am trying to illustrate is how complex the jigsaw puzzle is, how vast, in time and space the distribution of military actions is, and how befuddling little things like malaria (Maybe MacArthur?), mental illness (Pye) and dental disease (Ghormley) can affect outcomes in war. And let us not forget the politicians. They did not help matters on either side. And by politicians I include Admiral O'Richardson and his Japanese counterpart Isoruku Yamamoto. There is no easy hardware fix, or administrative remedial action when fallible human beings become involved.

=========================================================================

Own subs sunk by own torpedoes.



I used five (5) because that is the number that can be probably confirmed by the Japanese or American survivors. To show how good American reporting on this can be, I cite the USS Dorado, lost off Panama to mines about October 1943, laid by U-214. That is incredibly precise reportage by the silent service of a navy that didn't even know where a whole desron was during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. (Surigao Strait was confusing.)

Why wasn't torpedo 24210 (USS Tench) pulled and inspected?



Yeah, and since there IS a paper trail that he, Blair, found to prove it, there should have been a prosecution even at that late date. Sabotage is hard to prove. Falsification of documentation is not.

Torpedoes defective versus torpedoes fired as total:



Someone did that work for us.



Blandy sat on his duff as a rear area Washington admiral, during the torpedo crisis, not really under combat pressure until 1943, (took command of an amphibious force and managed it reasonably well.) and was in a sinecure [BuOrd 1941-1943] where he could afford to take a cautious risk to check things here and there. It was not just torpedoes he screwed up during the war-time operational emergency while he was BuOrd: there were problems with naval artillery that can be laid at his feet. Yet, even he can get a pass for some of the good things he did while he sat there, (proximity fuse). This game-player was involved in Operation Crossroads and demonstrated to the public, the same careless attitude toward concerns about what he was doing with atomic bombs that probably shows the character defect underlayment for the Mark XIV and Mark XVIII debacles he aggravated, during his watch.

He wasn't called the Atomic Playboy for nothing.

Of course he was right on the physics, he cited, but he was wrong about the concerns (FALLOUT) expressed about the tests he supervised. In other words he was incompetent to notice the problem's nature in front of him and would not brook criticism or advice from people who did .

==============================================================

I've made my current opinion clear about Christie. He made mistakes not involving the Mark XIV, while he was Southwest Pacific Submarines for which he can be second guessed, like the awarding of medals to crews that could have tipped off Magic and Ultra to the Japanese, and his failure to play well with Thomas Kinkaid and Uncle Chuck (Lockwood) which is incredible considering that those guys were rather easy-going. And then there is the Dealey affair, (Kinkaid's nephew went down with the USS Harder, too) with the medals again, the damned telegram about Kinkaid and his chummy relationship with MacArthur that did not sit well with the USN. He had to go. Not because he was a poor operational commander, but because he did not understand how to play the game within the war that is service politics. Basically he torqued off the wrong people. Fife, his replacement, was an utter disaster as an operator. Postwar, when Sublant came up, guess who got that flag? Fife could play the politics game.



Tough to do. Admiral Blandy and Admiral Fife are prime examples of why that would be so.

This deserves more than one like from me. Well said, indeed.

 

[James Ricker]

Japan only had about 100 oil tankers at the start of the war, every loss was going to be felt. Sink 10 oil tankers and that's 10% of Japan's oil imports gone.
Japan could always build more oil tankers but Japan was in a naval war building oil tankers means something else doesn't get built.

 

[merlin]

The debate is fine, but an update on what happens next, would be better ...... !!

 

[McPherson]

Japan only had about 100 oil tankers at the start of the war, every loss was going to be felt. Sink 10 oil tankers and that's 10% of Japan's oil imports gone.
Japan could always build more oil tankers but Japan was in a naval war building oil tankers means something else doesn't get built.

JANAC.

Despite the subsequent revisionist historians attempts to 'adjust" the Joint Army Navy Assessment Commission reports, the findings have remarkably held up. One can track the losses, month by month. The tanker targets stand out from the data sets early.

Doenitz.

Here the need for revision: especially his post morte bellum assessments and his glossing over of the KMs problems of which he was a major cause, and the stubborn refractious facts he ignores is evident.

He was a man who did not play well with others.

He was a delegator to be sure, but was he an efficient one?

He liked to micromanage.

 

[McPherson]

The debate is fine, but an update on what happens next, would be better ...... !!

