Submarine!

[HawkerHurricane]

95% of this is from memory. Any innaccuracies are not intentional, and may represent poor memory OR out of date data.

The first "successful" military use of a was the CSS Hunley, which sunk the USS Housatonic. Successful is in quotation marks because Hunley didn't survive the attack, killing her 8 man crew. During Hunley's career, she killed 32 of her crewmen; her attack on Housatonic killed 5.

Submarines didn't takeoff as a military weapon until the invention of the self propelled torpedo. And the reason why was the battleship. Sinking a battleship required a battleship; battleships were expensive, a less expensive way to beat battleships was needed. After the self propelled torpedo (just torpedo from now on) was invented a way to get it into range was needed. Battleship guns had ranges measured in miles, a torpedo was lucky to go a thousand yards. Two solutions to the problem were tried...

First, speed. A small, fast ship, armed with 8-12 torpedoes was built. The 'Torpedo Boat' was supposed to go racing into torpedo range, launch its fish, then flee... it worked better in theory than reality. In an effort to stop the torpedo boat, the British navy made a small ship, just as fast, armed with many small fast firing guns, and called it by the imaginative name "Torpedo Boat Destroyer". This was shortened to just "Tin Can".

The second solution was stealth. It's hard to sneak up on something on the surface of the water, so, go under the surface.

More to follow

[Garnet]

*settles in, with popcorn*

[Seeker630]

Originally Posted by HawkerHurricane

95% of this is from memory. Any innaccuracies are not intentional, and may represent poor memory OR out of date data.

The first "successful" military use of a was the CSS Hunley, which sunk the USS Housatonic. Successful is in quotation marks because Hunley didn't survive the attack, killing her 8 man crew. During Hunley's career, she killed 32 of her crewmen; her attack on Housatonic killed 5.

Submarines didn't takeoff as a military weapon until the invention of the self propelled torpedo. And the reason why was the battleship. Sinking a battleship required a battleship; battleships were expensive, a less expensive way to beat battleships was needed. After the self propelled torpedo (just torpedo from now on) was invented a way to get it into range was needed. Battleship guns had ranges measured in miles, a torpedo was lucky to go a thousand yards. Two solutions to the problem were tried...

First, speed. A small, fast ship, armed with 8-12 torpedoes was built. The 'Torpedo Boat' was supposed to go racing into torpedo range, launch its fish, then flee... it worked better in theory than reality. In an effort to stop the torpedo boat, the British navy made a small ship, just as fast, armed with many small fast firing guns, and called it by the imaginative name "Torpedo Boat Destroyer". This was shortened to just "Tin Can".

The second solution was stealth. It's hard to sneak up on something on the surface of the water, so, go under the surface.

More to follow

Yes the Hunley was successful in only a very pyrich sort of way. But wasn't there an earlier one----a one-man submersible-----invented by an Englishman? I can't remember his name now. I don't recall if it was ever used in an actual engagement. It was human powered. (Bushnell?)

And the term "Torpedo" was originally used to describe explosives delivered on the end of a "spar"-----a long stick on the prow of a surface vessel designed to stick the fucking thing to the side of an enemy ship and then retreat (if the boat hadn't been shot to bits by then).

I think in the beginning of the American Civil War, the same term was also used to describe what was later to be designated as a static mine.

[HawkerHurricane]

Bushnell built the "Turtle" for the American Army during the Revolutionary war. It failed to attach a mine to the hull of a British warship in New York harbor, but escaped with it's one man crew. It was human powered, as was Hunley.
Torpedoes were originally what we call mines. "Spar Torpedoes" would be a "mine on a stick".

[HawkerHurricane]

The first 'successful' submarine designs were short ranged, slow, and only carried a handful of torpedoes. They did more to "establish the concept" than accomplish anything useful. Submarines got larger, faster, and better armed. During the First World War, submarines didn't do well against battleships... but did show a great deal of success against merchant ships as a 'commerce raider'. Submarines caused great stress in England in thier efforts to 'starve England out'... and enough anger in the U.S. to lead up to American entry into the war.

