CL Kuma counter-attacks with torpedoes
 

So, I was Kuma-hunting south of Shortland Island in my new Salmon boat (Skipjack), trying the new fancy Mk14s (hah!).



I set up one contact, one influencer, both were duds. But, the weird thing - on the first dud (contact), the Kuma promptly fired a spread of five torpedoes in my direction! Never saw that one before - guns, DCs etc. yes, but torpodos? Mind you, at a short range I tend to fire, they would have a reasonable chance, but how are they to know? In RL, wasting torpedos like this would be rather frowned upon, but I do consider it cool :).



Can be seen at about 2:58 into my last video (link ad the end) Pity it was at night, so the quality is not great..



-smm

FotrS 1.8 Ultimate with a few aesthetic mods.


https://youtu.be/jwescCzWdJ8?t=02m58s

Yeah Submarines fire at you too. Great mod.

subs I'd fully expect - I have fired torpedoes at subs as well.... But cruisers? :) Again - I don't complain, I like it, but find it funny...



At least Kuma (leading ship) had depth charges, since when it sunk in '44, it was after being hit by two torpedoes that detonated her DC rack. But it could have been a late-war addition, I think early on only Sendais had DC as standard equipment.



-smm

Sure, that class had up to 4 double torpedo launchers according to the net. I've been shot at by destroyers too but don't recall a cruiser. Interesting!

All Japanes CLs and most, if not all CAs had torpedo tubes - after all, the Long Lance was one of the best torpedoes of WW2, and they knew it. Unlike Mk14/15/16 which didn't get to be good until '43 at least.



Although US FIDO was the best ASW weapon of the war later on - it had 27% success rate, or 18% if you cound immediately sunk and not "only" damaged. even that 18% is about twice as good as aircraft launched DCs (9.5%)



-smm

What about the German and Japanese homers? What was their success ratios?

No idea, I don't believe the IJN ones were very good though.



But FIDO was designed from ground up as an air-launched ASW weapon, while German homing torpedoes were meant as an anti-ship weapon. And there weren't many subs in Atlantic, so I don't know if they ever were used against a sub.


-smm

I suppose not, but they definitely had better "regular" torps than we did. That's interesting you mention the last. Now that you mention it I've never read of German acoustic torps being fired at all in anger, I'm sure they were but never read or heard of which subs did shoot them, then again 3/4 of the subs never got home or got the chance to report.

Some info on German torpedoes

https://uboat.net/technical/torpedoes.htm

there is much more you can find on them on the web, including the link at the top of that page. The Japanese destroyed a lot of information as the war came to a close, so we rely upon information gleaned from interviews and books. They may have been working on a acoustic torpedo, but I've not seen info. They did however, have the kaiten which had minor success (I wouldn't want it to be considered 'minor' if they hit my ship), but most Japanese crew reports from the field were often over-exaggerated, such as their attack on Ulithi Atoll.

Thanks! I'm surprised there isn't more detail about these in Clay Blairs excellent book set on Hitlers uboat war.

Very nice surprise! I am working on a WWI mod, and lots of WWI battleships and armoured cruisers had torpedo tubes - even the old pre-dreadnoughts built in the 1890's. It will be hilarious when a player closes in to sink a "helpless" damaged battleship - and then gets blown out of the water. :haha: The British also put big steam launches on their battleships; these were 40-50 foot steamboats that could carry two 14" torpedoes and one medium-sized deck gun, along with MG's....in an emergency they could be lowered over the side and used to hunt submarines.

Kaitens were quite overegged IIRC. Although I can't remember the source anymore, it was that they were one-for-one, less effective than Long Lances. I've heard a theory (again, can't remember source) that many pilots got cold feet at the last moment and tried to save themselves (which _seemed_ easier than in a plane, but in reality wasn't) - no idea whether it's true or not though.


Dan Carlin had a very good and interesting section on Kamikaze (applies to Kaiten too) in episodes VI I think of his Supernova in the East podcast.

Quite true. The only Kaiten kills I know of were USS Mississinewa, USS Underhill, and one landing craft.

Conway's WWII ships implies they could have been used to sink the USS Indianapolis, but Capt. Hashimoto denied this at the Indianapolis court martial.

As an aside, found this video on FIDOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2bA-4eNG7o
The channel also has some other great videos - sinking of I-52 in atlantic recording (sounds from the pilot and sonbuoys, including the prop noises, explosions, implosions and air escaping..)




-smm