SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
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And as I showed in the next post: no, the Mark 14 had several major problems, not just one.
Changing Destiny (Kancolle)
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Sure it had problems but the Duds problem is the one that renders the torpedo worthless. I'm not even going to argue that one fix would turn them into great torpedoes but it'd give them something to work with. The submariners clearly figured out how to score hits as at least one fired off every torpedo bar 1 and took the last one back to Hawaii for testing. He hit with most of his torpedoes but not 1 of them detonated and the only damage he did was by 1 dud shearing the enemies rudder off.
I'd say the circular run problem is also something that renders them nigh worthless.
Here here.
No one in the military wants a weapon that will kill them.
If the Torps do a circle run during the exercise, that admiral who got his star cause of them will be losing said star cause he will have no less than four different admirals on his ass.
Lucky for us it will only take six months to fix most of the problems with the torps or come out with field fixes for the crew to do.
SaltyWaffles
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There were multiple reasons why torpedoes would fail to properly detonate on target, not just one.
And frankly, you're missing the point entirely. There were four major problems. Any one of them would be grounds to consider the weapon a severe failure. The fact is, submarine commanders had to figure out these problems on their own, through trial and error, and even then, they got some degrees of false positives in their attempted workarounds.
The issue of the torpedoes running deeper than they were set to caused tons of misses. Setting them to run at 0 depth helped somewhat, but led to a bunch of misfires and premature detonations because they risked surfacing in choppy/wavy seas.
And circular runs are a horrendous problem with no excuse, as well as a known, simple solution. When some of your own subs are getting sunk by their own weapons, you cannot just say that "duds" are the only major problem.
Not quite. It would still have the issue of the magnetic component causing premature detonations, misses, and other issues. But it would help, at least.
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Calm down and back off you're getting overly agressive with your responses.
You want the weapon to be perfect. As far as I'm concerned they are at war. Perfect is great but at least giving them something that goes bang is a start.
Yes the circular runs were more comon that other nations having circular runs. Looking it up though I find 30 reports from 1941-1945. It happens but it's nowhere near common unless they were hardly ever using torpedoes. Should it be fixed certainly.
The early detonations were from the magnetic fusing and nobody to my knowledge solved that with WW2 technology. The solution remains the same disable it.
Running deep is a problem but it's not the end of the world. Most ships have a draught of 9metres not 9 feet so you don't need to set it to 0 to score hits. It should still be solved and they will solve it once they test properly.
The duds though is from the numbers I've seen the biggest problem by far. There will still be duds after they fix it such is the nature of weapons but at least they can take it down by a huge amount with a small fix.
jwolfe_beta
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They weren't asking for perfection. They were asking for an weapon that functioned within the range of parameters given (which the Mk14 wasn't in any way shape or form). Glitches and problems are to be expected, but they are supposed to appear in the minority of the weapons produced.
Considering the sheer list and extent of the various glaring problems with the Mark 14, I find it hard to believe that it was tested to any real extent before being forced on the navy.
It wasn't tested. At all. That was the bloody problem.
jwolfe_beta
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Thanks. I know it was mentioned somewhere that the thing never was tested but couldn't find the quote again.
Still I have to wonder how the various Admirals etc are going to react when they find out just how bad the Mk14s are.
I imagine the people in BuOrds who championed the Mk. 14 series torps will either get a multi-rank demotion or "Other-Than-Honorable" Discharges (at best) with extreme prejudice.
jwolfe_beta
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Maybe, maybe not. From what I read they dragged their feet and threw up opposing 'evidence' constantly OTL when people where testing the things in the Pacific trying to make it look like operator error instead of design flaws. No real mention if the BuOrd ever admitted that the Mk14 was in truth a piece of garbage.
SaltyWaffles
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I'm sorry if you feel that way, but I think you're downplaying the problem--and the significance of it--quite a lot.
