15 ms·

U.S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II (1998)

132 points by mmhsieh 7y ago

ryanmercer 7y ago
It doesn't surprise me. I've seen WWII-era torpedoes and their innards at the Science of Museum and Industry in Chicago in the U-505 exhibit (seriously, if you're ever in Chicago to to the museum and pay the extra fee to go aboard U-505. Totally worth it) and there is a lot going on in one of those. Here's a low-ish quality photo of the innars of a torpedo in the exhibit (not mine) https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/1jxk7k/u505_torpedo_at_the_museum_of_science_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/1jxk7k... Specifically in that thread these photos https://imgur.com/a/zNry7 https://imgur.com/a/zNry7 Sadly my photos from last year aren't any better, the cavern that U-505 is in has terrible lighting for photography. I was quite surprised by the amount of gears, tubes, segments, weights, etc inside one. Even the amount of batteries initially caught me off guard because I'm used to thinking in modern lithium batteries and not lead acid. I think that is a G7e torpedo above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e_torpedo
- MrZander 7y ago
  Wow, that is incredible. I had no idea they were that complex, or even that big.
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    The length was a bit hard to accept. Later I started looking into torpedoes and there are some real monsters that have existed, the Japanese Type 93 used in WWII is almost 30 feet long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo . The more modern Russian Type 65 is roughly the same size as the Type 93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo Russia also has that 'Poseidon' unmanned mini sub that's basically the nuclear powered sub version of a UAV that's something like 65 feet long and is believed to be able to be launched from another sub like a torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...
    - rmattes 7y ago
      If you're into this stuff and ever in the Seattle area I recommend visiting the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport. They have a good collection of torpedoes on display, including a Japanese Kaiten manned torpedo. http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org
- csours 7y ago
  If something is complicated, it probably needs more testing. Unfortunately, this was not done well for early US torpedos, mostly due to costs and overconfidence.
president 7y ago
There have been similar concerns about the US nuclear arsenal which are decades old and aging.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  Which is why the nuclear test ban is, IMHO, a bad idea. A nuclear deterrent must be credible to be effective. If an adversary comes to believe that, say, 80% of our warheads are duds and most of theirs work, the logic of retaliation may come to favor a first strike.
  - mmhsieh 7y ago
    The logic behind test bans (in conjunction with numerical caps on warheads) is to create uncertainty in the reliability of one's own arsenal to discourage either side from contemplating a first-strike.
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      I'm not sure about that. What if you're convinced that your brilliant scientists have created working warheads while you think the enemy's dolts haven't been able to keep their arsenal working? What if your enemy thinks the same thing in reverse? I think there's always a temptation to overestimate one's own capability and underestimate the sophistication of others.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
rocketpastsix 7y ago
They talk about it in the movie "Midway" (2019). It's definitely one of those things a lot of people thought was embellished to make the incoming battle of Midway look more drastic. However it was absolutely true. Without the dive bombers and code breaking they were able to do in the lead up Midway would have been a disaster for the Americans.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Ehhh. There's a lot of people that seem to think that Midway would have been a disaster for the US if they lost, but there's not much reason behind this. The only thing the US was really risking that had a significant strategic impact were the carriers - if the island of Midway fell it would have been essentially unsupportable by Japanese forces (being far past Japan's supply lines, when Japan was already facing logistical issues, and within B-17 range of bases in Hawaii) and even the carriers weren't absolutely critical must-not-lose assets for the US like they were for Japan. (The US commissioned 8 carriers in the year following Midway - four Essex class fleet carriers and four Independence class light carriers) Incidentally, this is part of why Midway was such a huge strategic blunder for the Japanese forces - it risked 2/3rds of their carriers for minimal gain. If Midway fell, it would have extended the war another few months. But I'm not sure that that really qualifies as a disaster.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    > The only thing the US was really risking that had a significant strategic impact were the carriers Yeah, that thing Japan bombed Pearl Harbor over....
    - Evil_Saint 7y ago
      They bombed Pearl Harbor knowing that no carriers were docked there at the time. American carriers were not the main objective of the attack. You have to realize carriers were relatively new and not a known commodity like they are today.
      - 7y ago
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
