"IF you want to fill 'em with air, bomb 'em; if you want to fill 'em with water, torpedo 'em." Such was the succinct appraisal of the torpedo made by a veteran pilot. And the superiority he recognized over bombs could be extended to cover the wide range of projectiles, for no weapon in the war proved half as destructive to enemy capital ships as the "fish." Yet for every complimentary comment, a host of damning ones echoed back from the war zones. United States torpedoes were variously described as running too deep, not exploding, exploding too soon, or not packing enough punch when they did explode.
The indictment unfolded point by point during the first 2 years of war. As each defect was exposed, the morale of the submariners who risked their lives to take the war to the enemy suffered, the enemy was given further respite from the full potential of torpedo warfare, and the Bureau of Ordnance was faced with the task of uncovering and correcting the mistakes of peacetime. Considering the extreme complexity of torpedoes, the job would have been a challenge under almost any circumstances, and the problem was compounded by the Bureau's reluctance to accept the fleet evaluation of its weapons. This reluctance was born not of any petty attempts to cover past errors, but from misplaced confidence in its own past work. And that confidence was occasionally bolstered even when the inadequacies of torpedoes were being exposed, because the evidence that came in from fleet commands was often contradictory.
