The Mark 14 Torpedo - Failure is Like Onions
2020 ж. 11 Ақп.
1 296 937 Рет қаралды
Today we look at what happens when you mix the Bureau of Ordnance with a cost-cutting Congress and a few people pathologically incapable of admitting to making a mistake, then try and get a working torpedo out of them.
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
Which Navy the German Japanese and Italian navies posed the biggest threat for the Allies for the longest time.
How do torpedo defense systems work?
I have heard a few people call the Bismarck a failure of a design i know she had design flaws but she was able to sink or help sink HMS Hood and heavily damage Prince of Wales plus was taking lot to put on the bottom and she was considered a threat so was she really a failure or was it more she was a good ship build for a nation without the resources to use the good ship?
Why did the ships spawned on the island instead of the ocean during the mikasa event Was it some kind of bugs. It looks funny tho
@@ozzy6852 Spaced armor, basically. You give the warhead something to hit and explode on that you don't particularly mind getting blown off your ship instead of the actual hull.
"Oh shit sir, the torpedo is coming back around!" "Don't worry, those things never work." *Clunk* "See."
Imagine a year or two later Don’t worry, those things.... Oh shit wait *Kaboom*
I don't know what to say. It made me laugh out loud
When your malfunction is saved by another malfunction
@@historytank5673 Heaven knows how many US subs were unlucky enough to be self-sunk. It's disgusting how long it took the Navy to take the performance warnings seriously.
@@colbyuetake130 It's almost like speaking French. The mistakes that you make in your mind are corrected or covered up by the complexities of pronunciation and grammar.
"Admiral, our torpedoes fail to detonate!" "Given that they have a tendency to target you, the Board of Ordnance has labeled that a Safety Feature."
The oldest skill issue
A weapon can't be dangerous to the user if it's not dangerous to *anyone*
"You're using them wrong!" "OK give me the manual so my sailors can figure out how to use them then!" "That's classified." "GRRRRRRRR"
There are technologies from WWI that are still top secret even though they haven't been used in a century.
Michael Clark the periscope hammer is very vital to national security and it must not be allowed for the enemy to discover our ingenious ASW weapon
When I was an infantry officer in the US Army in Vietnam, I once wrote an after-action report that was immediately classified so I that I would have been unable to read it. (It was describing a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol that went into Cambodia. At the time, Nixon was maintaining staunchly that there were no US troops in Cambodia.)
MegaFortinbras Shit man when did you serve? Also I doubt that the people calling Vietnam vets baby killers is false, did you get called that? And how did it feel coming out of the service and back into civilian life?
@@tinycockjock1967 68-69. My unit was 1/502d, 173d ABN BDE> I was never called a baby killer, but I was spat on once. I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and was spat on by a supporter of the war at a demonstration. I have PTSD from my time there, but it's not as bad as some people I know.
When Americans are incompetent, we are incompetent at a gloriously extreme level.
Arent we almost always incompetent?
@@danksinatra9146 no not really, when it comes to weapons and systems
@@danksinatra9146 Drach and others describe pretty well how US aircraft carriers and radar totally outclassed the Japanese.
James Dewane I think he just meant in general.
@Agent J I mean if you going to fuck upwhy not at least make it fun to learn/watch such as the room
I was serving on a nuclear sub when a dummy torpedo that we fired turned around and hit us, bouncing off of our hull, only to return and hit us again... several times! Trust me, that experience does get one to do a bit of thinking.
It just wanted to come home
@@joshuacheung6518 queue the 'LET ME IN' meme
Good thing it wasn't a real one
@@Shadow-sq2yj YOUR telling ME! LOL
@@billleach3396 So then, is that (probably) still a giro issue? I'd assume any sub would change course immediately after firing a torpedo, precisely to not be where it was when it fired one? (but then again, I've heard that nuclear subs are quite big, so maybe they wouldn't even be able to get away from a faulty torpedo? and, secondly, I can imagine a faulty giro doesn't necessarily cause a perfect circle - so moving the sub might actually put it in the path of a faulty torpedo, whereas it would've been fine if it had continued?) Keen to learn more! (if it's not classified to hell and back, lol)
When the idiom “what goes around comes around” applies quite literally to your nations torpedos, there’s a problem
My father got the patent on the guidance system after he joined Naval Research Labs in 1942. He was one of the two physists who ran Uniac computer on this problem. They went out into sub battles to test them. The other physist, George Gamow got the Nobel in physics for something else.
Not a problem. They won't explode!!
Not a problem. They'll explode prematurely
yeah, those Mk 18 electrics were freaking dangerous. sank more of our own subs than enemy subs probably.
It's the best torpedo design when you think about it. If you launch a torpedo and your vessel is captured shortly thereafter, the torpedo will circle back around, sinking the ship and depriving the enemy of their prize! Truly an ingenious design!
Summary: untested hardware makes it to production in the middle of a shooting war. Development team remains in denial about any issues. Hilarity ensues.
Shenanigans ensue, you mean
Now enter the DOMINION election.
Hilarity? No. This probably cost many many US sailors their lives.
Untested hardware makes it to production before a shooting war, powers that be refuse to test said hardware before sending them out for use.
-Hilarity- tragedy
Imagine how terrified the crew of the Japanese whaling ship was, having been struck 13/15 times
...Until they realized they could salvage and sell all the explosives in the dud torpedos that had pincushioned their ship...
I'm sure the After Action reports and recovered devices Admiral Yamamoto's officers were getting kept them amused.
they probably didnt notice.......what the fucks that tapping?? In Japanese of course
I read a book once about a Japanese destroyer in the war who suddenly experienced a lack of helm control. Suddenly the rudder had gone a bit "soft". They pulled the ship into a dry dock and when the water came out they found a 21" hole in the center of the rudder. That Japanese destroyed had been hit by a Mk 14 and they didn't even know it.
Probs laughing there Assss off That was the 2nd Yankee sub to try But back hone for sum welding
_"reality began to_ sink _in"_ Up to that point, _reality_ was the ONLY THING sinking....
That's deeeep, man. Over my head. Hard to fathom. XD
@@shannonrhoads7099 >>> And it came from a former _"Puddle Pirate"._ 😝😝😝😝
@@Allan_aka_RocKITEman LOL
Meh, water you gonna do about it?
@@Colonel_Overkill I'd go with the flow and try to keep current about it. It has me fit to be tide though.
All 195 thumbs down came from those who worked at the Bureau of Ordnance...
Typing my like since it is at 69
@@tachyon8317 LOL, SAVE THE 69!!!!
@@tachyon8317
@@halojump123 Failed.
…….and Adm Yamamoto’s relatives gave this a thumbs up.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall and observe Admiral King's "meetings" with buord.... 😁
Board
@@johnrogan9420 No...buord. Just as spelled. Abbreviation for "Bureau of Ordnance".
@@frankfedison5203: why don’t you just spell out the words instead of your so-called clever abbreviation. You just annoy people and you are rude!
@@steveperreira5850 Thirdly, "buord" is an actual, rather than "so-called" abbreviation which, far from being "mine", has been part of Navy parlance since before WWI, and (in case you didn't listen) is used by Drach many times during the video. Secondly, as far as spelling it out, I already did.. for the other dumbass. And firstly, I am indeed rude...especially when I am right. Now kindly fuck off and go educate yourself.
The motto of all administrations, be them civil, military or commercial: "Our policy is to always blame the customer!".
Most commercial companies back their product quite well. Your comment is cute...but grossly mistaken about commercial entities overall.
@@ajalvarez3111 That sounds like you've never dealt with a company in an industry with less than 5 serious suppliers globally. Deal with GE or Mitsubishi compressors and come back and say that private companies give a damn about their customers.
Having served on Submarines and actually seen and shot Mk14 torpedoes This is one of the best dissertations I have ever seen of the criminal failure of not only BUORD but the US Congress for strangling weapons development at the time. They significantly extended the war through pure politics before the war costing untold numbers of lives.
Nobody had the money during the Great Depression
I have often wondered how it felt to know your primary weapon was a doorknocker. Heads should have rolled over the departments arrogance in the face of reported duds. Lest we forget.
There should be a component of government itself to oversee (transparency) and prevent these blunders that cost so many lives.
@@1buszybudy13 We would have if not for a certain Prez and Govt at the time prolonging the depression with policy
Great video on you tube entitled "How the US was cheated out of the FAL". Different service - same B.S.
"13 out of 15 torpedo hits"... the next thing you expect to hear after a phrase like that is that pieces of that ship were found on the moon. Instead it just sailed away
Especially against a friggin' whaling boat.
That should have put down the Yamato.
Captain Daspir of USS Tinosa kept a precise log of the attacks on the Tonan Maru, and one torpedo after another gave rise to "Hit. No apparent effect." We can only imagine the rage of the submariners at the string of failures. Upon returning to Pearl Harbor Daspir reported directly to Admiral Lockwood, and as noted, this got something done at last.
@@CptJistuce Not just a whaling boat - the Tonan Maru 3 was nearly 20,000 tons. Given that it was serving as a tanker, it was a truly high-value target second only to an aircraft carrier; no small wonder the Captain of USS Tinosa was seething at the failure of the Mark 14.
Imagine being on that ship and seeing over a dozen lines of bubbles coming at you, and each time all you get is a loud clanking sound instead of an explosion. I think seeing the first two or three might scare the crap out of you, but after that, it had to have been nothing but amazement at how bad American torpedoes were.
"Son, victory is like onions...sweet and caramely" "and failure? "...Also like onions"
Also Ogres.
Imagine being on that Japanese ship, hearing a bunch of load clangs below deck and then finding thirteen unexploded torpedos sticking in from holes in the hull.
Brought to mind a Far Side comic where some executioners are trying to electrocute a prisoner and one says "Hmmm, the contact points must be dirty. Just flip the switch up and down a few times." while the prisoners shaking in fear.
"But Mr. Dent, the manual has been available in the local navy office for the last nine months" "Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything. "But the manual was on display..." "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's the display department." "With a flashlight." "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone." "So had the stairs." "But look, you found the manual, didn't you?" "Yes", said Arthur, "Yes I did. It was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
Haa, Yeah, I caught that straight away,, going thru the comments to see who else is/was a Douglas Adams fan. Have a Intergalactic Gargle Blaster on me,
If you're going to quote a large passage from a brilliant book, you should at least credit the author. RIP Douglas Adams.
@@stevengabriel3269 Did you watch the video
@arcade invader, yes. He quoted 1 line... you did several paragraphs. I just feel that Adams deserves mentioning whenever one gets the chance. "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." heheheh
@@plhebel1 watch out for that gold brick on the sling back mates!
*Dönitz on the crap torpedos Uboats had during the invasion of Norway* “never in history have men been sent to battle with such a useless weapon system” *US ordinance* hold my beer
That saved the Warspite and various other RN ships.
@@WestSideGorilla1980 Ah yes Ovaltine, or "Teenoval" as one of my family calls it XD.
Wonder if it was stamped kaiser ...aluminum..?? Huh??
The French hold my white flag
Sure we had crap torpedoes but we had lots of planes that go pew pew pew.
If it isn’t already, the story of the Mark 14 should be required reading for all military officer cadets (in all branches, not just the Navy) about the dangers of allowing their hubris to take precidence over actually winning wars.
I would also say it remains a note to always take your subordinates' claims of problems as being probable, or at least possible. The people on the front line bear the brunt of the effort, and their mention of a problem could very well be from design or mfg problems, not the usage or handling or training. Soldiers gripe, but when it is about a consistent problem with their weapons or equipment, it NEEDS to be looked into immediately. Gripes about the food, however, are pretty much hopeless anyway and can be ignored.
The Navy wasn't alone in its weapons procurement nightmares. Let's take the humble service rifle issued to infantry soldiers and the M14 and M16 programs. The M14 was the US Army's wonder weapon but due to preferential treatment in service rifle testing a number of defects were glossed over. The automatic rifle edition, the M15, didn't give any advantage over the lighter M14 rifle because the baseline mechanism wasn't heavy duty enough for automatic fire--the M14 and M15 used the same receivers and "full bore" rifle cartridge. When Secretary of Defense McNamara got fed up with Army obfuscation and cancelled the M14 program in favor of a stopgap M16 (until the Army managed to get the advanced rifle programs such as SPIW working) the US Army promptly "improved" the hell out of the M16 so that it didn't work any longer. I'm oversimplifying the "too many cooks" aspect of weapons procurement, but by 1968 the bugs had been worked out of the M16A1 and the US Army managed to replace the older guns around 1973 with working M16A1 rifles. Like the flawed Mk 14 torpedo, the M16 has become the longest serving service rifle in US history. Must be that "temporary" tag. As late as 2009 I would be quartered in "temporary" buildings erected during 1918 while TDY.
@@alancranford3398 I'd heard the "improvements" to the M16 may have been deliberate sabotage from the old curmudgeons who felt threatened by the "wiz kids" taking over the Department of Defense at the time. There's a bit of credence to that theory, as there really were generals who, if they had their way, would've made the Army keep the Garand as its service rifle in Vietnam (mechanically speaking, the M14 is basically a select-fire M1 with a removable magazine). They didn't care how many young men had to die to "prove" their point, their own necks weren't on the line, and they only cared about their careers. It's a damning indictment of the post-World War II "join the military to serve yourself, not your country" mindset that the DoD adopted and never really got rid of in spite of its flaws. As for the closing remarks, there is a saying about that sort of thing: there is nothing more permanent than "temporary" government programs.
@@z3r0_35 I became interested in the M16 around 1972 as a teenager because I was planning on enlisting as soon as I graduated from high school. Eugene Stoner believed that his rifle was deliberately sabotaged. I retired more than a decade ago but Stoner's claim is presented in two recent books, "Misfire--the Tragic Failure of the M16 in Vietnam" (2019) and "American Gun--the True Story of the AR-15" (2023). I entered boot camp a few weeks after the Marines quit using the M14 in basic training. Back in the Seventies I did read the American Rifleman (National Rifle Association's monthly magazine) and bits of the 1967 Icord Report. I later studied the adoption of American service rifles from the 1892 series of Krag rifles to the recent attempts to get back to a "real rifle cartridge." There were multiple culprits--failure to chrome line the bore and chamber, switching from cannister to ball powder, tossing rifles out to soldiers and Marines and telling them "don't clean 'em--they're self-cleaning," training recruits with M14 or even M1 rifles (the Marines continued to use the M1 in boot camp until the mid 1960's until .30 ammunition was exhausted and there were enough M14s for training), and in some units the M16-armed riflemen fired on full auto almost exclusively. I my studies the name S. L. A. Marshall and his "Men Against Fire" comes up often. Look up Project SALVO when you get a chance--that study was one reason that the M16 WAS adopted. General LeMay wanted the AR-15 (GAU-5 in the Air Force) as a replacement for all the M2 Carbines and other WW2 weapons his boys and girls were using for base security--he ordered 8500 in May 1962 but Congress wouldn't authorize the purchase for a while after that. The Air Force and Coast Guard never adopted the M14. Military procurement follies are not limited to torpedoes, unfortunately. The B-36 bomber program started sometime in 1940 but the B-36 wasn't ready for prime time until after 1949. Part of the procurement problems are self-identifying as infallible. There's a recent crisis in Disney movies--they're just not good. Echoes of the torpedo crisis of 1942 can be heard: "The audience is at fault for not loving our movies--who cares if the movie is a dud, it misses the target, comes back and bites us instead of sinking the enemy!"
Sadly it is not.... I worked in torpedo testing and maintenance for over 30 years, near the end of my career an Admiral decided to cut costs by reducing torpedo testing. Arguments about the possible results didn't result in a change, I (anonymously, I'm not stupid) sent the Admiral a copy of the book "Silent Victory", with the chapters on the failures of the Mark14 marked for reading....
There was a time when BuOrd's failure to even consider the faulty performance of the Mk 14 would have been considered as rendering material assistance and comfort to the enemy, if not outright treason...
probably part of what King threatened them with behind closed doors
Yeah I can say for certain without any actual evidence that some careers outright stalled if not substantially slowed down.... A blessing in disguise I say as a result of the debacle that is the Mark 14.