> Two completely different devices, each responsible for checking the other, deviated identically for vastly different reasons. Happens frequently. “The tests are broken but I’m positive the software is correct so I’m going to fix the tests”
- Armisael16 7y ago
  That isn’t at all what happened.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  That's one reason I hate complexity in tests. Your tests have to be dumb enough that you are 99% sure the code under test is at fault.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    By definition, tests have to be more complex than the underlying code. The test have to setup the conditions, execute the action and validate it. Don't confuse complexity with shitty unreliable tests (timing-based tests)
    - penagwin 7y ago
      Depends on the type of test. What you guys are talking about are unit tests, and are designed to test individual methods/functions. You write a separate test for each one. There's other types of testing, integration tests sound like what you are both complaining about. Integration tests test the interaction between components of a system, and are thus far more complex and likely to break as you're developing (which is a huge pain). However integration tests have their place - just because the function works doesn't mean it's being called from the web client correctly.
      - cryptonector 7y ago
        But you also have to test the whole system.
coachtrotz 7y ago
The WWII in Color series on Netflix has a Midway episode in which they indicate a 90% failure rate of the torpedoes to explode. The article says 70 percent rate but either way its pretty unreliable.
stcredzero 7y ago
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — The Department of Energy said tonight that approximately three‐quarters of the A‐1 model Polaris nuclear warheads deployed on submarines in the mid‐1960's were probably “duds” because of mechanical defects. https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris-missile-had-defects-scientists-at-government-labs.html https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris-mi... To be fair, the Japanese had really good torpedos at the start of WWII, but there were other things which were just as unproven and wonky. For one, the proposed tactic of letting battleship shells fall short, to target enemy ships underwater, was pretty much useless. (Come to think of it, the initial performance of Sidewinder missiles in Vietnam was another example of this sort of military equipment failure.)
- Smoosh 7y ago
  Another example is when the M16 rifle was first introduced in the Vietnam War, it was unreliable due to fouling.
  - m4rtink 7y ago
    This was prominently shown in the first Vietkong game, including having to use just 20 round clips when using it to reduce the chance of fouling happening. Quite a nice touch.
    - toomanybeersies 7y ago
      I don't think that 20 round magazines were used to reduce fouling and the chance of misfires. It was just the standard magazine capacity of the time.
  - chiph 7y ago
    That was the Army's fault. They changed the powder from the one specified by Colt and the Air Force. They didn't require the troops to clean their weapons (wtf?), and the Ordnance Corps desperately wanted the M-16 to be a lighter M-14. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-...
rshnotsecure 7y ago
It’s very likely that the torpedoes did not work for the whole war really. It sometimes is scary to think about all the complaints sub commanders put in, only to be dismissed by the Department of the Navy as excuses for bad leadership or tactics. I get that you have to take this line sometimes but still... That being said it should be noted US Naval strategy has never particularly relied on subs or been that great at it. This has always fallen to the Eurasian powers such as Germany, Russia, and China/Japan. Nothing has been downed by a torpedo in actual combat for the last 75 years, so realize that there are so many unknowns today in submarine warfare that you don’t see in say land warfare. That being said it looks like Underwater Unmanned Autonamous Drones is where sub warfare is heading. Supposedly China is way ahead of the pack here much like they are in the drone space (supposedly again) as well. The 2016 capture of a US Navy UUAV really was not good for the USA and marked a shift in the balance of power.
- wayanon 7y ago
  Belgrano?
- matthewmorgan 7y ago
  HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano with torpedoes
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    With a torpedo introduced to service in 1927, though. She avoided using her homing torpedoes (the Mark 24 Tigerfish) due to fears that they were unreliable.
- zentiggr 7y ago
  > It’s very likely that the torpedoes did not work for the whole war really. The patrol reports of each sub detail pretty well what shots were taken and after the fixes in '42 and early '43, the hit percentages rose dramatically... 1944 and 1945 were very good hunting times for US subs in the Pacific. They sank an amazing number of targets in a very short time. (Former US submariner and very amateur military historian.)
jandrese 7y ago
> Because of this logistics fiasco, veteran submariner and historian Paul Schratz said he ‘was only one of many frustrated submariners who thought it a violation of New Mexico scenery to test the A-bomb at Alamagordo when the naval torpedo station was available.’ LOL. Another interesting fact about the US torpedoes is that they were slow by WWII standards, especially compared to the Japanese torpedoes. This is normally a fairly bad flaw because it gives the enemy ship more time to dodge the torpedo, however in the Battle off Samar it turned out to be an advantage as they allowed the torpedoes fired by a tiny destroyer managed to scare the mighty battleship Yamato away from the battle for quite a long time because the torpedoes took so long to arrive that the Yamato was well out of position once they finally missed.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  It's important to note that the torpedoes Japanese generally used we powered by compressed pure oxygen, making them faster & giving them more range. But it also turned them into even bigger explosion hazard than normal torpedoes when the ship caring them is hit. As a result many Japanese ships are documented going down after what would normally be minor hits due to their oxygen torpedoes exploding and causing massive damage.
  - flukus 7y ago
    I wonder what the breakdown is on overall effectiveness, sometimes you can get some very perverse results. Kamikaze attacks for instance resulted in less pilots killed per damage dealt than traditional attacks even though attacks were 100% fatal, here's a good video breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqwDvxLVZII https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqwDvxLVZII
  - dralley 7y ago
    Why pure oxygen?
    - m4rtink 7y ago
      More energy stored in the same volume air tank. With normal air used by conventional torpedoes, you get just 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen, which is not useful for combustion. I think I might need to clarify - we are talking about a torpedo that is driven by combustion engine. It carries some sort of fuel and because it is under water, it needs to provide it's own oxidizer, which is where the high pressure pure oxygen comes in. Also, unlike when using normal air, it should be possible for the combustion engine to be more powerful while being smaller, due to the more energetic reaction. Also the exhaust gasses don't contain nitrogen, which is apparently visible as a noticeable bubble trail, which might result in your target noticing the torpedo and dogging. For more detail, see the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo
zepearl 7y ago
> Maneuvering as close to a 90-degree track as possible, the submarine fired three torpedoes against the rock cliffs. The first two exploded, but the third threw up the familiar geyser of compressed air and water. Divers carefully retrieved the activated yet unexploded torpedo. The valuable dud was then hauled back to Pearl Harbor for examination. Damn, for me any person who deals with any kind of unexploded ordnance is (as well) a hero.
segfaultbuserr 7y ago
When I was a child, I played a DOS game called Silent Hunter I. Basically, it's a submarine warfare game which you play as a U.S. Navy submarine in World War II, cursing the Pacific Ocean and attacks Japanese warships. When playing the game, I was extremely frustrated about the Mark XIV torpedo onboard - After going through the painstaking process of calculating the projectile, hitting the fire button, I would watch the stopwatch and hoping for the best that the target won't change its course... finally it was the time... nothing! For every five fires or so, there would be one or two torpedoes that never explode - when you need it the most. I was not playing the "hard" mode, it happens even in a "moderate" difficulty setting. I thought the game developers were making it unreasonable. And a few years later, I learned from a history book about the early unreliability of the torpedoes, and realized the torpedoes in the game were an accurate and realistic depiction of its historical performance. Kudos to the game developers. Another tool in the game I felt strange was the "Torpedo Data Computer", which is something that you can simply enter the bearing, speed, etc., of your target via its tuning dials, and the machine automatically calculates the firing position for you. I thought it was just the hand-waving of the game developers to make the game more playable while making it unrealistic - why would a computer even exist in the 1940s? I believed it was all pencil-and-paper. Later I learned it was real as well - totally mind-blowing. When I was a kid, I had no idea about the sophisticated historical mechanical fire control computers in the 1930s-1940s. There is a Hacker News submission of the documentation of the computer. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113
- leoc 7y ago
  Here are a few fun videos related to this. A 1943 USAF documentary about ground-based anti-aircraft fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E A short YouTube documentary about the failure of the German super-battleship Bismarck's anti-aircraft gunnery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE In fact the Germans had been working quite seriously on guided surface-to-air missiles during WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lsh0BJGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lsh0BJGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Q92V5hK-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Q92V5hK-c
brazzy 7y ago
Previous HN discussion about a different article (focusing on politics and very superficial concerning the actual problems) about the same subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665422
gadders 7y ago
If you're fans of alternative history fiction, the Destroyermen [1] series touches on the torpedo issues as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyermen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyermen

132 points by mmhsieh 7y ago

It doesn't surprise me. I've seen WWII-era torpedoes and their innards at the Science of Museum and Industry in Chicago in the U-505 exhibit (seriously, if you're ever in Chicago to to the museum and pay the extra fee to go aboard U-505. Totally worth it) and there is a lot going on in one of those. Here's a low-ish quality photo of the innars of a torpedo in the exhibit (not mine) https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/1jxk7k/u505_torpedo_at_the_museum_of_science_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/1jxk7k... Specifically in that thread these photos https://imgur.com/a/zNry7 https://imgur.com/a/zNry7 Sadly my photos from last year aren't any better, the cavern that U-505 is in has terrible lighting for photography. I was quite surprised by the amount of gears, tubes, segments, weights, etc inside one. Even the amount of batteries initially caught me off guard because I'm used to thinking in modern lithium batteries and not lead acid. I think that is a G7e torpedo above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e_torpedo

MrZander 7y ago
Wow, that is incredible. I had no idea they were that complex, or even that big.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  The length was a bit hard to accept. Later I started looking into torpedoes and there are some real monsters that have existed, the Japanese Type 93 used in WWII is almost 30 feet long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo . The more modern Russian Type 65 is roughly the same size as the Type 93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_65_torpedo Russia also has that 'Poseidon' unmanned mini sub that's basically the nuclear powered sub version of a UAV that's something like 65 feet long and is believed to be able to be launched from another sub like a torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...
  - rmattes 7y ago
    If you're into this stuff and ever in the Seattle area I recommend visiting the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport. They have a good collection of torpedoes on display, including a Japanese Kaiten manned torpedo. http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org http://www.navalunderseamuseum.org
csours 7y ago
If something is complicated, it probably needs more testing. Unfortunately, this was not done well for early US torpedos, mostly due to costs and overconfidence.

president 7y ago

There have been similar concerns about the US nuclear arsenal which are decades old and aging.

quotemstr 7y ago
Which is why the nuclear test ban is, IMHO, a bad idea. A nuclear deterrent must be credible to be effective. If an adversary comes to believe that, say, 80% of our warheads are duds and most of theirs work, the logic of retaliation may come to favor a first strike.
- mmhsieh 7y ago
  The logic behind test bans (in conjunction with numerical caps on warheads) is to create uncertainty in the reliability of one's own arsenal to discourage either side from contemplating a first-strike.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    I'm not sure about that. What if you're convinced that your brilliant scientists have created working warheads while you think the enemy's dolts haven't been able to keep their arsenal working? What if your enemy thinks the same thing in reverse? I think there's always a temptation to overestimate one's own capability and underestimate the sophistication of others.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

rocketpastsix 7y ago

They talk about it in the movie "Midway" (2019). It's definitely one of those things a lot of people thought was embellished to make the incoming battle of Midway look more drastic. However it was absolutely true. Without the dive bombers and code breaking they were able to do in the lead up Midway would have been a disaster for the Americans.

DuskStar 7y ago
Ehhh. There's a lot of people that seem to think that Midway would have been a disaster for the US if they lost, but there's not much reason behind this. The only thing the US was really risking that had a significant strategic impact were the carriers - if the island of Midway fell it would have been essentially unsupportable by Japanese forces (being far past Japan's supply lines, when Japan was already facing logistical issues, and within B-17 range of bases in Hawaii) and even the carriers weren't absolutely critical must-not-lose assets for the US like they were for Japan. (The US commissioned 8 carriers in the year following Midway - four Essex class fleet carriers and four Independence class light carriers) Incidentally, this is part of why Midway was such a huge strategic blunder for the Japanese forces - it risked 2/3rds of their carriers for minimal gain. If Midway fell, it would have extended the war another few months. But I'm not sure that that really qualifies as a disaster.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  > The only thing the US was really risking that had a significant strategic impact were the carriers Yeah, that thing Japan bombed Pearl Harbor over....
  - Evil_Saint 7y ago
    They bombed Pearl Harbor knowing that no carriers were docked there at the time. American carriers were not the main objective of the attack. You have to realize carriers were relatively new and not a known commodity like they are today.
    - 7y ago

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

> Two completely different devices, each responsible for checking the other, deviated identically for vastly different reasons. Happens frequently. “The tests are broken but I’m positive the software is correct so I’m going to fix the tests”

Armisael16 7y ago
That isn’t at all what happened.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
That's one reason I hate complexity in tests. Your tests have to be dumb enough that you are 99% sure the code under test is at fault.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  By definition, tests have to be more complex than the underlying code. The test have to setup the conditions, execute the action and validate it. Don't confuse complexity with shitty unreliable tests (timing-based tests)
  - penagwin 7y ago
    Depends on the type of test. What you guys are talking about are unit tests, and are designed to test individual methods/functions. You write a separate test for each one. There's other types of testing, integration tests sound like what you are both complaining about. Integration tests test the interaction between components of a system, and are thus far more complex and likely to break as you're developing (which is a huge pain). However integration tests have their place - just because the function works doesn't mean it's being called from the web client correctly.
    - cryptonector 7y ago
      But you also have to test the whole system.

coachtrotz 7y ago

The WWII in Color series on Netflix has a Midway episode in which they indicate a 90% failure rate of the torpedoes to explode. The article says 70 percent rate but either way its pretty unreliable.

stcredzero 7y ago

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — The Department of Energy said tonight that approximately three‐quarters of the A‐1 model Polaris nuclear warheads deployed on submarines in the mid‐1960's were probably “duds” because of mechanical defects. https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris-missile-had-defects-scientists-at-government-labs.html https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/02/archives/early-polaris-mi... To be fair, the Japanese had really good torpedos at the start of WWII, but there were other things which were just as unproven and wonky. For one, the proposed tactic of letting battleship shells fall short, to target enemy ships underwater, was pretty much useless. (Come to think of it, the initial performance of Sidewinder missiles in Vietnam was another example of this sort of military equipment failure.)

Smoosh 7y ago
Another example is when the M16 rifle was first introduced in the Vietnam War, it was unreliable due to fouling.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  This was prominently shown in the first Vietkong game, including having to use just 20 round clips when using it to reduce the chance of fouling happening. Quite a nice touch.
  - toomanybeersies 7y ago
    I don't think that 20 round magazines were used to reduce fouling and the chance of misfires. It was just the standard magazine capacity of the time.
- chiph 7y ago
  That was the Army's fault. They changed the powder from the one specified by Colt and the Air Force. They didn't require the troops to clean their weapons (wtf?), and the Ordnance Corps desperately wanted the M-16 to be a lighter M-14. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-...

rshnotsecure 7y ago

It’s very likely that the torpedoes did not work for the whole war really. It sometimes is scary to think about all the complaints sub commanders put in, only to be dismissed by the Department of the Navy as excuses for bad leadership or tactics. I get that you have to take this line sometimes but still... That being said it should be noted US Naval strategy has never particularly relied on subs or been that great at it. This has always fallen to the Eurasian powers such as Germany, Russia, and China/Japan. Nothing has been downed by a torpedo in actual combat for the last 75 years, so realize that there are so many unknowns today in submarine warfare that you don’t see in say land warfare. That being said it looks like Underwater Unmanned Autonamous Drones is where sub warfare is heading. Supposedly China is way ahead of the pack here much like they are in the drone space (supposedly again) as well. The 2016 capture of a US Navy UUAV really was not good for the USA and marked a shift in the balance of power.

wayanon 7y ago
Belgrano?
matthewmorgan 7y ago
HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano with torpedoes
- DuskStar 7y ago
  With a torpedo introduced to service in 1927, though. She avoided using her homing torpedoes (the Mark 24 Tigerfish) due to fears that they were unreliable.
zentiggr 7y ago
> It’s very likely that the torpedoes did not work for the whole war really. The patrol reports of each sub detail pretty well what shots were taken and after the fixes in '42 and early '43, the hit percentages rose dramatically... 1944 and 1945 were very good hunting times for US subs in the Pacific. They sank an amazing number of targets in a very short time. (Former US submariner and very amateur military historian.)

