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COB---another reason to never miss the golden opportunity to keep your mouth shut. Even today, loose lips can still sink ships. How close to a WW II boat does depth charge have to come to do damage? Seems to me that the test or crush depth of the vessel and the explosive force would imperil any boat.
DJ

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Good question. Obviously the closer the explosion and the deeper the depth, the more damage can be done. I have seen films of testing done post-war where a boat was suspended on cables in a stationary position and explosive charges were set off at various distances to see what would happen. From what I could see, even if the explosion was relatively far away (several hundred yards or more) extensive internal damage occured. Equipment that weighed over a ton, bolted to the deck was thrown across the compartment when the mounting boltys were sheared. You can imagine what would happen to the crew in that situation. Kind of like the spalling that occurs inside a tank.
You didn't have to get a hit or near miss with a depth charge either. Just by keeping the boat under until the battery was drained and/or the oxygen was depleted would work too. Up until Nuclear power, Submarines were really just submersibles, that is, a ship that could submerge for a limited time.

Cob

COB--the other clarification that I would request is on WW II torpedoes. Every book I read sings the praises of the Japanese Long Lance torpedoes in terms of speed and explosive power. We did not apparently possess a weapon of similar characteristcs. Do you know what shortfalls US topedoes suffered and why we did not just copy the Japanese one if it was that good thanks
DJ

Cob is spot-on with respect to the defects in our Mk-14 torps. Took over a year for the Torpedo Development folks to admit that their product was deeply flawed just because the real world didn't resemble their contrived tests. BTW, the U-boat force initially suffered from exactly the same mypoic white-lab-coat attitude.

As for the lovely Long Lance, a direct copy wasn't practical. That monster was 24" in diameter and rather longer than our torps, which were 21" in diameter. A total redesign of the boat would have been required to field a US version.

Greg

Sorry for the late reply here, DJ. Short answer is I don't know. With respect to the detonators, I think we scrapped the magnetic stuff and stuck to contact detonators. Magnetic was supposed to be all magical, detonating under the keel and snapping the target in two. But if it doesn't work reliably there's nothing to fall back on. Especially if you ALSO have problems with depth-keeping!

And I don't have a clue about propulsion. I don't THINK the Long Lance was a whole lot faster than any other torpedo, but its size allowed more fuel for longer range. this is a bit cynical, but something tells me we probably lacked good examples of that weapon to examine and copy if we wished to. Their torpedoes always seemed to blow up!
Greg

DJ

Short answer on the RPG, "not invented here" syndrome, if the Russians can build this than think what we can do!!

Rick Cooper

Greg--I am hoping that Brother COB returns to address this aspect of our discussion. I am onto this for the same reason I could nver figure out why we never imitaterd the remarkable Soviet RPG design. I never discovered why we just did not sit down and say this is a pretty good weapon system "why don't we build one like it?" Never happened....
DJ

Here is a link to a pretty informative article on the Long Lance. While the author does not specifically answer the question "why didn't the USA copy the Long Lance", I can make some better educated guesses. http://www.battleshipnc.com/heritage/ wwii/battles/torpedo

1. The "best" long lance was a surface launched 24" torpedo. Both the IJN and US submarines used a 21" torpedo tube. When the Japanese built a 21" version of the long lance, both the explosive power and the range were reduced to roughly that of the MK 14 steam-powered weapon. Changing our submarine production to a 24" tube would have been very difficult.
2. Using Oxygen as a fuel source is preety dangerous...especially in the confines of a sub.
3. According to the author of this article, the Americans didn't believe the long lance had the range that it did.

v/r,
Cob