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The Long Lance torpedo was far better than anything the Allies had, I believe even by the end of the war. (Certainly leagues ahead of the US's Mark 14 torpedo w
by jcranmer 5y ago
The Long Lance torpedo was far better than anything the Allies had, I believe even by the end of the war. (Certainly leagues ahead of the US's Mark 14 torpedo which had the minor defect of not working for several independent reasons). Japanese rangefinders were also I believe ahead of the American ones, and in general. In terms of tactics, Japanese night fighting doctrine was again far superior to anything the Allies had put together--witness the repeated mauling of the American fleets at Guadalcanal for how poorly the US fared in this regard in the early part of the war.
- sbierwagen 5y agoYou allude to this, but one of the reasons the Mark 14 didn't work was that they were clockwork masterpieces that were so expensive that the Navy didn't want to expend any of them in testing, and didn't do a single live-fire test! (It was the Great Depression, after all. Penny wise, pound foolish.) They proceeded to full-rate wartime production completely blind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo#Development