jandrese 7y ago

> Because of this logistics fiasco, veteran submariner and historian Paul Schratz said he ‘was only one of many frustrated submariners who thought it a violation of New Mexico scenery to test the A-bomb at Alamagordo when the naval torpedo station was available.’ LOL. Another interesting fact about the US torpedoes is that they were slow by WWII standards, especially compared to the Japanese torpedoes. This is normally a fairly bad flaw because it gives the enemy ship more time to dodge the torpedo, however in the Battle off Samar it turned out to be an advantage as they allowed the torpedoes fired by a tiny destroyer managed to scare the mighty battleship Yamato away from the battle for quite a long time because the torpedoes took so long to arrive that the Yamato was well out of position once they finally missed.

m4rtink 7y ago
It's important to note that the torpedoes Japanese generally used we powered by compressed pure oxygen, making them faster & giving them more range. But it also turned them into even bigger explosion hazard than normal torpedoes when the ship caring them is hit. As a result many Japanese ships are documented going down after what would normally be minor hits due to their oxygen torpedoes exploding and causing massive damage.
- flukus 7y ago
  I wonder what the breakdown is on overall effectiveness, sometimes you can get some very perverse results. Kamikaze attacks for instance resulted in less pilots killed per damage dealt than traditional attacks even though attacks were 100% fatal, here's a good video breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqwDvxLVZII https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqwDvxLVZII
- dralley 7y ago
  Why pure oxygen?
  - m4rtink 7y ago
    More energy stored in the same volume air tank. With normal air used by conventional torpedoes, you get just 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen, which is not useful for combustion. I think I might need to clarify - we are talking about a torpedo that is driven by combustion engine. It carries some sort of fuel and because it is under water, it needs to provide it's own oxidizer, which is where the high pressure pure oxygen comes in. Also, unlike when using normal air, it should be possible for the combustion engine to be more powerful while being smaller, due to the more energetic reaction. Also the exhaust gasses don't contain nitrogen, which is apparently visible as a noticeable bubble trail, which might result in your target noticing the torpedo and dogging. For more detail, see the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo

zepearl 7y ago

> Maneuvering as close to a 90-degree track as possible, the submarine fired three torpedoes against the rock cliffs. The first two exploded, but the third threw up the familiar geyser of compressed air and water. Divers carefully retrieved the activated yet unexploded torpedo. The valuable dud was then hauled back to Pearl Harbor for examination. Damn, for me any person who deals with any kind of unexploded ordnance is (as well) a hero.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago

When I was a child, I played a DOS game called Silent Hunter I. Basically, it's a submarine warfare game which you play as a U.S. Navy submarine in World War II, cursing the Pacific Ocean and attacks Japanese warships. When playing the game, I was extremely frustrated about the Mark XIV torpedo onboard - After going through the painstaking process of calculating the projectile, hitting the fire button, I would watch the stopwatch and hoping for the best that the target won't change its course... finally it was the time... nothing! For every five fires or so, there would be one or two torpedoes that never explode - when you need it the most. I was not playing the "hard" mode, it happens even in a "moderate" difficulty setting. I thought the game developers were making it unreasonable. And a few years later, I learned from a history book about the early unreliability of the torpedoes, and realized the torpedoes in the game were an accurate and realistic depiction of its historical performance. Kudos to the game developers. Another tool in the game I felt strange was the "Torpedo Data Computer", which is something that you can simply enter the bearing, speed, etc., of your target via its tuning dials, and the machine automatically calculates the firing position for you. I thought it was just the hand-waving of the game developers to make the game more playable while making it unrealistic - why would a computer even exist in the 1940s? I believed it was all pencil-and-paper. Later I learned it was real as well - totally mind-blowing. When I was a kid, I had no idea about the sophisticated historical mechanical fire control computers in the 1930s-1940s. There is a Hacker News submission of the documentation of the computer. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12785113

leoc 7y ago
Here are a few fun videos related to this. A 1943 USAF documentary about ground-based anti-aircraft fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPNMqVi2E A short YouTube documentary about the failure of the German super-battleship Bismarck's anti-aircraft gunnery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTO3JagV8gE In fact the Germans had been working quite seriously on guided surface-to-air missiles during WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lsh0BJGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lsh0BJGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Q92V5hK-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Q92V5hK-c

brazzy 7y ago

Previous HN discussion about a different article (focusing on politics and very superficial concerning the actual problems) about the same subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665422

gadders 7y ago

If you're fans of alternative history fiction, the Destroyermen [1] series touches on the torpedo issues as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyermen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyermen