Darter, Dace and the Japanese Heavies

Ultradog MN

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Today is the 70th anniversary of American subs Darter and Dace and their ambush of the three Japanese Heavy Cruisers at the Palawan Passage.
We all know the story on that so I wont go into it in detail.
But a little on Heavy Cruisers might be in order.
Heavies, along with attack carriers and battleships were considered Capital Ships by all the navies of the world.
They were big - two football fields long and about 16,000 tons -
8 times the size of a large destroyer - and fast.
Usually 30+ knots on 130,000+ horsepower.
The Japanese started the war with 20 of them.
But 4 of those would be lost prior to Leyte.
Takao, Atago, Chokai and Maya were the 4 sisters of the Takao Class. They were modern vessels - completed in 1932, and updated prior to the war.
At the time they were built they were the most heavily armed cruisers in the world with 10 8" guns.
Plus they carried a bunch of Long Lance torpedoes (the world's finest)
for an extra punch the US and Brit cruisers never did match.
So the Japanese bring their might to Leyte and in the opening round lose 3 of them.
Wham! Atago goes down.
Bam! Maya explodes.
Bang! Takao is heavily damaged but will limp off to Singapore and never fight again.
20% of their remaining Heavies gone in the bat of an eye.
It was very, very high cost to pay as the price of entry to the battles of Leyte Gulf.
They will lose 5 more Heavies sunk and 6 more badly damaged as the battles unfold.
Including the last of the 4 sisters, Chokai, who will only live for 2 more days and go down to her rest at Samar.

Edit,
I had a photo of Chokai but it was too large so I deleted it.
 
Really great book about U S subs in WW II: Silent Victory. Heroes like Sam Dealey in Harder, Mush Morton in Wahoo, and so many more. Talk about absolute, raw courage!
 
I've been through on of them as a tour in a navel museum - can't imagine living in one and being beneath the surface for any amount of time and then add to people trying to hunt you down and kill you. Its amazes me how much guts and courage the guys in WW2 had.
 
Another good read is "Iron Coffins", by Oberlutenant Herbert Werner, one of three German U-Boat Captains to fight through the entire WWII and survive. The attrition rate among the U-Boats and crews was over 90%.

In March of 1945, Werner's boat was damaged and had to go into drydock for repairs, with the estimated repair time at 8 weeks. During this time, he had time to think, and finally faced the fact that there was no way Germany was going to win the war.

He was single, both of his parents and his sister were collateral damage from the war, his major girlfriends were either dead or disappeared, so he hatched a plan. He began combing personnel files looking for reliable men in the same circumstances. His plan was he was going to assemble a skeleton crew, and when his boat was repaired, on the pretense of a trial run, he was simply going to scram to South American and accept what asylum he could find.

The war ended before his boat was fixed. As he had once been on a mining mission in Chesapeake Bay, his boat did have the range, though.
 
For all the talk about the carriers in WW2 During World War II, the submarine force, comprising only 1.5 percent of the U.S. Navy, wreaked havoc on Japanese maritime power. U.S. submarines sank over 30 percent of the Japanese Navy, including eight aircraft carriers, a battleship, and 11 cruisers. More importantly, the Submarine Force sank 1,200 Japanese merchant ships totaling 4.8 million tons - fully 60 percent of the Empire's total merchant ship losses. No other single type of ship sank more (Cruisers, destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers).
 
On the Americans part, the biggest disgrace of the war was the early utter failure of our torpedoes. They refused to test one (said they were too expensive to try) and the American sub commanders for about 2 years were trying to tell the higher ups that they were hitting the Jap ships and the torpedoes were not exploding. Of course, as soon as we shot at a ship, the Jap destroyers were alerted as to the fact that there were enemy subs around and we lost some subs because we would not try our torpedoes ahead of time. These torpedoes were made by Electic Boat Co. in Groton Conn, and Conn had 2 very powerful US Senators that protected them against any criticism. Many opportunities lost and many brave sailors lost because of politics.
 