After the war, England got language put into the Versaille Treaty forbidding the Germans from 'ever building submarines'. This prevented German submarine construction for almost 15 years. A similar attempt by the English to ban submarines for everyone in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 failed; everyone but the English wanted submarines and weren't willing to give them up.

[Gurdur]

Interestingly though, the Japanese never used theirs well 1941 onwards, and seemed to use them mainly as supply vessels. Bit of a waste from their POV, really.

[Seeker630]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

Interestingly though, the Japanese never used theirs well 1941 onwards, and seemed to use them mainly as supply vessels. Bit of a waste from their POV, really.

Except you couldn't say that to the poor bastards on the U.S.S. Indiannapolis. It was a Japanese sub that sank them, and left the poor fuckers to the sharks. Bloody hell I can't imagine dying like that.

[HawkerHurricane]

You've gotten ahead of me, I'm still in the 1920's.
The Japanese Naval Doctrine said that enemy warships were much more important than merchant and supply vessels. The the Japanese, who really had some good submarines, misused them horribly.
The other side of the same doctrine said that escorting your own merchant ships and supply vessels was unimportant, since real warriors wouldn't attack them, and an enemy who weren't real warriors would be easily beaten.

[Seeker630]

Not only that, but from Pearl Harbor on------there really were few merchant marine targets for the Japanese subs-----they really were restircted to U.S., Australian and British war vessels for the most part. Also, they couldn't put out the prodigious numbers we did----like the Gato class boats. The U.S. Navy's sub flotilla was murderous on both the Japanese merchant and naval fleets, but especially the merchant.

At least once they got the damned torpedo scandal taken care of.

For those of you unfamiliar with it--------in the first year and a half or so of the Pacific campaign, U.S. submarines were plagued with a very high rate of torpedo failures. The U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordinance stubbornly refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with the torpedos, and insisted that the submarine commanders were doing something wrong using them.

But after an exhaustive series of tests, it was finally discovered that the detonators were faulty, and the damned thing would frequently hit an enemy ship and just not explode, or the gyroscopic mechanism that regulated the depth of the torpedo's run would go wrong, and the thing would pass hamlessly under the target at the wrong depth. On several occasions, it went so badly that the torpedo would go haywire and loop around backwards towards the sub that had fired it.

[HawkerHurricane]

It took so long to settle the "Torpedo Scandal" in part because the officer who had approved the torpedo design (the Mk. 14) was in Commander (all) Submarines, Pacific Fleet (ComSubPac). He 'knew' that there was nothing wrong with the torpedoes that he had approved, since it would ruin his reputation if there was something wrong...
These were torpedoes with magnetic detonators. Essentially, they were proximity warheads designed to go off while passing under the enemy's ships keel. The magnetic detonators didn't work properly (the technology wasn't there). Sub Captains figured this out, and began disabling the magnetic detonators and going for impact detonation. But the impact detonator's firing pin was made out of scrap aluminum; when it hit the steel hull of a ship the pin would often shatter, failing to detonate the warhead.
Amazingly enough, the problem was solved by sub commanders in Australia before the 'official' solution was noted... seems that ComSubPac was in Pearl Harbor, where he could 'keep an eye' on sub commanders and relieve them if they modified the torpedoes with steel firing pins.
Oh, the problem of the depth setting turned out to be the simple fact that the torpedoes were initially tested off of Cap Cod, Massachussets. The water was not as salty and colder than the water off of the Solomon Islands where the problem was first noticed. The Earth's magnetic field was different there, too, but that was less of a problem than the simple fact the magnetic detonator didn't work as advertised anyway. A perfect example of "Vaporware": a piece of equipment that works in the brocure but not in real life.

[Seeker630]

Hey ---not to derail the thread-------but how are you doing in regards to half the state being on fire in your area? My sister just told me a while ago that our older 1st cousin, who lives in La Mesa, is surrounded by fire, but nothing of iminent danger to him yet.

