In June 1942, Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood became COMSUBSOWESPAC. After reading the war diaries of his submariners he became convinced that poor torpedo performance was the root cause of fleet's poor sub kill rate. Lockwood asked BuOrd if they had recently tested the Mark 14. The answer was a curt "No." Lockwood then purchased a 500 foot long fish net and tested the Mark 14 himself. The results were no surprise to the submarine captains. One torpedo, set at 10 feet, ran through the net at 25, another with the same depth setting passed through at 18 feet. Another, set to ride on the surface, went through the net at 11 feet. Lockwood notified BuOrd of his results and was told that no reliable conclusions could be drawn from his test. Lockwood then repeated the test with another submarine. Three torpedoes, each set at 10 feet, cut the net at 21 feet. In July, informed of Lockwood's tests, King, ordered BuOrd to test the Mark 14. In August of 1942 the Bureau completed its tests and formally declared the Mark 14 ran 11 feet deeper than set. Premature Explosions Even after this problem was "solved" complaints on torpedo performance continued. Most concerned the issue of premature explosions. Lockwood endorsed these reports and sent them to Washington. Rear Admiral Ralph Waldo Christie, the BuOrd officer largely responsible for the development of the Mark 14 and Mark 6 magnetic detonator, then entered the fray. When the failure of the attack was blamed on his beloved detonators and torpedoes. Christie wrote Lockwood: "It is not defective torpedoes nor exploders causing the dearth of sunken Japanese ships. It is ineffective submarine crews... and by the way stop your negative reports about the torpedoes.". Lockwood replied, "From the amount of belly-aching it (Lockwood's note) contains, I assume that your breakfast coffee was scorched or perhaps it was a bad egg. You boys may figure the problem out to suit your favorite theories but the fact remains that we have now lost six valuable targets due to prematures so close to that the skipper thought they were hits.". Lockwood made his feelings plain at a conference in Washington DC. He ripped into the BuOrd declaring "If the Bureau of Ordnance can't provide us with torpedoes that will hit and explode, then for God's sake get the Bureau of Ships to design a boat hook with which we can rip plates off a target's sides." Lockwood was immediately confronted by an old friend, Rear Admiral WHP "Spike" Blandy, the BuOrd Chief. "I don't know whether it's part of your mission to discredit the Bureau of Ordnance, but you seem to be doing a pretty good job of it." "Well, Spike," Lockwood retorted, "if anything I have said will get the bureau off its duff and get some action, I will feel that my trip has not been wasted." Christie Checks In early 1943 the submarine command structure changed. Lockwood moved from being COMSUBSOWESPAC to COMSUBPAC at Pearl Harbor under Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander In Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). Christie was named COMSUBSOWESPAC. Far from bowing to the obvious, Christie conducted a vendetta against skippers who slurred his torpedo. When two of his captains questioned the reliability of the Mark 14 they were transferred out. Word spread that to question the Mark 14 in Christie's command was a sure way of being assigned shore duty. To forestall criticism, Christie actually went on patrol with his most successful captain in order to observe the Mark 14 in action. Of three fired in the first attack, the first torpedo broke to the surface zigzagged and passed in front of the target while the other two hit and sank the ship. During the second attack on this cruise Christie watched as 18 torpedoes were fired at one ship. Only five hit but none of the blows was a killing one and the Japanese ship steamed off. Christie deemed the operation a success. Nimitz Takes Action The missed opportunities continued to mount. In April 1943 the USS Tunny had worked herself into the center of a Japanese carrier formation near Truk. On one side loomed a fleet carrier, on the other two smaller ones. Tunny launched four aft torpedoes at the small carrier and six at the big one at a range of 850 yards. Despite the spread and position only one of the small carriers was damaged while most of the other torpedoes detonated prematurely. Tunny had to flee for her life with little to show for her efforts. On June 11, 1943 US submarines entered Tokyo Harbor, one of the war's most daring feats. Salvo after salvo failed to sink any fleet units in the harbor's confined spaces. This and other failed attacks were enough for Nimitz. In June 1943, CINCPAC ordered the deactivation of the magnetic warheads on his submarines. Christie, still maintaining his faith in the magnetic detonator, continued their use in his fleet. A Matter of Physics Nimitz was right, Christie was wrong. The magnetic detonator on the Mark 6 was not working. After much investigation, it turned out to be a matter of physics. Every steel bottomed ship was encased in a magnetic field that radiated in all directions. Designers presumed that this field extended an equal distance in all directions, forming a perfect hemisphere under the bottom of the ship. But there was flaw in the reasoning. What was not understood (by anyone in the world) was that the magnetic field encasing a ship varied in shape depending in circumstances. Near the equator, this magnetic envelope flattened out until it resembled a thick disk more than a hemisphere. Since the torpedo would enter the magnetic field some distance from the ship it would explode harmlessly. The war was now eighteen months old. The Navy had already discovered that its state of the art torpedo was running eleven feet lower than its setting and that the magnetic detonator wasn't working. What else could go wrong? Duds Once Nimitz' subs stopped using the magnetic detonating feature it became obvious that most of the torpedoes were duds. One sub reported firing 15 fish at an anchored Japanese Whale Factory. Eleven torpedoes failed to explode though they hit their target. Lockwood ordered more tests, this time of the contact detonators. Mark 14s were fired at a cliff and dropped from a crane in an effort to get to the bottom of the problem. By September the tests had proven that the Mark 14 contact firing pin was unfit for combat. The pin was so delicate that it would crush without detonating the torpedo on an optimal hit of 90 degrees relative to the target. At 45 degrees, 50% of the torpedoes failed. Lockwood ordered the submariners to target glancing shots at enemy vessels. Yes, he admitted, they were more difficult to make, but they had a chance of being successful while the problem was corrected. In November 1943 Christie was given a direct order by Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, Commander of the Seventh Fleet to disarm all the magnetic detonators. It was a bitter blow and he refused to accept its logic. "Today," he wrote in his diary, "the long hard battle on the Mark 6 magnetic feature ends with defeat. I am forced to inactivate all magnetic exploders. We are licked." During the same month a fix for the contact pin problem was introduced. Now when the submarines pulled out of port they were finally able to hunt and kill, not shoot off fizzling fish. More Fizzling Fish US WWII Torpedoes Fizzling Fish: Introduction Fizzling Fish: Commanders, Tactics & Torpedoes Fizzling Fish: Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood Back to Cry Havoc #14 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com