(quoted from post at 11:52:58 10/23/14) Really great book about U S subs in WW II: Silent Victory. Heroes like Sam Dealey in Harder, Mush Morton in Wahoo, and so many more. Talk about absolute, raw courage![/quot

"Hit 'em again Harder"
 
(quoted from post at 15:05:00 10/23/14) On the Americans part, the biggest disgrace of the war was the early utter failure of our torpedoes. They refused to test one (said they were too expensive to try) and the American sub commanders for about 2 years were trying to tell the higher ups that they were hitting the Jap ships and the torpedoes were not exploding. Of course, as soon as we shot at a ship, the Jap destroyers were alerted as to the fact that there were enemy subs around and we lost some subs because we would not try our torpedoes ahead of time. These torpedoes were made by Electic Boat Co. in Groton Conn, and Conn had 2 very powerful US Senators that protected them against any criticism. Many opportunities lost and many brave sailors lost because of politics.

You forgot to mention the Admiral who was behind the development of those torpedoes. He relieve sub commanders right and left because according to him they were not aggressive enough when they had in fact attacked shipping but the failures of the faulty design resulted in misses or failure to explode, hence no ships sunk. The subs sailing out of Australia were under him at the start of the war. The Subs out of Pearl were allowed to deactivate the magnetic exploder and Pearl found that the torpedoes ran too deep. They still had problems with the contact exploder due to the firing pin. Once that was fixed they started sinking ships. The sub shop down under was forced to paint the heads on bolts as an anti tamper device. The Admiral had unexpended torpedoes inspected for being tampering.

The "silent service" did one heck of a job.

Rick
 
(quoted from post at 15:05:00 10/23/14) On the Americans part, the biggest disgrace of the war was the early utter failure of our torpedoes. They refused to test one (said they were too expensive to try) and the American sub commanders for about 2 years were trying to tell the higher ups that they were hitting the Jap ships and the torpedoes were not exploding. Of course, as soon as we shot at a ship, the Jap destroyers were alerted as to the fact that there were enemy subs around and we lost some subs because we would not try our torpedoes ahead of time. These torpedoes were made by Electic Boat Co. in Groton Conn, and Conn had 2 very powerful US Senators that protected them against any criticism. Many opportunities lost and many brave sailors lost because of politics.

I have read about that torpedo problem but never that they weren't allowed to test them. Where I read about it, it was an intermittent problem where they would test OK but then in use they had a high failure rate.
 
(quoted from post at 19:35:24 10/23/14)
(quoted from post at 15:05:00 10/23/14) On the Americans part, the biggest disgrace of the war was the early utter failure of our torpedoes. They refused to test one (said they were too expensive to try) and the American sub commanders for about 2 years were trying to tell the higher ups that they were hitting the Jap ships and the torpedoes were not exploding. Of course, as soon as we shot at a ship, the Jap destroyers were alerted as to the fact that there were enemy subs around and we lost some subs because we would not try our torpedoes ahead of time. These torpedoes were made by Electic Boat Co. in Groton Conn, and Conn had 2 very powerful US Senators that protected them against any criticism. Many opportunities lost and many brave sailors lost because of politics.

I have read about that torpedo problem but never that they weren't allowed to test them. Where I read about it, it was an intermittent problem where they would test OK but then in use they had a high failure rate.

Besides the depth problem the magnetic exploder was a total failure. What's bad about it is the Germans had tried an magnetic exploder before we got into the war and when they had problems with it immediately discontinued it. Admiral Christie was the one who tried to prevent further testing and commanded the sub fleet based in Australia. The subs based out of Pearl had been allowed to disable the magnetic feature and go with contact hits. After reports of repeated failures Pearl tested them and found that they ran deeper than set. Deep enough to run under a target. They next batch of subs that set the them to run shallow enough to hit reported multiple failures of the contact feature. But late 43 they pretty much had those problems fixed but Christie refused to allow his sub commanders to deactivate the magnetic feature. He had been key in the development of the torpedo. He didn't authorize deactivation of the magnetic feature until early 44. He clearly recklessly endangered his sub crews to protect his reputation. But because of the way the Pacific was split up he fell under Mac's command. Now I've seen nothing to make be believe that Mac knew anything about those problems or that he was involve in any way.

What I read about testing them was that it wasn't the cost but there was a shortage of torpedoes for a very long time after the war started. Many boats put to sea with less than a full load for the first year of the war. They were in short enough supply that the torpedoes used to test the depth settings were fired at a net so they could measure how deep they ran in a bay that was shallow enough to allow easy recovery of the torpedoes. Torpedoes were needed by cruisers, destroyers, PT boats, torpedo bombers and subs. The military was short or just about everything the first 2 years of the war.

Rick
 
Trying to remember the name of the US sub that sank itself with one of the circling torpedoes. Tang or something like that. Capt and a few crew are all that survived. