Posted on 12/17/2021 9:18:58 AM PST by CIB-173RDABN
Tells how submarines crippled Japan in WWII (my observation shows how China could also be crippled if they start a war).
With torpedoes?................
Don’t give China any ideas. Oh wait…too late.
That’s funny. I remember that our MK13 torpedoes had a 64% fail rate and would more often than not bounce off the target on a direct hit. The issues weren’t resolved until almost the end of the war. I seem to remember that it was our air power that did the heavy lifting in crippling Japan’s war effort.
The Mk-48 Mod 6 version.
WW II submariners had the highest death rate per capita of ANY branch/division of ANY of the military services.
The US Navy didn’t fix the torpedo issue until around early 1943. But once that was fixed, the Navy went after Japanese shipping so aggressively that by the summer of 1945, the Navy essentially ran out of enemy merchant ships to attack! They spent the last days of World War II sinking the occasional ferry ship in the Seto Inland Sea.
I watched this video yesterday and recommend it for the historical content.
Do not know how well it would play out today given the anti-sub capabilities of our opponents.
Our torpedoes were sh*t for the first couple years. More often than not they did not explode.
The US was better at unrestricted submarine warfare than the Germans, and the Japanese were not as good at anti-submarine warfare as the Allies...
If we’d had better torpedoes...
All valid points, however the point I was trying to make is that our aircraft (late war torpedo bombers in particular) were doing the brunt of the work. Our subs were too few in number and not as economical as sending wing after wing or fighter/bombers.
Mines, more than likely.
The videos discusses the problem with the torpedoes.
Looking back in hindsight, after we joined World War II we might should have focused only on Germany, not just having a "Germany first" policy but we might should have completely ignored Japan for a while and let them destroy China before we bombed Japan enough to force them to surrender. It's ironic that the country we saved from Japan is probably our #1 nemesis today, while Japan is one of our BFF's.
Our torpedoes were sh*t for the first couple years. More often than not they did not explode.
_________
Our torpedoes had a multitude of problems, but the big one was that the torpedo was designed to run beneath the keel of the targeted ship and blow up beneath, thus breaking the back of the vessel and causing massive flooding. Striking the side of the vessel and exploding on impact was thought to be less effective (particularly against capital ships with torpedo blisters).
“With torpedoes?................”
When they detonated.
We should have listened to Heddy LaMarr and had radio guided torpedos.
This is Free Republic where nobody clicks the link to source material before posting on it. lol
Human nature never changes.
Shut up, Stepanak.
Clever crews disabled the magnetic detonators and stuck with contact. THOSE worked ... when they hit.
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