Circular runs are a big deal even when they don't happen terribly often, because simply knowing that any time you fire your torpedoes, they could circle around and kill YOU instead--with far too little warning--is terrifying and severely detrimental to any submariner's warfighting capability. Sub commanders are encouraged to be very aggressive, and their success often depends on this. Being aggressive becomes vastly harder when your own weapons could kill you whenever you use them.
To put this into perspective, it's like asking a battleship captain to enter a duel with another battleship despite knowing that there's a not-insignificant chance that any time he fires one of his main guns, the round could malfunction so catastrophically that it detonates the magazine and blows up the entire ship.
Are you saying that it isn't that big of a deal?
Hardly. They've got over a year to work on the problem before the war starts. I'm not expecting the torpedo to be perfect by then--any of them, really--but you're saying that they only need to fix one of the major problems with a given torpedo for it to be sufficient. I'm saying that this is definitely not the case at all. The Mark 13, especially, had many severe problems. The Mark 14 had at least two cripplingly severe problems--and a third problem (circular runs) that, while less severe in terms of its offensive potential, was still a horrendous and completely unacceptable problem from an ethical and military standpoint (it's also an easy fix).
If anything, the circular runs problem is the easiest to fix, since you can repeatedly test it out with dud (as in, with the detonator/fuze removed) torpedoes, as well as test out potential solutions for it.
It happened often enough. Remember, we're talking about submarines. If they fire a torpedo that already runs deeper than set, it's hard to notice it curving off its course if it isn't running all the way back around towards you.
Also, it's not just the Mark 14--the Mark 18 had the same problem. It stems from the same basic design flaw. And if you include the circular runs from the Mark 18, then you have at least two instances of US submarines being sunk by their own torpedoes with massive loss of life. It's important to note that a bunch of US sub losses are listed as "possibly due to a circular run of its own torpedo". It's extremely hard to ever know if a circular run was the cause of a sub being sunk, especially when there are often no survivors anyway.
Okay, and? It's still a major problem that needs to be fixed. It may be an easy solution, but it's still essential.
It's a bigger problem than you'd think. (Also, it's 10 feet, not 9.) Oceans are not perfectly level environments. And without having the chance to properly and thoroughly test the torpedo in live-fire exercises, they couldn't really know exactly how much deeper the torpedo was running than it was set to. So they set it to depth 0, which helped a bit, but still led to a bunch of premature detonations and misfires.
Also, the "running too deep" problem was something that happened just about all the time. It'd require fairly thorough testing in a variety of environments to nail down exactly what the problem is and how to correct the problem in the field--and when to do it by how much. So, while not exactly a fatal problem so long as it's discovered beforehand, it still takes time to even come up with a decent way to work around it, and it still substantially hampered the torpedo's effectiveness until it was fixed at the source.
Kind of? You'd need to fix the defective detonators, disable or remove the magnetic mechanism, and at least discover and quantify the false-depth problem before you'd get a decently effective torpedo. Discovering the last one is easy (so long as you bother to conduct real tests, either with the detonator removed or with a live-fire test), but quantifying it...not quite as much. Regardless, all three of those issues are a fairly easy fix; the main problem is that trouble-shooting the torps will be hard, because there are so many problems going on simultaneously that it's hard to narrow down what the specific problems even are.
The Deep problem was cause because the Dummy torps they used to test the depth finders didn't displace the same as torps with live ordnance.
@SaltyWaffles I disagree with you on the severity of the issues the great thing is that we don't need to agree. I don't really want to continue this in a fanfic thread where it's only tangentially related so I'd like to leave it at that. There were certainly problems though and they certainly can be fixed faster.
Actually because the depth gauge was in a different place then in the test ones.
The tes ones had the gauge in the front.
The real ones had it where the body tapered down which was a low pressure zone on the torp.
