[buccaneer81]

Dec,1, 1941 Press release. US. to use new torpedo design.

Ironically, during the first two years of the Pacific war, hundreds, if not thousands of our torpedoes were duds.

[gcruse]

I just read about that a few weeks ago. One submarine sortie came back having fired all its fish at the Japs and every one of them was a dud. It must have sucked.

[Enchante]

That was one awful torpedo, which should have proved forever the great perils of insufficient testing of a weapon before deployment (damn, that was FDR's navy, I guess he should have been impeached!!):

http://www.historynet.com/air_sea/naval_weaponry/3037866.html?featured=y&c=y

[JSteff]

"hundreds, if not thousands of our torpedoes were duds"

... and cost hundreds, if not thousands of lives of our submariners. Meanwhile the Japaneses "long lance" torpedo had a terrific range that was about 3 times the U.S. torpedoes. It also had a larger war head than our torpedoes.

The Japanese had no qualms about testing which had begun in the 1930's.