[Wolfar]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

The game does an OK job of it, but really doesn't do it as often as happened in real life, which is scary. Imagine wiggling your way into an escorted convoy, shooting 4-6 torpedoes, and getting nothing in return for your efforts, other than a nerve-wracking depth charging... lather rinse repeat, with no do-overs... scary. There are several good write-ups on the subject, but several of them are now behind a pay wall at USNI, and I was not able to find several others I know are out there (thanks Google AI). Fire One - Fire Ten seems an OK replacement. Wikipedia changed their article, and removed quite a bit of detail they used to have. I don't know why, but is probably related to the recent spate of un-intelligent "AI" that wants to "help" us all by re-writing "history"... sigh

Anyway, the gist of the matter is that the USN BuOrd did not want to waste taxpayer's money by testing their infallible product, so they never actually attempted to blow-up a ship, or to even strike a ship with their new Mark 14 torpedo. The submariners were the guinea pigs, and when their reports from the field came in, they were ignored, and/or the crews called incompetent. By mid-1943, it was determined not only that the depth-keeping was borked, but that the magnetic pistol also did not function correctly, which is why Nimitz had them disabled in the CenPac areas. Christie in Fremantle, having been a gun-clubber who had helped develop the beast, did not order them disabled on his SoWesPac boats until much later. Disabling the magnetic pistol then brought to light the issue with the impact pistol, in which the pin would deform, and its track often break from the warhead's impact with a ship. The Pearl shops hand-manufactured a temporary solution, and testing on that began shortly after, near the fall of 1943. You can see an immediate sharp rise in sinkings after the "fix" went into the field.

Indeed, there seemed to be incompetence and a lot of hiding the truth!

They denied it even happened for almost a YEAR!