It will be a week according to the thread author before he can add to his ATL. In the meantime, I suggest he offers enough meat on this sandwich served so far that we can chew. Consider it the lede.

 

[zert]

I for one am willing to wait. I think I will learn new things I had not known or forgot, and I appreciate all the additional details others have already posted.

 

[James Ricker]

Doenitz.

Here the need for revision: especially his post morte bellum assessments and his glossing over of the KMs problems of which he was a major cause, and the stubborn refractious facts he ignores is evident.

He was a man who did not play well with others.

He was a delegator to be sure, but was he an efficient one?

He liked to micromanage.

That hurt the KM big time, he liked daily reports from all his U-Boats.Not really a problem, unless your ememy has broken your codes.

 

[zert]

Even without reading the messages, all those reports helped to track the various subs. Closing the air gaps helped to kill them and save ships.

 

[phx1138]

Even without reading the messages, all those reports helped to track the various subs. Closing the air gaps helped to kill them and save ships.

Yeah, when you detect a U-boat signal near a convoy, you don't need to be Alan Turing to guess what it's about, & don't really need to read it to know you should reroute the convoy away from it.

Air cover out of Newfoundland would have been the best option: keeping U-boats from detecting convoys as they departed was the easiest way to reduce contact en route. Killing U-boats, while desirable, wasn't necessary.

 

[kclcmdr]

... The Nautilus nails the entire KB the morning of 4 June.

Let the Nautilus nail the Hiryu and slow it down so that she can't launch her two air strikes and thus save the Yorktown from been bashed twice and eventually sunk by a IJN Submarine...

 

[r1ncewind]

Threadmarks?

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Let the Nautilus nail the Hiryu and slow it down so that she can't launch her two air strikes ...

Nah, I'm gonna think BIG

 

[zert]

Near possible ASB levels, but if Ireland had joined the Allies after Germany raids against her cities and ships, then getting more recon planes based could also help to seal the air gap. It might also allow for more shipyards for repairs of Allied ships.

 

[McPherson]

Yeah, when you detect a U-boat signal near a convoy, you don't need to be Alan Turing to guess what it's about, & don't really need to read it to know you should reroute the convoy away from it.

Air cover out of Newfoundland would have been the best option: keeping U-boats from detecting convoys as they departed was the easiest way to reduce contact en route. Killing U-boats, while desirable, wasn't necessary.

This happened late, RTL, but the flying weather into the North Atlantic was and is horrible at the medium and low altitudes where the LRMP aircraft then and now operate. The North Atlantic flying weather is horrible in northern latitudes anyway, but off Newfoundland and Southern Greenland it can be exceptionally terrible. Losses in the mid-Atlantic were RTL high due to flying accidents in that weather.

Nah, I'm gonna think BIG

Settle for Kaga and be happy. That result alone saves Hammann and Yorktown. Hiryu only acts because she was not one of the carriers dedecked in the massed dive bomber bounce that got Kaga, Soryu, and Akagi. If one wants to be greedy, ASB the Mark XIV torpedoes as acoustic seekers homing in on prop noise and have Akagi and Kaga have their propellers blown off and rudders mangled. That is how FIDO worked against subs and how CUTIE was supposed to hit destroyers. Rudder chasers homing in on prop noise.

Near possible ASB levels, but if Ireland had joined the Allies after Germany raids against her cities and ships, then getting more recon planes based [there] could also help to seal the air gap. It might also allow for more shipyards for repairs of Allied ships.

Oh, yes. That is a doable (ASB, maybe, but far more doable than some of the nutty ideas that rattle around in my overactive imagination (See what I wrote about screw noise chasing homing anti-ship torpedoes above?), and or such ideas as the Mark 1e (Mark 20) electric torpedoes being ready by 1935.); for it is an executable idea that would relieve Atlantic convoy escort forces pressure in the Western Approaches and could release (British?) resources for Pacific or Mediterranean action. Is a reverse Norway possible? It RTL happened to Iceland. The Icelanders were not exactly originally happy to receive British or American occupation or be thrust so prominently into the Battle of the Atlantic. I imagine the Irish Republic would be equally un-thrilled; but somewhat acquiescent as long as it was Americans and not the Black and Tans.

 

[phx1138]

the flying weather into the North Atlantic was and is horrible at the medium and low altitudes where the LRMP aircraft then and now operate.

No argument, & RAF hated flying in it. RCAF did it, & in conditions RAF thought it was insane. Even if they only fly some of the time, it's an improvement.