Your torpedo circles back around and sinks your sub. "A significant emotional event". Major Nicholas Moran "Once fired Mr. Torpedo is nobody's friend.' The Mighty (and exalted) Jingles Has anyone else noted that Drachinifel's videos are more entertaining when the subject matter is less than a stunning success
There's a reason people don't turn off the news in the middle of a report on a train crash.
Well yes, he does tend to put failure in proper perspective. He said that "with the Navy the US built, the main benefit of the British Navy in the Pacific was act as decoys for the kamikazes" does sum the situation up succinctly.
His snark is at expert level.
@@magisterrleth3129 If it bleeds, it leads
@@magisterrleth3129 mainly to find out who done fucked up?
According to Admiral King's daughter: "he did not hate the British, he hated everyone.."
Well at least he was constant.
I believe she said he was mean to everybody
That's funny.............sort of.
Eisenhower said that somebody should shoot him only half jokingly
"My father isn't moody: his mood is totally even. he's always angry!" same person
The video game Silent Hunter 4 concerns the US Pacific submarine fleet, and has an option in the main menu to turn on dud torpedos for realism. The funny thing is that even then, the MK14 is not a tenth as bad as it was historically. I like to think that at some point there actually was a +70% dud chance, but the play testers threatened significant bodily harm to the developers unless they changed it. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, many people spend the extra funds to replace the 3 inch deck gun with a 4 inch, and also take a loadout of the twenty year old MK10s until 1943.
I feel like those torpedoes should have had a 92% dud chance... It would be funny the first few times...
The constant harassement by Japanese planes which forces you to either repeatedly dive and surface again or only surface at night kind of ruins the game, I mean sure, maybe when you are north of the Philippines in December 1941, but not somewhere in the South Pacific in 1945
@@yourstruly4817 I loved SH4, I wish it were still operable on a modern OS (or Mac), but yes, I completely agree with you. There’s nothing realistic about sailing towards the home islands in the middle of absolute nowhere (like literally thousands of miles from the nearest island) even in 1941/early 1942 and encountering a short range scout plane. Or the fact that if you don’t suffer major damage to your boat and don’t lose any men, you sail into 1945 with a 1941 configuration boat and a crew of all senior officers and CPOs.
I remember a game I played many years ago (Pacific Storm Allies) had the same thing. I was much younger then and never knew why some of the torpedos would go in a giant circle and others fail to detonate.
Game can't simulated real life, even as technology has evolved. Unless you go glancing blow, which will detonated the fish with impact fuse, or using late mod. with most of problem solves, game can't simulated that
The Apple of torpedo industry: "think different. Hit the ship that launched you." also: "you are holding it wrong".
I recently tried to update the e-mail address for my Apple account. Apple refused to allow it. Why? Because I was trying to do it from a Linux computer. (Linux being the 'father' of Android.)
More "You go to war with the equipment you have." as if "The enemy shoots at trucks containing our soldiers" was an unforeseen detail missed in the design of the M998 HMMWV
Yeah, I wish I had bought Apple stock, too. But who knew?
@@jfan4reva Linux, being free and open-source, is also the father of Apple. Apple is a Linux-based system, they just put their logo and interface onto it so they can charge you money. Also, hardware-wise, Apple has very bad hardware design - their products overheat at the same rate as Chinese 300$ ultra books people buy from Ali-Express. I had to repair a few Apple devices, the lack of quality materials and unrealistically crammed components are their trademark, believe me. Also, they offer no real tech-support - one of my clients had a burned SSD, at apple they wanted to charge him 800$ to replace the motherboard. I replaced the SSD with a generic for 130$. I have never met a decent person who works for Apple, most people who use apple products are preppy and low-iq.
@@andreypolonsky1694 Unix is what apple rebadged, not Linux. In any case, I don't buy apple.
BuOrd - the Imperial Japanese Navy's greatest asset in WWII
You jest but the handling of the situation by BuOrd was outright criminal. People should've been jailed if not shot over this.
Alternative point of views. BuOrd's smug pride, and adament cost savings saved many Japanese sailors. Initial cost savings is costly waste or corrections later. I wonder when if ever 5:00 detonator design schematic in safe was ever made available for troubleshoot its design. Killing others required much effort.
They should have mailed their super secret design to Hideki Tojo and admiral Yamamoto. Maybe they were the ones who gave them the design?
100 years of providing not enough of the wrong weapon for the highest price.
I really start thinking they were collaborators for Japanese... one simply cannot fuck up so royally in such time scale with out malice intent... remembers that stupidity is infinite... welp i stand corrected...
they literaly built a torpede that disarmed itself upon impact lmao
But 97% of it was spot on.
When you let penny pinchers do an Engineer's job.
A valuable and farsighted safety feature in a torpedo that was as likely to turn around and head for the vessel that had fired it! I dimly recall a BBC radio 4 program called the delve specials that were spoof documentaries where a young Stephen Fry covered similar subject matter. This was back last century when the BBC had a sense of humour!
@@robinwells8879 nice , actualy i could agree to this. i mean the enemy also would have known when they were supposed to be hit by the "clonk" noise, so it was a matter of sportsmanship the japanese just didn't appreciate.
After having fired al MK14 aboart, the Captain of USS Sargo was screaming so loud, the Hydrophone operators of the japanese Destroyers all went deaf.
I bet Admrl King wanted keelhauling to come back into fashion when speaking with the torpedo developers and suppliers.
Meanwhile on the Japanese ships, the sailors hear a loud thud on the hull and then proceed to point and laugh at the periscope 3000-ish yards away...
All US sailor does a pout XD
All those poor Japanese dockworkers putting Bondo in all them dents...
That's why they soulda hanged several bureaucrats.
@chris younts Thanks to this idiot, you know the right depth setting. www.ww2pacific.com/congmay.html
@chris younts Except that Japanese depth charges only had 2 depth settings, so any other depth was absolutely safe for US subs. Basically like two soldiers trying to kill each other with cartoon cork launching rifles.
Before watching the video: I wonder if he means it's like onions because it has many layers or it makes people cry? After watching the video: Ah, both.
Or it was like a vegetable that doesn't do well in wet environs.
"Failure is like an onion. You just keep peeling layer after shitty layer until all you're left with is stink and tears".
It also means that onions are not able to sink warships.
Those sub commanders would have been better off with the prototype rocket torpedos that were tested at the end of the Civil War, that had been sitting in a warehouse since the end of the Civil War.
The statements about how the US Navy submariners reacted to being "given the finger" by the US Navy BuOrd submarine shore support establishment when they reported the problems with the Mark 14 "super"-torpedo does not do the subject justice: By the time this was fixed, the submariners, especially the officers who knew more of the details, were enraged beyond what you might call "psychosis". After WWII, many of these submarine naval officers NEVER trusted the shore people again and when they got now-perfectly-functional new-type torpedoes, they SABOTAGED THEM, cutting all internal circuits not related to direct impact to make sure that nobody even TRIED to use any magnetic exploders or any other such improvements. This lasted until those officers retired. I was told this by a ex-submarine crewman during the Korean War who was involved with torpedoes and watched his Captain himself cut the wires of each torpedo as it arrived aboard. As a person who worked for the US Navy anti-aircraft guided missile system shore establishment for 41 years (Systems and, later, Software), I can assure you that this kind of thing was never, ever allowed and our ships were "Job 1". Twice I got a summons to my boss's office and was told that one of our ships was now having a problem that they could not find the cause of. I was to report the next day with all my bags packed for a several-week, if necessary, trip and would be given airline tickets, a hotel reservation, a US Government Credit Card, a message to one of the automobile rental companies that had contracts with the US Government at the airport at my destination near the shipyard, and a ship boarding pass. I did so and, "POOF!", by the end of that day I was on the other side of the US and the day after that reported on board the ship to find out how to fix its problem. In both cases, I was successful, but I had to wait in the freezing cold computer room (the machines, not the people, were to be kept functional no matter what) all day for about a week waiting for the parts to arrive to fix the broken equipment (the problems were, as expected, rather unusual or the regular testing would have found the problem without me) and then test the gear again to make sure it worked right before I could go home. No bullshit here!!!
"Beware of the leopard" -Douglas Adams, a national treasure.
Oh fucking snap! I got to be the 42nd like on this comment; that just made my entire day. I was getting worried as I had to scroll a bit and couldn't find one mention of Doug...thank you!
