19. A Failed Detonator That Caused American Submariners a Ton of Grief
In March 1943, Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood, recently placed in charge of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet submarines, sat down to examine the tally sheet of enemy ships sunk by his men. The figures he found gave little cause for cheer. The previous year, American submarines had fired off 1442 torpedoes but failed to sink more than 211 Japanese ships that totaled less than 1.3 million tons. The real figures, if he had known them at the time, would have depressed him even more.
After the war, it turned out that the poor figures examined by Lockwood had actually been wildly optimistic. Analysis of captured Japanese records revealed that in 1942, only 109 enemy ships, with a total weight of a mere 41,871 tons, had been sunk by torpedoes from US submarines. The culprit, as was ultimately revealed – but only after massive resistance from US Navy higher-ups – was the Mark 14 Torpedo. Designed in 1931, it was the standard weapon of American submarines when the country joined WWII in 1941, and it failed the submariners miserably.
