#16 a shorter version, prepared by your poster, as a lesson in quality:
QUALITY MINUTE
July 15, 2002
From a History Channel Program viewed July 11, 2002
At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. Navy submarines carried the Mark 14 torpedo manufactured since 1923. In the sixteen years of manufacture, the torpedo had been tested exactly twice. It worked properly 50% of the time. Further tests were not conducted because torpedoes were virtually handmade, at a cost of $10,000 each. Quality assurance was deemed to be too expensive.
Early in the war, sub captains complained the torpedoes ran deep, and failed to explode. They were ignored, and then blamed for their poor tactics. Finally, an Admiral conducted tests and found the torpedoes ran an average of eleven feet deeper than their setting. The Mark 14 torpedo was usually going under its targets. The Admiral was ignored, until he ran the same “quality assurance” test again, with the same results. Finally, the Navy investigated and agreed to fix the depth problem.
More hits were reported, but many torpedoes still failed to explode. Albert Einstein was consulted, and then ignored. Finally, in early 1943 a sub fired four torpedoes at a huge tanker from close range (1,000 yards). Some were heard to strike, but all failed to explode. Two more were fired from the stern tubes, and one finally exploded. Over the next three hours, the sub conducted a “quality test” by firing twelve more torpedoes, all of which failed to explode. Finally, the Navy investigated and discovered an exploder component was being crushed by impact. (Einstein had suggested failures were related to crushing).It was strengthened, and the problems were finally resolved in October, 1943.
Ultimately, the submarine was a major factor in the war in the Pacific, but no one knows the cost of the lack of quality torpedoes for the 22 months after Pearl Harbor. Merchant ships were hit, but not sunk. U.S. subs were sunk because they failed to damage an attacker, or risked detection trying to fire additional torpedoes, hoping to get one to explode. Navy morale was also adversely affected.
Finally, Westinghouse designed, developed, and tested a new electric torpedo in just 17 months, without the Navy Ordnance Department’s help – or inertia. In the wartime environment, quality was finally prioritized ahead of cost. The new Mark 18 was immediately found to be quite effective, and was much more stealthy than the earlier steam torpedoes.
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MOSCOW (AP) - Russian divers have spotted the wreckage of a legendary U.S. submarine that was lost in the Pacific in 1943, a Russian news agency reported Thursday. The ITAR-Tass news agency said that a diving team from the Far Eastern State Technological University in Vladivostok found the USS Wahoo in the La Perouse Strait and took pictures of it during a recent expedition. It didn't give further details.