@@UrsaMajorPrime I"m glad that you appreciate it. I caught his reference.
I'm a retired USN Surface Warfare Officer, test engineer and teacher at university. When discussing the biggest weapons' debacles in the American military, this is my initial example. I applaud your discussion of this topic. You covered the story accurately and thoroughly. Well done!
While the Mk 14 was a disaster, the much bigger problem is confusing "range" with the ability to hit something. (See my prior post). That mistake led to the development and construction of battleships where the big guns had a "range" exceeding the "range" of a torpedo. But neither of them could hit anything at anywhere near their "max range". That's so say battleships never worked, sort of another Mk 14 story. Also see: prc68.com/I/Gyroscopes.html#Norden, prc68.com/I/Torpedoes.html#Big_Guns_Disconnect, prc68.com/I/FNFAL.shtml#Bal
I am an engineer at an automobile company and I use the Mark 14 torpedo example to teach my engineers about problem solving and transfer function physics. The classes usually are stunned and very intrigued as we teach about the torpedo. The lessons are very relevant to problem solvers in various fields
@@matthewtrent2359 This is another example of a tendency in American history. After every war we send almost all the troops home, then cut the military's funding by 90%. Then they are expected to do R&D on a shoestring budget, and when you get a prototype, don,t you dare waste money testing it our we will court-martial your ass and kick you out. Nearly 15 years after WW2 in the late 50's, the Air Force said guns are obsolete and missiles are the wave of the future. The F-4 had no guns and in Vietnam their were many frustrated and angry pilots who would have had many easy kills that were lost because their missiles would drop and fail to ignite, becoming expensive fence posts in the jungle, or would fail to track the enemy, or would strike and fail to detonate. If only they had installed guns as a backup. In short as with the torpedoes and later the missiles, the propulsion system was "OK" but building a accurate and reliable guidance system and detonator is where things get tricky.
@@H-to-O look up the b-71 supersonic bomber. We decided not to make it because "anti-aircraft missile systems will be too advanced soon".
David Marquardt the F-4 is different. Missiles were being fired outside their design envelopes. The USN never put a gun on their Phantoms and still had a higher kill ratio than USAF F-4s. This was due to Top Gun. The instructors there actually talked to the missile engineers, and instructed the Fleet in their proper use.
You can tell in his voice how astounded he was when he was doing research how big of a fuck up the mk14 torpedo was
I mean, Drach's delivery is always very dry...but yes, there is a certain sense of incredulity to this one nevertheless.
I think he had some idea of the nonsense before but after having read one or two of those documents he probably just went but why like what benefit do you get out of doing this you get nothing except pissed off Naval personnel.
@@the_undead and blood on their hands, because they refused admit their mistakes, many men died in combat due to their criminal incompetence. Sad really.
@@Arphalia, and all the incompetence of this torpedo led to how the US stopped using a sole source for a weapon to multiple sources, as well as, doing lots and lots of tests to document reliability. Even that did go too far with the testing of a solid metal fin system on a rocket that went on for 10 years. After that grueling situation, shorter testing time was implemented.
Bureau: NOOO you can't fix our bad torpedos!!!!! Sailers: Torpedo go finally boom
Though Ive read a considerable amount on the MK 14 I have never found where anybody was eventually punished for this fiasco which is almost as much a shame as the damn torpedo.
ditto M-16
It's nothing less than criminal!
@@pakers2128Ross rifle comes to mind.
Speaking as a former software tester, the testing mentality never really leaves you. I can't imagine deploying anything so complicated as a torpedo without in-depth (heh) integration tests. As one author (James Bach) describes it, testers are the headlights of the organization. If you aren't testing you don't know what's going on. The Mark 14 program makes me so angry.
Have you heard of "Empire Total War's" original launch? Or some game I will never play: "Fallout 76?"
Asume: if it is not tested it will not work.
Very well said. Experience driving blindfolded....
You're talking about attitudes developed decades later by human factors research that didn't exist in the 20s. The diffusion of responsibility that resulted from assembly line invention and compartmentalization of R&D from manufacturing, took a while to recognise. The people who worked on these projects still had the mentality that worked, when a small group, developed and built each item from start to finish. There was no quality control, because the expectation was to rely on "craftsmanship" and reputation.
@@AudieHolland or horrible scam called: "Reeeeforged"?
0:39 All these questions... but never does anyone ask: "How does the mark 14 feel"
Depressed, it went 25 feet lower after-all.
I’m sure Mark 14-chan felt very sad that it let so many submariners down.
The Japanese liked them. Show some empathy for the other guy
Victimized.
After Pearl, the Mark 14 must have felt like a virgin at an orgy.
Everyone asks "What was the Mark 14?" and never "HOW is the mark 14?"
The Ordinance Dept.'s reaction to this is what makes me wish public flogging was still an acceptable punishment for gross incompetence and willful misconduct. (Calif. PG&E also comes to mind...)
Our last POTUS, described to a tee.
"...politicians who were more concerned with their own reelection than the national interest, and who were therefore more determined just to keep torpedo production in their particular state." Oh thank goodness government contracting has evolved over the last 70+ years to prevent this... [Looks at NASA's multi-billion dollar SLS rocket system] ...hmm...never mind.
The F-35 program would like a word
@@xmlthegreat Back in the day things got even more bizarre. The post WW2 money was authorized by Congress only in one year tranches so contracts for aircraft programs had to somehow mesh with when the cash would eventually show up. To add to the fun, it was not uncommon for a company on the east coast to somehow "lose the next year's contract" to an underbidding company on the west coast and vice versa. There once was a newspaper columnist whose funniest stories told about the events surrounding his aircraft designer father plus family plus hundreds, even thousands of his fellow design office workers migrating back and forth.
@@xmlthegreat Another misinformed F-35 hater?
The government is the problem, not the solution. Ronald Reagan
-The SLS is way too expensive and has fundamental safety problems that could lead to loss of the crew. -But... but... It's S H U T T L E D E R I V E D
Sir, can we fire the torpedoes? - NO! They're too expensive! Get on deck and throw rocks at them!
I believe it Charles Momsom who did the tests at Pearl. I believe he used live weapons and recovered the live unexploded torpedos to assess the issue. This man has an incredible history and would be worth a video.
Hearing about them not wanting to bear the cost of even a single torpedo for testing makes me think my dad was in charge of their financing
I can imagine if the BuOrd ignored the problems any longer, submariners would assume that BuOrd's incompetence was malicious in nature and would bombard their HQ with the submarine's fully functional deck guns if they didn't listen.
Nah, Adm King would have gotten a firing squad of marines and publicly executed them.
Assigning BuOrd to the 1st Marine Division en route to Peleliu would have been a nice use of them (put them all in Chesty Puller's 1st Marine Regiment)!
sometimes in history i really dont understand why subordinates DIDN'T do things like that lol could've saved lots of lives and possibly prevented wars by not following stupid orders and/or taking out the people who CONSISTENTLY make horrible orders that get loads of people killed.
@@zeening There are historically only two reasons why that happens and they're strongly linked. They are corruption, and treason.
I wouldn’t have put that past Admiral King
I remember when I was a kid, reading Gordon Prange's excellent Miracle at Midway, and there's a point where the USS Nautilus fires a spread of 4 torpedoes at Kaga(although Nautilus identified her as Soryu) and claims a kill because she then exploded and sank. In actuality, of the 4 torpedoes, one doesn't work, two ran erratically and missed, and one slammed into the side of the ship...and promptly broke apart. As if this wasn't enough, parts of the torpedo then bobbed to the surface to act as impromptu life preservers for the sailors already in the water. Upon reading this, I thought "When your torpedoes are more a boon to the enemy than to your own forces you have a BAD torpedo..."
And for the early MK18. As the USS Tang found out the hard way. "When your torpedoes are more a boom to your own forces than to the enemy you have a BAD torpedo" To quote Wikipedia: "The first submarines to use Mark 18s (still not perfected) were Eugene Sands' Spearfish and Mush Morton's Wahoo in September 1943. Sands "experienced enough torpedo problems to drive an ordinary man berserk": one sank, one broached and ran wild, three fishtailed at launch and hit the outer doors before disappearing, and seven missed astern. His results, as described by his squadron commander, "Gin" Styer, "were disappointing"." Would love to see Drach make a video on these wild torps.