They never recalibrate it to take the low pressure into effect. Which cause the gauge to read as much as ten feet less then the torp was. So you set it for ten feet it run at twenty.
it was both Both the warhead on the test torps to set the gauges were filled with water.
from the wiki
The torpedo tended to run some ten feet (3 meters) too deep for several reasons. The first was that it was only tested with an exercise warhead filled with water to set the depth. However, the live warhead contained more mass than that, and it reached buoyancy equilibrium at a lower depth.[33] Also, the depth mechanism was designed prior to the warhead's charge being increased, making the torpedo even heavier overall. Furthermore, two depth testing devices used by NTS to verify results were both off by the same amount in the same direction, which compounded the problem. After hearing of the problem, most submarine skippers simply set their torpedoes' running depth to zero,[34] risking a broach. By August 1942, the faulty running depth situation was in hand and submarines were getting more hits with the Mark 14. However, curing the deep-running problem caused more prematures and duds, as more hits were being achieved. The number of sinkings did not rise.[35]
A more serious reason for the torpedoes running deep was hydrodynamic flow effect on the torpedo's depth sensor. The pressure tap for the torpedo had been placed in the rear cone section where the measured pressure would be substantially lower than hydrostatic depth while the torpedo was moving through the water. The torpedo's depth control engine was therefore given erroneously shallow depth indication and responded by trimming the torpedo to run deeper. This was finally addressed in the last half of 1943 by relocating the sensor point to the midbody of the torpedo where hydrodynamic effects were minimized.[36]
from the wiki
The torpedo tended to run some ten feet (3 meters) too deep for several reasons. The first was that it was only tested with an exercise warhead filled with water to set the depth. However, the live warhead contained more mass than that, and it reached buoyancy equilibrium at a lower depth.[33] Also, the depth mechanism was designed prior to the warhead's charge being increased, making the torpedo even heavier overall. Furthermore, two depth testing devices used by NTS to verify results were both off by the same amount in the same direction, which compounded the problem. After hearing of the problem, most submarine skippers simply set their torpedoes' running depth to zero,[34] risking a broach. By August 1942, the faulty running depth situation was in hand and submarines were getting more hits with the Mark 14. However, curing the deep-running problem caused more prematures and duds, as more hits were being achieved. The number of sinkings did not rise.[35]
A more serious reason for the torpedoes running deep was hydrodynamic flow effect on the torpedo's depth sensor. The pressure tap for the torpedo had been placed in the rear cone section where the measured pressure would be substantially lower than hydrostatic depth while the torpedo was moving through the water. The torpedo's depth control engine was therefore given erroneously shallow depth indication and responded by trimming the torpedo to run deeper. This was finally addressed in the last half of 1943 by relocating the sensor point to the midbody of the torpedo where hydrodynamic effects were minimized.[36]
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SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
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....I already posted that...sigh. Still, thanks for saving me the trouble of re-posting it.
Skywalker_T-65
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I will say all this discussion is quite enlightening. Thanks for that.
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@Skywalker_T-65, what are the odd's of Jame's family showing up and meeting the shipgirls only for dear old 'dad' to jump on his case about not being married to any of them?
SaltyWaffles
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You know, for all of his plans for dealing with Pearl Harbor, Thompson should be equally worried about how in the hell he's going to save the carriers from all being killed.
After all, only two of the battleships (three, if you count Utah) were irrecoverably sunk at Pearl. The carriers, on the other hand...only Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger survived the war. Saratoga was mauled by kamikazes so badly at Iwo Jima (and she was already outdated in an increasingly huge, modern carrier fleet) that she wasn't even repaired to combat status, and was instead converted to serve as a training carrier. Ranger served in the Atlantic the whole time, and thus had a far easier time of things. And Enterprise, even though she did survive the war and was combat-ready at the end of it, was mauled to near-death at least once. All the others died slow, painful deaths.