And yeah I had forgotten the part about the magnetic detonators. I remember there was a wartime movie made about the subject-----Fred Mac Murray played the lead role. I don't know how accurate it is---it's been years since I last saw it.

As far as you know, was it only the Mk 14 that had the problems? Not others fired by PT boats or destroyers, or dropped by aricraft?

[HawkerHurricane]

About the fire... Me and immediate family are fine. One Bro-in-Law had to evacuate, but it looks like his home is safe.

About torpedoes...
Mk. 14's had the magnetic detonator, and someone has checked out the book "Victory at Sea" by Nofi and Dunnigan that had the cool charts in it. So, from memory...

Aircraft torpedoes (and PT boats used the same ones) were smaller and pre-set to depth. Unable to adjust the depth to the target, they were set to run fairly shallow so to be able to hit whatever target that presented itself. So, they used contact detonators. They still had major problems (the fact that the torpedoes would explode if they hit the water too fast), but not with detonators.
Destroyer torpedoes were varients on the Mk. 14, but when the problem was noticed the magnetic detonator was disconnected and the aluminum firing pin replaced with steel. Destroyer commanders didn't have a idiot boss telling them not to make the changes... plus, destroyers have thier own machine shop and could make 'field' modifications easily. Add in that destroyers didn't get to use thier torpedoes as often as subs, and it wasn't as big of a problem.

Did the movie you remember have them testing detonators with a crane, lifting up torpedoes and dropping them to see if the detonators would work (with no warhead, of course)?

[Seeker630]

Yeah that was the film. I think Fred Mac Murray played the lead----but I could be wrong on that-----it's been that long since I last saw it. I can't remember the title of it either.

[HawkerHurricane]

On American Torpedoes, WW2 issue...

Mk. 10: Submarine torpedo, obsolete, only used by "Old S" class subs that couldn't take the larger Mk. 14. Contact detonated, small warhead.

Mk. 13: Aircraft torpedo, also used by PT boats. Contact detonated, short ranged, limited by speed (Under 110mph) and altitude (Under 100 ft). If dropped to fast, would detonate when it hit the water; if dropped from too high it wouldn't level off and run straight down.

Mk. 14: Submarine Torpedo.

Mk. 15: Surface Torpedo used by destroyers. Contact detonated, larger, longer ranged, bigger warhead than Mk. 14.

Mk. 18: Airborne torpedo with homing guidance. Not successful.

Mk. 20: Airborne torpedo with homing guidance. Very successful, used for ASW, had 30% accuracy rate.

Mk. 22: Modified Mk. 20 for submarine use. Used to sink/cripple Japanese escorts. Not likely to sink a destroyer, but it would blow the prop off one. 40% accuracy rate.

And I can't find a Fred MacMurray film where he's on a sub. "The Caine Mutiny" has him on a DMS. He plays the bad guy.

[Shake]

On a personal note, I was in Charleston, SC when they raised the Hunley. It was the talk of the town for a while. Decided I didn't need to pay the $30 for a few minutes of looking at it though. I might have that cost wrong, but I remember it being pricey for the amount of time they allowed you to look at it.

[Shake]

PS. funny sub movie.

[Seeker630]

Originally Posted by Shake

PS. funny sub movie.

I can't remember the title off hand, but there was one even funnier with Kelsey Grammer playing the lead role. Only a few years ago ----so it's not that old.

[Master Taran]

Down Periscope.

[HawkerHurricane]

Originally Posted by Shake

PS. funny sub movie.

Based on a true story!

USS Seadragon was in Manila drydock when the war started. Desperate to get out to sea, they slapped light grey paint over the still wet red lead paint, and it came out pink(ish). Seadragon was later used to evacuate nurses from Corrigidor. The "Sunk a truck" incident is based on a sub using modified torpedoes to blow up a railway bridge.

"Loosely based" I should say.