If all 4 failed, how did it blow up?
@@shariklein5883 The dive bombers from USS Enterprise. Several bombs penetrated and detonated inside the hangar, causing fires that, in turn, detonated the torpedoes and bombs there, blowing out the sides of the hangar deck and leaving Kaga unrecoverable.
@@Griffon29 its a bloody mess in the hangar
At least it led to Arashi trying to sink her which was later spotted by the American Dive Bomber squadrons when Arashi headed back to Kaga at full speed with her wake acting as a giant arrow for them.
I’m having Silent Hunter 4 nightmares now: “Torpedo was a dud, sir.”
Back in 1978, as a young FTG2 on a SSBN, we had the opportunity to shoot an exercise MK14. This one had the "boom" removed intentionally. I remember the TMs cursing it on a daily basis. I also recall having to exercise the gyro daily so arthritis didn't set in. We were never happier when we got to unload it via the muzzel door.
I've read and heard literally dozens of versions of this sad and sorry saga (all of which practically made my blood boil at the stupidity of BORD), but this is one of the most clear, logical, accurate, and objective depictions I have ever run across. Congratulations on the outstanding research, and on the considerable effort you clearly devoted to laying out the facts so that it all made sense. I am quite impressed by this video (I write Military Science Fiction for a living, so I read and watch a lot of this stuff), and I am not easily impressed.
sure know how to flog a dead horse
AS usual we never find the actual participants that were responsible. Who they were and the reasons for their faulty decisions.
@@GIJoe2at cause us captains linched them
The submariner in me is always so pissed about this. We lost so many boats for bullshit.
@@jacobwerner274 pour encourager les autres. Too bad they didn’t pull their heads out of their behinds earlier
The top brass of the Board of Ordinance should been handed a choice. A blindfold, or not.
You would think .but as we all know it's all about the money first then the power and bringing up the rear lives of service men and women. If they are even given a passing thought!!!
@Eric da' MAJ I don't think that the Depression was any bad of roses. But at the same time Gm, Ford, Chrysler, Hudson, Nash and Studebaker all kept building vehicles. Somebody was buying them. Nash for instance had a profit all through the 30s. Homes were being built. The railroads were starting to switch to diesels. There was more money floating around than you would think. More people became real millionaires in the 30s than all the paper millionaires created by the Stock Market in the 20s. Yes the various federal programs aimed at the unemployed and underemployed were geared towards public works. And there was nothing wrong with that. But also in the 30s the US military invested in technological development. The Army in the automotive side of armored vehicles. The Navy in aviation. Lack of income due to tariffs can largely be blamed on the Smoot-Halley Act.
Mike Schnobrich Or just the leadership, like we said.
Donitz when faced with the same problem court-martialed the ornaments officers and sent them to prison.
@Mike Schnobrich That is a good pre-war defense. But once the shooting started they started receiving complaints and the Ottomans Bureau ignored them, They ignore them almost two years. That is textbook dereliction of Duty.
Having played Silent Hunter 4 with realism mods like TMO, i know this torpedo debacle way to well, i must have rage quitted more times than i can count after several duds failed to detonate or detonated too early
Yeah I play kerbal space program now I know the horror of apollo 13. Get real.
@@johnennis4586 Right, let me get my time machine so i can get myself into a Gato Class sub in 1942, guess you've never heard of simulators, genious.
I've played a little stock of the last three SH games. In SH4 I always set my Mk 14s pre-1943 to minimum depth, contact detonator only, and they work fine, which seems very wrong to me
“Torpedo is a dud, sir!”
@@sheogorath979 according to another commenter that game actually doesn't even betray the issue as bad as it is. To my understanding the dud rate of these torpedoes in 1942 would probably be in the 70% of the time it's a dud if not worse, and based off what I've read in the comments so far the game does not give you that much of a dud rate
I remember parts of a book describing IJN captain's dairies and the mk 14s failures and clanging their hulls morphing from lucky miracles to something they grew fearless about. Some were wary the USN would quickly fix it but were shocked to be wrong for almost 2 years.
Oh, it’s the “Officer gets his men killed because he is clearly God’s gift to perfection and all his subordinates saying otherwise are just stupid” show again...
I'm guessing we could find examples of this all the way back to the stone age...
"…keep out of the way of officers, ‘cos they ain’t healthy. That’s what you learn in the army. The enemy dun’t really want to fight you, ‘cos the enemy is mostly blokes like you who want to go home with all their bits still on. But officers’ll get you killed." - Sir Terry Pratchett, _Monstrous Regiment_
At least it's not on the kamchatka!
@@GaldirEonai most soldiers get into the fight with the enemy because they are more afraid of their own officers than of the enemy
@@dragonsword7370 And yet if Mk14s were used on Kamchatka, they'd actually work because its Kamchatka ;P
You have to wonder if some of the flaws with Japanese ASW had to do with spending the first part of the war not noticing that American submarines were even attacking them.
I mean if you were a sailor and thirteen enemy torpedos donked your ships hull and failed to detonate you’d probably worry a little less about your enemies submarines lol
There is actually some scholarship to suggest this was the case.
So, we have finally uncovered the American's clever ploy! (Before you get mad at somebody else, I'm an American.)
There's a story that a congressman aided Japanese ASW more than any other research by saying in a press conference that our submariners felt safe since the Japanese never set their depth charges to go off deep enough.
@@monkeyship74401 That's is a true story, it was congressman Andrew May who was the head of the Committee on Military Affairs.
You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the many lives lost as a result of this dud of a torpedo. Makes me wonder: perhaps, just perhaps we could have keep the Yorktown at Midway if the TBDs had been able to disable even a single enemy carrier before the dive bombers arrived.
Unfortunately the quality of stupidity at the management level no longer surprises me. While this is a great example from 90 years ago, we still face these problems today. Excellent video, best I have seen on this subject.
"Politicians that were more concerned about their reelection, rather than the national interest." Where have we heard this before?
Donald Trump
Joe Biden
@@ryanfreeman5083 where you’ve been living buddy?
@@davidvasquez08 In reality, you?
We're Americans. We've ALWAYS heard it. The sad truth about greedy, power-hungry, self-serving politicians of EVERY stripe.
"Whatever floats your boat." - Well, these torpedoes definetly didn't sink it.
What's really sad is how the USN swept this under the rug, along with how VT-8 on the Hornet suffered when armed with these defective weapons on an obsolete delivery platform at the Battle of Midway . My boot camp assistant Company Commander, who retired as a Master Chief Torpedoman's Mate, was not even aware of these issues. I had to send him internet links to make him a believer. (EX) IC2 John D. Waldron
For reference, and because their names deserve to be remembered, the chiefs of the Bureau of Ordnance for the USN in the relevant time period were: Rear Admiral Edgar B. Larimer, 1931-1934 Rear Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, 1934-1937 (CNO at the US entry into WWII.) Rear Admiral William R. Furlong, 1937-1941 (Commanded Pearl Harbor Navy Yard during WWII, where he did excellent work.) Rear Admiral William H. P. Blandy, 1941-1943 (Retired as a full Admiral after many other commands.) From the available information, none of these men was a fool, which makes this travesty even harder to understand.
As the saying goes, you can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
The Bureau of Ordinance and the Kamchatka would have gotten along splendidly, both were a royal pain to their team mates.
Monty Python definitely missed to make a film featuring the Bureau of Ordnance, Kamchatka, and flag officer Seymour!
@Rayy‘s Musikladen Under Admiral Gensoul's command. Edit: and working for the guys who decided to build a collective 31 battleships and large cruisers in the carrier era.
Kamchatka: AHHHHHHH Torpedo boats!! The Bureau of Ordinance: Dont worey watch this , *torp circles straight back round* Kamchatka: I torpedoed them ... i am fantastic
Seymour hoists some colourful flags which, as he thinks, say: “Greatest feat of the BoO”. Gensoul, watching this: “GENERAL QUARTERS! MOTHER-IN-LAW WILL BE COMING FOR DINNER!”
Rayy‘s Musikladen LMAO!