Hornet's must have been particularly agonizing. Hit by wave after wave of carrier strikes, rammed by two bombers-turned-kamizakes, torpedoed, and still managed to survive, albeit barely--she was dead in the water, slightly listing, and burning quite heavily. Enterprise and her escorts were forced to leave her behind. Still, damage control was looking good--the fires had been put under control, the flooding stopped--and she was even under tow for five knots...until another two small waves of bombers came and torpedoed her again. Fellow destroyers were forced to scuttle her, except the fucking torpedoes failed like always, so they resorted to shooting her to death with their five-inch guns...hundreds of times. And when the destroyers had to leave in the face of the incoming Japanese fleet, Hornet was still afloat. So Hornet, now completely empty save for corpses, was left behind entirely, still not being put out of her misery.
When they found her, the Japanese considered taking her as war prize, but decided she was too badly damaged to be worth it, and torpedoed her themselves, again. Only then did she sink.
It was particularly tragic, as this would be the last time the IJN would have enough skilled/veteran pilots to conduct their highly coordinated, massed airstrikes against carriers. The last two, smaller waves that attacked Hornet and doomed her were basically the last of Japan's elite naval aviators (though most of those two small waves returned safely, IIRC--the others were horrendously mauled).
Yorktown...similar story, really, except that she had been repaired from major damage in a rush job to get her into the upcoming battle at Midway. She bore the entirety of the Japanese carrier strikes, still survived (barely), damage control succeeded in saving her, only for a Japanese submarine to slip through the escorts (Enterprise and Hornet had to leave her behind in the face of the potentially advancing Japanese battleships at night) and torpedo both her and the destroyer providing Yorktown with power, dooming her.
Wasp was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine. Lexington died hard to Japanese carrier strikes at (IIRC) Coral Sea.
Langley was in the Philippines at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and she escaped to Australia. She was then put into the ill-fated ABDACOM force, and in early 1942, near Java, she was attacked by a Japanese airstrike and crippled. She was scuttled, as the other ships she was with had to leave her behind to escape further attacks. Not only that, the two ships that rescued her crew were later sunk, so most of them died.
And then there were a few escort/light carriers that were sunk throughout the war, too. Mainly by kamikazes, IIRC, though one was sunk by gunfire at Samar.
Only two battleships (and one former-battleship-turned-training-ship) were total losses throughout the war. Of the ships that were around at the time of Pearl Harbor, the carriers, destroyers, and cruisers suffered far more. Submarines took significant losses as well.
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Now, all that said, it might be a very fascinating butterfly effect if Thompson can save most (or all) of the battleships from suffering major damage at Pearl Harbor. If they're still around and operational, the Japanese carriers might actually prioritize the battleships over the American carriers--or at least split their attention between the two somewhat.
However...
Langley, in particular, is going to be hard to save. ABDACOM was pretty much doomed for a number of reasons, and Langley was more of a seaplane tender than a true carrier (her role was changed as she began to show her age). Maybe he could argue that she should be kept away from Java and ADBACOM because she'd be a big, vulnerable, tempting target with completely insufficient escort whilst operating in range of Japanese land-based aircraft, which her own aircraft would be powerless against (being floatplanes), and she'd be totally outclassed and doomed against Japanese fleet carriers, should even one show up. That she would be far better utilized as a scouting/recon (or ASW) platform attached to the other fleet carriers in the eastern Pacific, as per concentration of force. Hell, Langley would be far more useful as an ASW platform providing convoy escort/overwatch in the Atlantic than as a "please kill me" target with completely inadequate escort in Japan's backyard.
After all, only two of the battleships (three, if you count Utah) were irrecoverably sunk at Pearl. The carriers, on the other hand...only Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger survived the war. Saratoga was mauled by kamikazes so badly at Iwo Jima (and she was already outdated in an increasingly huge, modern carrier fleet) that she wasn't even repaired to combat status, and was instead converted to serve as a training carrier. Ranger served in the Atlantic the whole time, and thus had a far easier time of things. And Enterprise, even though she did survive the war and was combat-ready at the end of it, was mauled to near-death at least once. All the others died slow, painful deaths.
