Meme Thread... no politics

In reply to Appleseed :

I'll take "torpedoes shot from WWII American submarines" for $100 please.

Noddaz said:

In reply to Appleseed :

I'll take "torpedoes shot from WWII American submarines" for $100 please.

I thought it was the air dropped torpedoes that, after like 20-30% of the torpedo planes survived long enough to launch, would go too deep and/or fail to detonate entirely, rendering the whole mission a waste of time and men and materiel.  (At Midway, they had a Cleveland Brownsian near perfect record: zero hits and like 95% losses)

The early history of US torpedo bombers in WWII is.... harsh and depressing.  Made worse that Important People In Charge refused to admit that there was a problem.

edit to clarify nationality.  Japanese torpedo bombers worked very well...

It wasn't just the air dropped ones. The dud rate for our subs was appallingly bad for at least the first 2 years of the war. Whereas the Long Lance that Japan had was the best toroedo of the war. But they also had the worst air defense of any belligerent, sooooo....

It wasn't just the running depth it was the triggers on the torpedoes.  The magnetic triggers (goes under ship and explodes) were never tested in the Pacific (they are very expensive weapons) and as you may know, there are some serious magnetic variations around the world (see below).  Notice how different the Atlantic is from the Pacific.  The contact trigger was also a big issue because a heavy impact (!!) would cause it not to fire because I believed it moved vertically(!) and heavy g's would make it jam.  It was a total S-show with something like a 70% failure rate.  I think it may not have been fixed until 1944.

Oh, and it also had a tendency to go circular! (Torpedoes steer to a course after launch, these sometimes just kept turning!)  This is clearly a bad thing for the launching sub!  Hey, at least there is a good chance it won't go off!

Here is a drawing of the mechanical detonator:

Airplane wise, you don't really need torpedo bombers when you have these. Very effective at putting 500 pounders through the decks of Japanese carriers:

Is that a dauntless?

In reply to Racebrick :

Douglas SBD Dauntless (a.k.a. slow but deadly)

WW2? There is no substitute:

Berkley me?

F4U

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

The Corsair is a beautiful bird.  But if we are talking US Navy fighter aircraft, the undisputed champion with a kill to loss ratio of 19:1 was the Grumman Hellcat. The F4U was roughly 12:1.  The USAAF P51 Mustang had a kill ratio of about 11:1.

Then there was the Calliope. Haha, rockets go whooosh

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

Worked as a service writer for a while.  Had a customer come in with a battery that wouldn't charge.  Cable connector was pretty much rotted in half, put enough strain on the alternator that it croaked as well.  
Replaced alternator and cable.  Weeks of trouble followed.  Battery died multiple times, many warranty claims.  Finally got out there and dug into it.

Tech had used these to connect the cable.  You can't tell from this, but when these are painted they don't bother to mask off the inside that interfaces with the battery terminal.

Weeks of work, hundreds of dollars, all because someone didn't run a battery terminal brush through the damn terminal connector.