7:36 - Another indicator of how expensive these things really were - the median house price in the U.S. in 1940 was about $3,000.
Hmm, so US military procurement hasn't changed much then? I remember the Navy being sold ramjet powered artillery shells for the Zumwalt which cost more than most luxury yachts.
i mean, to be fair, the mk14 had lots of issues with development but i dont think they were necessarily getting gouged by contractors, they were just really expensive systems, and new developments in torpedo defense required beefier faster techier and costlier torpedos. (one of the things that sorta made me go 'oh dang' when i read about the first time was learning that the mk14 was its propulsion power was a weird hybrid of internal combustion and steam power (water cooling the combustion chamber gets converted to steam to squeeze out just a little more power). and then, after all the wierd development dysfunction, you have to figure in the time period of its development, the Great Depression/Big Sad, so the government other priorities for most of the decade. and as kinda a shitshow in retrospect the whole thing is, its one of those things that is unfortunately necessary learning experience, cus while people are great at hindsight, foresight no so much and especially when dealing with complex systems of groups of people to develop complex systems of whatever thing (in this case, complex mechanical doodads to make underwater boombooms). in the future, hopefully, people can look back and say 'well dang, we can try to avoid these problems in making our new whatever' i swear i didnt mean to go on this long
@@arkadeepkundu4729 They never actually bought any ammuntion for the Zumwalt gun. Which is arguably worse. Also, ramjet shells are at least conceptually solid.
@@FlyingNinjaish they also didn't buy the radars for the SAM system... So we have a ship with guns that can be aimed but no ammunition for them and missile launchers with ammunition that can't be aimed. So much for the mighty DDG-1000...
@@FlyingNinjaish They actually bought 100 rounds from initial production before cancelling the project, but I admit it is nitpicking as 100 rounds is nothing.
Thank goodness by the time I joined the submarine force, we had the Mk48 torpedo. And also, since the Navy had learned its lesson in WWII, we were able to fire Exercise torpedo's at least annually. The last time I participated, we were 8 out of 8 successful. Those torpedoes are fantastic. I have also seen video online recently, showing this torpedo hitting a target ship to sink it, after the Army, the Marines and air force had all tested missiles against the ship, and it was still afloat. When the submarine got its turn, the ship broke in half spectacularly. So, if there is a silver lining to this sad story, it is that even the USN can learn.
So the manual was located in the basement with no stairs locked in a file cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard".
13:29 Where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom!
Hahaha nice TeamFourStar reference. 🤣🤣😂😂
The Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator detonator must be faulty.
@@lawrencemiller7442 it's actually a looney tunes reference. Teamfourstar probably homaged it.
@@andyjim1734 Cool. I didn't know that.🤔
Sounds like the Martian
I remember studying this mess in Naval ROTC. The whole thing was an exercise in CYA. The guys at Navy Ordinance knew the weapon had never been tested but they were under a LOT of pressure to cover it up because they wanted to keep their jobs. Politics in the military before the war was vicious and officers could find themselves posted to the Asiatic fleet, serving on a Clemson or a Wicks class DD sweating it out in the south pacific if they pissed off the wrong admiral. Having a job at Navy Ordinance was a cushy posting so the news out of there was always cheery and positive. "No sir! We're having a great Navy day here! Nothing wrong here, Sir. Our stuff is the best stuff ever! Nothing to see!"
Yet another lesson in the dangers of both insufficient testing and backward accountability. Reminds me of this talk: kzhead.info/sun/ZNyKlbyHsWKElqs/bejne.html
Too bad American sailors died to preserve some dickhead's ability to sail a desk a thousand miles away from real danger. Why is it ALWAYS BurOrd that gets our own people killed? Should have acted like Soviets and lined BurOrd officers against the wall for treason. Would have solved all those problems in a month flat, if they actually had to face danger themselves...
@Putin the Frog Cover Your Ass. Important military acronym. To expand, it means knowing how not to be the squeaky wheel that gets thrown out instead of getting greased.
@CommandoDude I'd agree but who? The problems were a thousand fold. Pre-war America didn't want anything to do with war. Congress had squeezed all the armed forces until there was nothing left. All the armed services suffered from the same issue. On top of that, add in the peace time Navy personnel situation. The Navy, bereft of any real money, focused what it had on its big gunned battleships and it's aircraft carriers because both of those systems kept people employed. The Navy felt that if it lost any more ground budget wise then it would loose any chance to do it's mission. Now add in the extreme competition at the top of admirals jockeying for promotion where there was no room left to move up and you create the mess that Drachinifel was talking about. So sure, Christie like many other officers at his level made a habit of showing results even if there were none. I think he was more of a symptom of a financially starved Navy. If you want to root cause the situation, then blame Congress for starving the programs to the point of failure. (A problem we're faced with today. The US Navy is at it's lowest readiness status since WWI. The current Carriers are exhausted. We need a LOT more new ships, but Congress is to busy focusing on...___________) You can fill in the blank.
@@b.thomas8926 Is it possible that one of the US Military's problems is a supply system that leaks financially?
The ineffectual salvoing off of countless torpedoes in battle has never been tabulated. Each one of these cost was enough to have bought you a four bedroom house in California in those days. I would love to find a book or source that tabulates with dates and locations of the use of torpedoes and their effects. If only to see what was being ignored by Admirals King, Nimitz, Halsey, and Admiral Wright among many others.
THAT was spectacular! I’ve read a lot about the MK 14 issues, and your video is spot on and really well presented. BUORD personnel should have been rounded up and dropped off in Tokyo Bay right about January 1942. Let the Japanese have their way with them. At the very least, they should have been forced to fly with the men of Torpedo 8 that all died during the battle of Midway. Those dunderheads absolutely extended the war in the Pacific and by extension, caused the unnecessary deaths of thousands of US military personnel. This was the most egregious example of incompetence one could imagine. As a Navy vet, this story never fails to really piss me off.
Ohh, you should hear about the Battle of May Island then.
The US subs were sinking ships left and right once the torps started working. Imagine the devastation that could have had on the Japanese fleet if the torps had worked on day one..
Not to mention all those poor torpedo bomber pilots who risked their lives to get into launch range only to have their torpedoes bounce.
@CK Lim the us didn't follow German military strategy so subs did not hunt in packs rather they were lone wolves. in the first stages of the war you are correct in the subs were used mainly as scouts. but thanks to hyper aggressive captains such as flucky on the uss barb thing changed quickly and their role expanded into the nightmare for the Japanese navy they are now known by. The uss flasher alone sank around 22 ships or over 100k tons of Japanese ships. Us subs as a whole sank around 5.3 million tons, and completely locked down Japanese naval movement to the point that when the war was nearing its end ships just off the coast of mainland Japan were not expected to survive their trip.
Does anybody have a headcount of how many of our guys died because these fucking things didn't work?
Ironically the early failures might have stymied IJN anti-submarine warfare techniques and technologies. No need when the subs weren’t much of a threat.
@@deh6724 You took part of my comment. To add to yours, Nimitz actually changed his view of the submarine as they were the only vessels after Pearl Harbor to actually go on the offensive carry the battle to the Japanese Navy and Commerce vessels. As for hunting in packs, such tactics were proposed but then found to be not worth it as the Japanese Navy did not employ the convoy system until later in the war and the battle theater covered a much greater area than in the Atlantic.
The torpedo that went “boop” instead of “boom.”
This was so cathartic to hear while grading Middle School kid's work. The parallels in stupidity with Bureau of Ordnance was enlightening and surreal.
Hard to believe that BuOrd was that incompetent.... Surprised that more people weren't court martialed.
Sailor:Sir! We see an enemy convoy! Captain:Are we in torpedo range? Sailor:Yes sir! Captain:Good, get on the deck gun Edit:”Drive us closer, I want to hit them with my sword”
Good fucking GOD!!! Edit: Thanks, guys! Lotsa likes!
The 1941- late 1942 Silent Hunter 4 experience
how many ships were sunk by deck guns - all navy''s
@@fernandomarques5166 Exactly!