Hornet's must have been particularly agonizing. Hit by wave after wave of carrier strikes, rammed by two bombers-turned-kamizakes, torpedoed, and still managed to survive, albeit barely--she was dead in the water, slightly listing, and burning quite heavily. Enterprise and her escorts were forced to leave her behind. Still, damage control was looking good--the fires had been put under control, the flooding stopped--and she was even under tow for five knots...until another two small waves of bombers came and torpedoed her again. Fellow destroyers were forced to scuttle her, except the fucking torpedoes failed like always, so they resorted to shooting her to death with their five-inch guns...hundreds of times. And when the destroyers had to leave in the face of the incoming Japanese fleet, Hornet was still afloat. So Hornet, now completely empty save for corpses, was left behind entirely, still not being put out of her misery.
When they found her, the Japanese considered taking her as war prize, but decided she was too badly damaged to be worth it, and torpedoed her themselves, again. Only then did she sink.
It was particularly tragic, as this would be the last time the IJN would have enough skilled/veteran pilots to conduct their highly coordinated, massed airstrikes against carriers. The last two, smaller waves that attacked Hornet and doomed her were basically the last of Japan's elite naval aviators (though most of those two small waves returned safely, IIRC--the others were horrendously mauled).
Yorktown...similar story, really, except that she had been repaired from major damage in a rush job to get her into the upcoming battle at Midway. She bore the entirety of the Japanese carrier strikes, still survived (barely), damage control succeeded in saving her, only for a Japanese submarine to slip through the escorts (Enterprise and Hornet had to leave her behind in the face of the potentially advancing Japanese battleships at night) and torpedo both her and the destroyer providing Yorktown with power, dooming her.
Wasp was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine. Lexington died hard to Japanese carrier strikes at (IIRC) Coral Sea.
Langley was in the Philippines at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and she escaped to Australia. She was then put into the ill-fated ABDACOM force, and in early 1942, near Java, she was attacked by a Japanese airstrike and crippled. She was scuttled, as the other ships she was with had to leave her behind to escape further attacks. Not only that, the two ships that rescued her crew were later sunk, so most of them died.
And then there were a few escort/light carriers that were sunk throughout the war, too. Mainly by kamikazes, IIRC, though one was sunk by gunfire at Samar.
Only two battleships (and one former-battleship-turned-training-ship) were total losses throughout the war. Of the ships that were around at the time of Pearl Harbor, the carriers, destroyers, and cruisers suffered far more. Submarines took significant losses as well.
---
Now, all that said, it might be a very fascinating butterfly effect if Thompson can save most (or all) of the battleships from suffering major damage at Pearl Harbor. If they're still around and operational, the Japanese carriers might actually prioritize the battleships over the American carriers--or at least split their attention between the two somewhat.
However...
Langley, in particular, is going to be hard to save. ABDACOM was pretty much doomed for a number of reasons, and Langley was more of a seaplane tender than a true carrier (her role was changed as she began to show her age). Maybe he could argue that she should be kept away from Java and ADBACOM because she'd be a big, vulnerable, tempting target with completely insufficient escort whilst operating in range of Japanese land-based aircraft, which her own aircraft would be powerless against (being floatplanes), and she'd be totally outclassed and doomed against Japanese fleet carriers, should even one show up. That she would be far better utilized as a scouting/recon (or ASW) platform attached to the other fleet carriers in the eastern Pacific, as per concentration of force. Hell, Langley would be far more useful as an ASW platform providing convoy escort/overwatch in the Atlantic than as a "please kill me" target with completely inadequate escort in Japan's backyard.
Duzzit
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I will confess, I had actually thought that, if as Thompson thinks it might and I stress the might have something to do with them being the two most experienced anti-abyssal commanders.
