*NITPICK ALERT* SS-311 was originally known by this name, but it was changed well before commissioning to Archerfish.
...Those Marvelous Tin Fish: The Great Torpedo Scandal Avoided
- Thread starter DaveJ576
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*NITPICK ALERT* SS-311 was originally known by this name, but it was changed well before commissioning to Archerfish.
On a semi-related note, IOTL when Mk 14’s got really scarce in 1942 due to idiotic production difficulties, one of the workarounds was for the boats to take on partial loadouts of the more plentiful Mk 15’s. This presented difficulties as the Mk 15 was too long to fit in the standard fleet boat torpedo tube and on the loading skids inside the room. The solution was to replace the warhead with the shorter one from the Mk 14. This enabled the Frankensteined weapon to just barely fit inside the tube, but it was still too long to be loaded from inside the room so it was placed in the water and pushed back into the flooded tube from the outside. Once loaded this way it could not be pulled out and into the room for servicing and they would be the first weapons fired, replaced by Mk 14’s from inside the room. The other solutions to the shortage problem was to loadout with Mk 10’s and/or tube launched mines. None of these solutions were popular with the crews.
I can't seem to stop shaking with glee at the idea of going into the Pacific campaigns with a functional torpedo...
That would do it.
She'd probably still lose on total tonnage to Flasher, too.
I'm unaware of Mark XVs ever being used, & AFAIK, they wouldn't have worked anyhow. Using Mark Xs was fairly routine, especially as the S-boats were retired & sold off to the Brits, French, & Poles.
Mining also became more common.
The list of people who deserve Leavenworth just keeps getting longer.
Honestly, once King heard about the torpedoes performance, or lack thereof, the fact he didn't drive up to BuOrds with about a company of Jarheads to arrest all involved should be a miracle.
marathag
Banned
and away from subs, there's the discussion on a lot of people over at Brewster and Wright Aeronautical who would needed to be in cells, and not making decisions
And one or two in BuAer for not realizing things were extremely wrong...
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/JANAC-Losses/img/JANAC-Losses-pv.jpg I Think that graph was part of the manual
McPherson
Banned
Hyperwar is an awesome online resource for WW II minutiae. It is a bit (more than a bit) Anglo-American biased, but even Dutch and Polish military history in that conflict is covered there in monographs. Glaring holes in the resource base are for Russia and China. These nation's archivists have not participated in the hoped for extent with first source articles and documents. The Americans and British try to fill in, but as I mentioned, they are a bit biased.
I have been reviewing the Submarine Operations Research Group (SORG) attack data listing and it reaffirmed what I had found in other references. There were numerous occasions, mostly in mid-1942, when USN fleet submarines (mostly Tambor/Gar and Gato class) carried and fired Mk 15 destroyer torpedoes (see my earlier post). I also found confirmed references to fleet boats firing the old Mk 10 torpedo. This use seems to have been mostly limited to the boats assigned to the former Asiatic Fleet.
The use of alternate torpedo types was forced on the submarine force due to the inability of Newport to ramp up production quickly. They could not keep pace with expenditures, and the Mk 10's were used as a stop gap measure because of the large number (I believe it was over 200) Mk 14's that were destroyed at Cavite on the first day of the war.
Trust me, my scenario will correct this part of the debacle as well.
For some dry but interesting reading, surf to this link: http://www.combinedfleet.com/sorg.php
The use of alternate torpedo types was forced on the submarine force due to the inability of Newport to ramp up production quickly. They could not keep pace with expenditures, and the Mk 10's were used as a stop gap measure because of the large number (I believe it was over 200) Mk 14's that were destroyed at Cavite on the first day of the war.
Trust me, my scenario will correct this part of the debacle as well.
For some dry but interesting reading, surf to this link: http://www.combinedfleet.com/sorg.php
I have heard of fleet boats using MK 10s, but not DD torps. I have always seen the 200 number of torpedos lost at Cavite, but never a brakedown of numbers between MK 10 and MK 14. Where did you find the breakdown?
I have not yet seen any breakdown as to the types of torpedoes that were lost at Cavite. All the references that I have seen only state that Mk 14's were lost. But I think it is reasonable to speculate that there were some Mk 10's in there as well, as there were several S-boats attached to the Asiatic Fleet. Most authors probably saw "torpedoes lost" and assumed they were all Mk 14's.
Remember that the use of Mk 10's and Mk 15's by submarines was a stop-gap measure only, allowing them to go out with close to their original loadouts during the shortage of Mk 14's. There were issues with using those weapons in fleet boats, and the crews did not like to compromise in that regard, but were forced to for a time.
The SORG data also revealed something that caught me by surprise. It seems the big old V-boats Narwhal (SS-167) and Nautilus (SS-168) fired Mk 15's nearly exclusively for the first half of the war. I was not previously aware of this and I always assumed that they used Mk 14's as well. It may have been due to their intended original role as "Cruiser Submarines", a role they were designed for in the late 1920's. I will see if I can run this down in my other references.
Remember that the use of Mk 10's and Mk 15's by submarines was a stop-gap measure only, allowing them to go out with close to their original loadouts during the shortage of Mk 14's. There were issues with using those weapons in fleet boats, and the crews did not like to compromise in that regard, but were forced to for a time.
The SORG data also revealed something that caught me by surprise. It seems the big old V-boats Narwhal (SS-167) and Nautilus (SS-168) fired Mk 15's nearly exclusively for the first half of the war. I was not previously aware of this and I always assumed that they used Mk 14's as well. It may have been due to their intended original role as "Cruiser Submarines", a role they were designed for in the late 1920's. I will see if I can run this down in my other references.
McPherson
Banned
My check is USS Nautilus. Until 43 it was Mark XV, then Mark XIV 3A and finally Mark XVIII
Her JANAC numbers. It is a rather large difference.
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