Man, SH4 is amazing. My signature move was setting up in front of a convoy and waiting. When they got close, I'd throw 2 torpedoes at the front escorts and then surface in the middle of the convoy, firing the aft tubes and firing at the closest ships with the deck gun. When the merchants scattered enough to give the destroyers clear shots, I'd submerge and then flee. My favorite moment in gaming was intercepting the Japanese fleet en route to Midway. I crept past the pickets and fired a full 6 fish spread at the Soryu. The sonar operator reported explosions, but at that moment the game crashed, forever corrupting that save. I never played the game again, assuming that I would never top that experience, but I still enjoy thinking about it.
I was on a USN SSBN in the late 70's to early 80's and the sub that I was on had 2 MK. 14 first issued in 1942 in Pearl Harbor Hawaii we had another that was issued 1945 same place. The rest were from the 50's. When we went into the ship yards the Mk 14's were retired. when we came out the sub was issued brand new Mk. 48's. I was a Torpedoman TMSN (SS) so since I had to arm, disarm, maintain. load and unload the weapons I do know what I am talking about. The worse problem for the MK.14 was the circular run that was worked out of the weapon along with the detonators. I will not talk about the "Gilley Juice" problems with the torpedomen in the 30's and 40's. The largest problem was and still is the perfumed princes of the pentagon who know everything yet nothing, most have been long term desk Jockies.
The thought of using the Mark 14 as a last ditch self defense defense weapon against a modern (for the time) ASW platform makes my blood run cold
@@jeffreyskoritowski4114 Honestly if a late 70s US Navy SSBN was actually deploying a torpedo in self defense shit is so unbelievably fucked in both the intimately local and very global sense that dying by depth charge is the least of your problems. The biggest one is "Is there going to be anyone left to see it when our wreckage washes ashore", though I guess at that point is it really your problem anymore?
Yeah, they assigned me to the PK Analyzer for section tracking party, because as an FTB I'm supposed to know something about targeting solutions (?) Had fun playing with the knobs, at any rate. Sean Thornton is a nice touch, btw. Great movie.
@@ssbn6175 LOL Fire Control Technician "Baby" do you still walk 6" off the deck at all times?
@@darthrex354 the sub was capable of carrying 16 Poseidon missiles and if we had successfully gotten all of them off all we became was a really big not so fast attack sub and if that happened we knew that there probably was no one left to come home to.
"Longest Serving" is not a good thing to say about something whose service life is about forty-five seconds when it works correctly.
8:44 “You’re only going to see a handful built each year.” To be fair: That must be a big fucking hand.
13:44 My heart sunk when Drach mentioned US subs disappearing without ever making enemy contact, with faulty magnetic torpedoes on-board. What a way to go.
I'd like to know his reference for that comment, I noticed it too. In none of my reading have I ever come across anything that even implied that the magnetic exploder detonated inside the submarine. There were definately 1 and maybe 2 submarines sunk by their own torpedo's making circular runs and coming back to sink them. USS Tang is the most famous of these. Late in the war we discovered that we had been sending subs into Japanese minefields. This could account for many of the "missing" subs.
@@lilidutour3617 which is better how?
I very much doubt the magnetic exploder could go off on it's own. That's because instead of using batteries, it uses a water wheel powered generator for the electronics. Just sitting there on a sub there would be no power to allow it to work. There may be other "safe and arm" features to protect against that.
@@indyrock8148 Here are a couple of cases of circular running: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tullibee_(SS-284)#Fourth_war_patrol_and_loss en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306)#Fifth_war_patrol and still unknown reasons: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_%28SSN-589%29#Theories_about_the_loss en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593) and the biggest mystery of all the Russian K-129 prc68.com/I/crypto.shtml#SOSUS Some torpedo info: prc68.com/I/Torpedoes.html#Background prc68.com/I/Submarines.html#Background and for something completely different: prc68.com/I/Sonobuoy.shtml#Roswell
Whilst I've never read anything on the subject, I mentally framed the "disappearing subs" comment in terms of the unreliable exploders detonating the weapon not necessarily while still on board but as soon as it left the tube, with the subsequent shockwave travelling back up the tube and doing Bad Things to the inner door. Pure speculation of course.
That Japanese whaling ship, tho. *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* *CLANG* "Okay, what the hell is that noise?"
imagine getting your ship sunk by LITERAL torpedo *impacts* (and not detonations)
I cant help but wonder if- by the tenth hit- the terror had been replaced by fits of laughter
I am forcing my heart to slow, this is a part of the story I din"t know and can only think of the number of our fellow sub sailors who were murdered by shear incompetence!
"longest serving torpedo in USN history..." Well, sure - theyre reusable, naturally they last longer.
15:38 "Meanwhile, back in the real world..." This is the best transition I have heard in a while.
Sounds like the attitude of Apple towards its customers: trying to convince you their device is perfect and it's your fault for not using it correctly.
reminds me of H&K more than anything
Or any corporate manager towards their wonderful fix-all software solution they bought off some shady salesman that doesn't even do what they were told it does.
Apple customer service is like cutting onions using only your teeth.
Apple, like all for-profit corporations, does try and portray their products and services in a positive way. But you don't go from near bankruptcy, in 1997, when Steve Jobs rejoined the company, to the world's first publicly owned trillion dollar company (in 2018), or two trillion dollar company (earlier this year - 2020), with smoke and mirrors. In my experience, and I have a lot if it, their products just work.
@@CPSJSMSUUMUGA Just don’t try getting them fixed if they fail. Apple has close to the most incompetent repair staff around and simply won’t repair anything older than two years old.
(4:59) First time watching this channel, loved the perfectly placed Douglas Adams reference. (13:08) "Torpedoes were being fired, but ships, were rather inconveniently staying afloat." That's a very British way of describing the problem, and I quite enjoy hearing it... of course, assuming they're not my torpedoes during a time of war, that aren't up to snuff. (23:28) If enemy ships weren't sinking in, something else would, _finally._
Hearing how hesitant the US navy was to fire the torpedoes, reminds me of Paul Harrell's philosophy on ammo and why he dislikes "hyper" ammo, because of what he calls the "precious" factor. People spend so much on boutique carry ammo and they deem it so "precious" that they never practice with it, never get proficient with it, and thus have no idea how reliable or accurate it even is. Then if they actually need to use it in self defense, they have a rude awakening.
Yes, I have that problem with firing my Weatherby Mark V 270mag. 1 box of 20 rounds is $200.oo. I can't afford to practice (much).
That talk about "boutique carry ammo" brings to my mind a gag from an old MAD magazine satire of the then-popular 1950's serial, 'The Lone Ranger' (called "The Lone Stranger", who fires golden bullets). In one battle scene when the Indians are attacking, one of the settlers yells, "Lone Stranger! Lone Stranger! Why aren't you firing?" He says, "Fire? And lose my golden bullets? It's plumb hard to come by them thar golden bullets!"
Your absolutely right ctuan, if you don't practice with it, how do you know what it will do!
13: I'm an unlucky number 14: hold my beer
M-14, Mk-14...
The 13 was actually worse than the 14. The 13 had a failure rate of around 97%, That is why The Japanese were able to get off so relatively light at Midway.
@Phil McCrevice Whos been triggered then?
@@wideyxyz2271 well not the torpedo.
Still see this today... Worked for Company, did a good job. There were lots of odd procedures in building X, some of them were literally "drill/tap 6/32 hole at position Z, install screw" and appended near the end of the instructions "remove 6/32 screw from position Z, force in [some metric screw]" Why like that? Why re-work X while it is still being built? Why run a mis-matched screw into a drilled/tapped hole? Why not [some metric screw] drill/tap in the first place? This was not a mismatched revision, this was first-run assembly directions. Turns out the tech that wrote the "6/32" part was a novice when he wrote that, and X really did need to use [some metric screw] at position Z. Being a novice, he thought that the tiny difference would be OK. I mean, the [some metric screw] could be driven into the 6/32 hole, with a little effort. Besides, you could leave off the lock-tite if the threads are a tiny bit jammed. The answer to all those questions was simple: over 20 years, that junior tech moved up the corporate ladder, to a VP position. So pages had to be added ammended to the instructions to make allowances for the many mistakes Junior Tech made. To go back and make ANY edits to the original document was to insult their author, today. Sure, it was a Japanese owned company, but the attitude that only the upper echelon knows anything and that underlings are all lazy liars lives on. The [some metric screw] could be driven in once, and usually held OK. But since the threads were not well matched, the screw would fail and a new one used. By the third time running in a screw, the screw-hole would be worn out, requiring drilling/tapping one size up. After all that crap, the bottom line was 'wing it'. sigh.
Jesus Gawd. I actually saw a revision on a casting print that read "revised drawing to comply with what foundry is actually supplying". Lowered expectations is a business model.
@@kmech3rd I've seen that before, as well as a few others. And it's been a career limiting move to try and straighten them out in every case, because "getting shit right" is less important than the pride of some mediocre engineer who didn't pay attention to their design a decade ago.
This sort of lunacy is still going on, if (hopefully) slowly dying out. But interchangeability is fraught, even disregarding Imperial vs Metric. Many years ago I saw a case where a 90 mm axle from Japan, reputedly "identical" to a Caterpillar 90 mm axle, could not be used as a replacement. About that time I also had a summer job in a factory with different machines using two different Imperial standard screws (BSW? SAE?) plus Metric screws. Maintenance was challenging.
@@vholes2803 For 1 company I worked for a big machining house(a decently big name, but I shall not name them). Examples of things I found were say, a series of "Go/NoGo" gauges. Several hundred of these were used across the plant... and they were assembled out of 4-5 components screwed together. And these gauges were manufactured by a different company. Back in the 80s when the company started making the thing that needed these gauges... someone screwed up the drawings and several of the thread/hole callouts on different components... didn't match. 1/4-20 threads line up with holes for #8 screws and shit. In the late 90s-early 2000s when these were all converted to 3d models/electronic drawings... no one fixed them. And here I was trying to find time on a drill to work on my own assigned project... as a staff member was re-drilling and tapping dozens of holes... as they've been doing for 35+ years. Why? Even the machine shop we bought the things from was skeptical. But apparently it had been brought up a few times before, and I could even see where every 3-5 years since the 90s, someone (usually an intern) has made revised copies of the drawings and submitted them to leads for update. 1 guy even mathed out that a few thousand dollars a year was being wasted reworking these gauges. All rejected. Why? Because the guy who designed them in the 80s is the guy who gets final say if any drawing is accepted or rejected for production.
The Fleet Ballistic Missile Weapons System belonged to SP (Special Projects, later updated to Special Programs), and had terrific documentation for the Boat sailors...the first Fire Control system I worked on had some 17 separate volumes of nothing but pull-out FCDs; we could troubleshoot to the individual diode when necessary. It gets terribly boring out there, and guys would read through the manuals looking for errors; when one was found, the appropriate documentation would be submitted. In due course a technical change would be disseminated. I think the Tech Writers loved us...
This Cold War Torpedoman found the video to be an accurate and most informative overview of the MK14's history. Well done, sirs.
Saw a cut-a-way of a torpedo at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, about 15 years ago. Blew me away how complex they are. Never gave it a second thought, because in the movies they worked all the time, every time. Never showed the crew messing with it. Came home and read some more. Good gravy, they are an amazing piece of engineering.
Love the story of Kaga at Midway. Struck by a MK14 torpedo from USS Nautilus that not only failed to explode, but actually saved some Japanese crew by breaking apart and floating amongst those who had abandoned the ship post bombing.
And just in case anyone thinks “we’re better than this now’ - witness the Sergeant York AA weapon; the Osprey; the F35 fighter and indeed the Boeing 737MAX & Starliner capsule. Never underestimate the power of human pride and stupidity even in the face of evidence!
The Sergeant York failed in live fire tests. Which is better than the mk 14, which never got tested and failed in battle.
You're also forgetting the M2 Bradley...
And the littoral combat ship
Dont forget the Russian Concord. which crashed at a Paris air show. Killing all aboard.
They were developed on Aquidneck island, home of Newport, and Davisville, Rhode Island. I had an Professor in college who worked on the issue and helped design the aluminum firing pin that resolved the detonation issues.
This is one piece of tech that even the Adeptus Mechanicus would spurn
It would have to be assumed that the Iron Men had planted at least some of these defects because there would be no logical excuse for a weapon to be this flawed.
No prayers to the machine spirit can save this weapon. If this happened in wh40k, the people who made the weapon would suffer a fate worse than death
"The on-board depth sensor... was also compromised by it's position..." Oh no... Surely they can't have been stupid enough to put it in the nose or tail... "...the mk 14's was installed in the cone shaped tail." FFS! Really? They have the the barefaced cheek to tell everyone there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with their torpedo, when they were making errors I'd expect a first year engineering student who's done fluid dynamics 101 to spot.
Ser Garlan Tyrell lI haven't even taken such a course, but the moment he said where it was positioned, I thought "hmm, I don't think that's how this works.." It makes me wonder if fluid dynamics was even a thing back then? Or did they think that only applies to engines, vessels, and planes?
@@guard13007 of course it was, how do you think they designed such high performance aircraft. And they've been designing hulls for ships long before that.
@@guard13007 The study of fluid dynamics (often still referred to in maritime circles as "hydrodynamics" during the era under discussion) is ancient and goes back to classical Greece. Without an understanding of Archimedes' principal of bouyancy and other related laws, it would have been impossible to design a submarine or any other vessel which relies on displacement to stop it sinking in the first place. You might perhaps be thinking of "computational fluid dynamics", which studies methods of simulating complex fluid behaviour, interactions with solid objects, etc. It's a much more recent field which only came about with the necessary increases in available computing power. In any case, as Ser Garlan Tyrell points out, not understanding that a static pressure sensor is going to give erroneous readings if you locate it in an area of reduced pressure caused by increased flow is like the definition of "rookie mistake", and I've never even studied fluid dynamics. :) BuOrd had the hide of an elephant claiming that there was nothing wrong with the design.
@eedd sdsd But either you have to have a complicated mechanical computer to compensate for different speed and depth settings, or you're stuck with the single speed & depth setting that came with it from the factory.
@eedd sdsd Running speed likely to be inconsistent due to currents, wakes, other hydrological effects, plus the specified margin of error of the propulsion system, all of which would then make the depth tracking similarly inconsistent. Probably bad for scoring solid hits against sloped and armoured hulls. ;) The better engineering solution is to simply mount the sensor inlet port in an area of minimum static pressure change with respect to velocity of the surrounding fluid, a relatively simple problem for a qualified engineer with the available technology of the day (pencil, paper, slide rule, time).
So, the tldw is "End user says torpedo is crap, designer responds with a "Your face""
Instructions unclear, sending 14 guys named Mark to deal with the enemy
I am so glad I remembered watching this video a couple of years ago. I am currently a museum visitor volunteer at the Oregon Military Museum in Clackamas, Oregon of which we have a Mark 14 torpedo as a static display. This information will be very helpful to pass on information to our visitors. Great episode indeed!
Well, luckily the Dutch submarines didn't have this problem, allowing Admiral Helfrich to become known as "Ship-a-day" Helfrich with the 20 submarines the Dutch had in East Asia.
I'm not trying to be nasty, but that sounds a little bit like "Ha ha, you suck" to the Americans
@@christopherwhitney2711 The Dutch could well be a bit more at home below sea level because quite a few of out houses are there. Dutch prowess in WWII was a quite limited, but there were a few successes. We still were occupied in Indonesia and our home turf, so it didn't really get us that far.
@@bramverbeek7109 Yes I understand and I'm grateful as an Australian. But poor RogerWilco just at that time seemed the master of the unfortunate phrase, even though I get his intentions were all good. I suppose I was just being like a good XO and playing devil's advocate lol
These torpedoes are expensive, so if they miss, they'll come back to the ship that fired them, to be picked up for another try. Mark it top secret and put it in the book.
Is that the same book that got put into the mildew ridden safe behind the "Beware of the Leopard" signs?
@@kieranh2005 the very same! Although before facing the leopard, you must first fight your way through endless hoards of bureaucrats and political sycophants. Then the dedicated boot licking lackeys, with their smoke and mirrors of misinformation, promiscuous finger pointing and the diversionary offering up of scapegoats.
Thanks for the presentation and the work it took to prepare it. The MK14 Torpedo system was one of the subjects addressed dramaticly by Hollywood in the 1951 Warner Brothers film "OPERATION PACIFIC" starring John Wayne and Patricia Neale.