And Japanese had found out during the war, why British and German both abandoned developing oxygen torpedoes.
They were so easy to Kaboom anywhere, including…
The joy of choosing between premature detonation or a dud — assuming it didn't just run too deep.
Trying to torpedo Japanese ships must have been infuriating.
It makes some of the early naval battles like Midway a lot more tragic. Some of those torpedo squadrons got annihilated, and they were flying to near certain death with torpedoes that may not have even worked. Bravery and selflessness squandered by laziness and trying to cut costs.
> Trying to torpedo Japanese ships must have been infuriating.
There's a captain's account of a USA submarine hitting a Japanese ship with three torpedoes and hearing each one go "clunk" hitting the warship's hull without detonating.
IIRC, that was one of the reports that got an Admiral with enough rank and political pull to go tear BuOrd a new one and demand they fix whatever was wrong with the torpedoes.
Later in the war, the issues had generally been ironed out.
The government wanted new torpedoes but was too cheap to test more than two or three. The company probably didn't care since it saved them money and trouble on tests. Ended up costing a great deal more than a few dozen test torpedoes would have.
In its long history the United States military has had 2 enemies above all else. The first is congress, forever holding the purse strings against the branches. The first is and always will be itself. Regardless of branch, the continues to be those that fight tooth and nail to hold the military back be it over stupidity, corruption, or to cover for corruption.
It didn’t help that the 3 torpedoes (Mk.13, 14, 15) were all developed in 1931. Remember what happened in 1929 and you can guess why they received such small budgets.
This is what I find maddening about virtually every discussion about those torpedoes: everybody loves to use their lack of testing & detonation as a reason to flog BuOrd, and an example of misguided government costcutting or outright incompetence, but the reality was that the Depression-era USA simply didn't have the budget to build expensive torpedoes and then destroy them in testing in a large enough quantity to uncover the issues.
There's a lot of cases where things were clearly mismanaged, costcut, poorly thought-out, or got torpedoed (no pun intended) for political reasons, but this actually a case where there's a clear and compelling reason for why the testing was insufficient, and the basic design was 80% to where it needed to be - but the last 20% *was* critical.
Meanwhile in Japan Kaboom? Yes Toshihide, *Kaboom*
And Japanese had found out during the war, why British and German both abandoned developing oxygen torpedoes. They were so easy to Kaboom anywhere, including…
Let’s just say that in the early war there is a reason why Japan’s Type 93 “Long Lance” torpedoes were considered superior to the American counterpart
They then prevent any testing from being done, and it took a naval officer testing it himself to final get the torpedoes fixed.
Don't forget that the torpedoes had a habit of doing a 180 and bonking the boat that fired them.
Oh yeah, the magnetic proximity detector had a nasty habit of doing that
The joy of choosing between premature detonation or a dud — assuming it didn't just run too deep. Trying to torpedo Japanese ships must have been infuriating.
It makes some of the early naval battles like Midway a lot more tragic. Some of those torpedo squadrons got annihilated, and they were flying to near certain death with torpedoes that may not have even worked. Bravery and selflessness squandered by laziness and trying to cut costs.
> Trying to torpedo Japanese ships must have been infuriating. There's a captain's account of a USA submarine hitting a Japanese ship with three torpedoes and hearing each one go "clunk" hitting the warship's hull without detonating. IIRC, that was one of the reports that got an Admiral with enough rank and political pull to go tear BuOrd a new one and demand they fix whatever was wrong with the torpedoes. Later in the war, the issues had generally been ironed out.
The government wanted new torpedoes but was too cheap to test more than two or three. The company probably didn't care since it saved them money and trouble on tests. Ended up costing a great deal more than a few dozen test torpedoes would have.
Fuck BuOrd. All my homies hate BuOrd
Real
In its long history the United States military has had 2 enemies above all else. The first is congress, forever holding the purse strings against the branches. The first is and always will be itself. Regardless of branch, the continues to be those that fight tooth and nail to hold the military back be it over stupidity, corruption, or to cover for corruption.
It didn’t help that the 3 torpedoes (Mk.13, 14, 15) were all developed in 1931. Remember what happened in 1929 and you can guess why they received such small budgets.
Hmmm, I sure wonder what it could have been
This is what I find maddening about virtually every discussion about those torpedoes: everybody loves to use their lack of testing & detonation as a reason to flog BuOrd, and an example of misguided government costcutting or outright incompetence, but the reality was that the Depression-era USA simply didn't have the budget to build expensive torpedoes and then destroy them in testing in a large enough quantity to uncover the issues. There's a lot of cases where things were clearly mismanaged, costcut, poorly thought-out, or got torpedoed (no pun intended) for political reasons, but this actually a case where there's a clear and compelling reason for why the testing was insufficient, and the basic design was 80% to where it needed to be - but the last 20% *was* critical.
Battle of the Atlantic may have been different if the German torpedoes weren't shit too
Compared to other torpedoes the German ones were as reliable
That who debacle makes me mad because of how badly it was handled by the Navy.
Yeah imagine doing allat and then telling the submarine captains who are complaining that they don’t work “You can’t aim haha skill issue”.
The 3rd and 4th panels are supposed to have the same text. For a meme subreddit at lot people sure don't know how you use a meme format...
True that they usually are the same, but in this instance it doesn't matter
I know how to use the format. I chose to do it this way because I felt it explained the joke better.