Iron Men and Tin Fish: The Race to Build a Better Torpedo during World War II

by Anthony Newpower

From the American entry into World War II until September 1943, U.S. submarines experienced an abnormally high number of torpedo failures. These failures resulted from three defects present in the primary torpedo of the day, the Mark XIV. These defects were a tendency to run deeper than the set depth, the frequent premature detonation of the Mark 6 magnetic influence exploder, and the failure of the contact exploder when hitting a target at the textbook ninety-degree angle. Ironically, despite using a completely independent design, the Germans experienced the same three defects. The Germans, however, fixed their defects in six months, while it took the Americans twenty-two months. Much of the delay on the American side resulted from the denial of senior leaders in the operational forces and in the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) that the torpedo itself was defective. Instead, they blamed crews for poor marksmanship or lack of training. In the end, however, the submarine force itself overcame the bureaucratic inertia and correctly identified and fixed the three problems on their own, proving once again the industry of the average American soldier or sailor.

From the American entry into World War II until September 1943, U.S. submarines experienced an abnormally high number of torpedo failures. These failures resulted from three defects present in the primary torpedo of the day, the Mark XIV. These defects were a tendency to run deeper than the set depth, the frequent premature detonation of the magnetic influence exploder, and the failure of the contact exploder when hitting a target at the textbook 90-degree angle. Ironically, despite using a completely independent design, the Germans experienced the same three defects. The Germans, however, fixed their defects in six months, while it took the Americans 22 months. Much of the delay on the American side resulted from the denial of senior leaders in the operational forces and in the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) that the torpedo itself was defective. Instead, they blamed crews for poor marksmanship or lack of training. In the end, however, the submarine force itself overcame the bureaucratic inertia and correctly identified and fixed the three problems on their own, proving once again the industry of the average American soldier or sailor.

Contrary to the interpretations of most submarine historians, this book concludes that BuOrd did not sit idly by while torpedoes failed on patrol after patrol. BuOrd acknowledged problems from early in the war, but their processes and their tunnel vision prevented them from realizing that the weapon sent to the fleet was grossly defective. One of World War II's forgotten heroes, Admiral Lockwood drove the process for finding and fixing the three major defects. This is first book that deals exclusively with the torpedo problem, building its case out of original research from the archives of the Bureau of Ordnance, the Chief of Naval Operations, Vice Admiral Lockwood's personal correspondence, and records from the British Admiralty at the National Archives of the United Kingdom. These sources are complemented by correspondence and interviews with men who actually participated in the events.

Genres: War, History, Technology, Military History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2006

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Iron Men and Tin Fish is a very good technical and historical study of the US torpedo disaster of World War II. This is a complex historical event that prolonged the war, cost perhaps thousands of Allied lives both at sea in the US submarines and ashore with land forces but did it have to be this way. Most historical thought is it did not and Newpower agrees but also shows the top leadership for example Admirals King (Chief of Naval Operations), Lockwood (Commander Submarines Pacific) and Blandy (head of Bureau of Ordinance) were looking for solutions but they were looking for the solutions at differing speeds. The question is anyone criminally negligent and the answer that Newpower uses from Blandy himself is telling with a resounding yes and no.

Newpower does a fine job in presenting the evidence however i felt some pieces of evidence were missing which would have strengthened his argument. There have been other books with accounts of defective torpedoes stuck in the hull of a Japanese ship and the Japanese knew how defective out torpedoes were and thought our torpedoes were not a threat until 1944. Clay Blair in his Silent Victory recounted that when the Cavite Naval Base was captured in 1941 the torpedoes were not destroyed and the Japanese studied them and decided that the risk to their ships was real but there was a fair chance of the torpedoes not functioning as designed.

This book is highly recommended for a serious student of the submarine war if you are looking for an anthology of submarine stories this may not be for you.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty disappointing. I was hoping it would shed new light on the bureaucratic angle of the torpedo issues suffered by the US Navy from 1941-43. It doesn't really add to what has already been said. There's just a little too much celebration of the bravery and ingenuity of submarine captains, and not really too much technical detail compared to whats freely available or has been discussed in larger histories of the submarine effort. The correspondence between commanders and the Bureau of Ordnance is discussed, but frankly, isn't very illuminating.
There are interesting comparisons to the torpedo experiences of the Germans, Japanese and British, though much more detail is needed here to live up to the subtitle "The Race to build a better torpedo in WWII". Also missing are any discussions of later war US torpedo development, other than some comparisons to the mk18.
There is a good mixture of the context of the Pacific War and the torpedo problems, but in some ways, the context distracts from the problem. The book makes a great introduction to the issue and even to submarine warfare, and is a quick and accessible read, but as someone already familiar with this at a basic level, adds little new for me.

[Jesper Jorgensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book shortly after reading Hellions of the Deep: The Development of American Torpedoes in World War II was actually quite interesting with the latter as the better of the two in my humble opinion.

I believe it to have a broader perspective relating in great detail the competition between Westinghouse and the Naval Torpedo Station (NTS) and NTS' reluctance to accept any faults in it's precision made torpedoes.

It also relates the frantic mobilization of US scientist and 'brain capacity' of all kinds to work in the weapons industry in general as well as on the urgent task of getting the US torpedoes 'right'

On the other hand this book goes much more into the details of the impact on morale among submarine captains and their crews as well as top brass, like Admiral Lockwood's and Chief of BuOrd William H. "Spike" Blandy's roles in what is called 'the torpedo scandal'.

So, actually, I'd recommend you to read both books

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of book I tend to enjoy: detailed technical history. Starts with a short discussion of the history of torpedoes, and then analzyes the experiences of the US, UK, Germany and Japan in WW2.

The UK and Japan entered WW2 with good or excellent torpedoes, while the US and Germany started the war with torpedoes that very often failed to do their job. This book describes why.

The book has to walk a fine line between being a history of submarines in WW2 and being a technical history of the torpedo branch. I think it manages this, but I know a lot about submarines, so other readers may feel differently.

Torpedoes turn out to be interesting and complicated machines. They are stored in damp conditions with variable pressure, badly maintained, and then have to work correctly after passing through a mile of water and banging into a steel hull at 40 miles an hour.

To make matters worse, they are big and expensive, leaving torpedo development groups reluctant to do full-scale testing. Turns out, if you don't test, the things don't work reliably.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

For those of us who worked on these ancient beasts, this book is of passing interest. Anybody else, it's a dust catcher. The level of technical detail and assiduous date/time notation is maddening.