Those Marvelous Tin Fish
The Great Torpedo Scandal of World War II
However, being a service made up of imperfect human beings, the USN occasionally falls flat on its face. Given the nature of what we are asked to do by the nation, a failure often results in tragedy for the sailors and the service. It is said that Naval Regulations are written in blood, with the inference being that real progress has a very high cost. The Navy prides itself on being able to learn from its mistakes and often it does. But bringing those lessons onboard sometimes only comes after tragedy. Several times over the decades needless and avoidable tragedy has occurred, and Ric and I can only sit back and shake our heads at the occasional stupidity of the service that otherwise has so much to be proud of.
On December 7, 1941 the United States Navy entered into combat embroiled in a scandal that it actually was not yet aware existed. The principal weapon of the submarine and adjunct weapons for destroyers and aircraft, the torpedo, was horribly flawed. The Mk 13, 14, and 15 torpedoes, developed by the Naval Torpedo Station Newport, Rhode Island during the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930's were finely crafted but deeply flawed weapons. Put into full production without being adequately tested the torpedo had numerous faults; they were of such a nature as to be difficult to find if not rigorously tested. Once the war started, alarming reports of torpedo malfunctions began to surface as misses began to rack up. The problems could be grouped into three major areas: deep running, erratic course keeping, and the complete failure of the Mk 6 exploder in either influence or contact mode. The leaders of the BuOrd and the technicians at NTS Newport steadfastly refused to believe anything was wrong with the weapons that they had developed. They blamed all of the faults on the operating forces and refused to do anything about it. Only when high level officers ordered field tests and put personal pressure on the Newport staff did they finally admit that there were problems. It took until the summer of 1943 before the issues with the torpedoes were corrected.
The reasons that this supremely frustrating and unforgivable situation occurred are numerous and complex. The scandal has been covered extensively by numerous authors: Clay Blair, W.J. Holmes, Theodore Roscoe, and Edward Beach have all covered the topic extensively and have been able to drill down to the root causes. In addition, the webmasters can recommend the following web articles on the scandal:
• The Great Torpedo Scandal 1941-43, 1996, by Frederick J. Milford, courtesy of the Naval Submarine League.
• Wikipedia article on the MK 14 torpedo, 2024
The root causes of the scandal were the arrogance and hubris of the engineers and administrators at the Bureau of Ordnance and NTS Newport, the insular nature of the work environment at Newport that made them unresponsive to the fleet, and the penny-pinching financial situation forced on the Navy by an isolationist Congress and the Great Depression. There was NO insurmountable technical or scientific reason for the nearly total failure of the torpedoes; the root causes just mentioned were entirely of human creation and therefore entirely preventable.
As a historian this issue has long interested and frustrated me. It should have never happened, and it is fascinating to consider what may have happened if somehow events had turned to prevent it. Being a fan of alternate history fiction, I follow the forums at Alternatehistory.com and one day in 2008 I decided to explore the topic. That original post did not quite analyze it the way I wanted so ten years later I tried again. This time I did far more research on the topic and it went much better, although the thread ended up getting hijacked by an aggressive "fan" and I eventually gave up on it.
I believe that this fictional account, Those Marvelous Tin Fish, does an adequate job of creating a realistic scenario where the scandal never happened. What the U.S. Navy could have accomplished in WWII with fully developed and tested torpedoes is a thought-provoking exercise, and my fondest wish is for my service to learn a lesson from history so that a shameful episode like this never happens again. I have distilled the forum posts down to a single article, and I recently updated it new information for better readability and story flow.
As with any alternate history scenario there is some admitted "hand-waving" when it comes to creating the scenario. Some of the situations that I described may indeed be on a practical basis impossible. However, with the right amount of willpower by the right people it is at least plausible. Take a look at the article Those Marvelous Tin Fish at this link.
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcomed at the email listed below.
David Johnston
2024
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