Though who knows, Kongou would be ...quite different than the uptime one I'd imagine.
(Honestly though, I doubt the Abyssals had anything to do with stuff, or if they did all that happened was a copy of Thompson came over).
Nicholas
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Technically Langley wasn't a carrier anymore--she had been converted back into a seaplane tender--but yeah. And the Navy concluded that Ranger was too small to mount enough anti-aircraft armament to survive in the Pacific, hence she was kept in the Atlantic.
Still, some of them might be saved more easily: Yorktown might be saved if more destroyers had been kept around to protect her and drive the sub away, and Lex was lost because her crew forgot to secure a power generator which triggered the AvGas explosion.
But one carrier I am definitely concerned about--particularly given the butterflies are already making themselves felt--is Enterprise. Who was supposed to be in Pearl on December 7 if not for a rain squall and the need to refuel. If not for that squall, or if the attack came the next day or even that afternoon, Enterprise would have been right in the crosshairs of the Japanese fleet.
jwolfe_beta
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Remember that butterflies are starting to slowly pile up. There is nothing saying that the attack will occur on the 7th.
Skywalker_T-65
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All very true.
Though, I'll note that Thompson hasn't so much forgotten about the carriers or zeroed in on Ari and friends to the exclusion of all else. The problem is, and he knows this, that saving the carriers is a lot harder than saving the BBs. Or, perhaps more specifically, saving them from Pearl Harbor. There were specific reasons why the Japanese attacked when they did, and while Thompson knows butterflies could...butterfly...that away, it is still the absolute closest to a fixed date he can get.
The carriers? Butterflies mean that trying to save them from what sank them is not going to work well.
Yorktown: She got sunk by a lucky Japanese sub. But, that sub wouldn't have been in position to do so if she hadn't been so heavily damaged in the first place. Now, imagine, that instead of Yorktown being hit at Midway it was Enterprise. Or Hornet. Which could happen, because who says the formation will be the same?
Hornet: As above, she could sink at Midway instead. Failing that, the odds of the Solomon Campaign going the same are slim.
Lex: Bad luck on her part, and probably the easiest to avoid...presuming...she doesn't take more damage anyway.
Big E: Hoo boy...so many ways she could be sunk, that it isn't even funny. Her luck may or may not hold out, but James can hardly rely on that.
Wasp: Other than better ASW, what can be done here? Her design, by virtue of being a scaled-down Yorktown, has no real anti-torpedo protection. Any sub, hell any torp bomber, that hits her will likely kill her. Better damage control could help, but only so much.
And all of the above needs to be qualified with one thing. The Butterfly Effect.
There is no way for Thompson, especially as things are already changing, to say that 'Coral Sea will happen here and now' or 'Midway will happen right now!'. Things could change, and the events that lead to these battles would be gone. And trying to prepare to save the carriers from the specific ways they sank just went down the drain. How can you plan for the butterfly effect, after all?
In this case, by doing what he's doing. Pushing through 'new' tactics for the carriers- really, what they would have started doing mid-war anyway -and hoping it's enough. Improve that, improve AA guns and pilot training, improve DamCon...that's about all that can be done. He can still prepare for the specific days...but that may, or may not, be worth it.
That is why he's focusing so much on Pearl instead. It's the closest thing to a fixed situation our Admiral has, so he's focusing on it for now. He will work more with the carriers later on though. Especially considering Sara, and how close those two are.
SaltyWaffles
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Well, yeah. Of course. That goes without saying.
I was never implying that Thompson would need to (or be able to) prevent specific circumstances that caused the sinking of specific ships. The closest he could get to that would be with Langley, but that's about it.
I was just explaining exactly how much worse CV casualties were, compared to BB casualties, of the pre-war ships.
Besides, you already said that focusing on tactics, training/practice, and doctrine--outside of specific cases like the torpedoes--is just about the only reliably effective means of preparation he has beyond Pearl Harbor. Which I agree with.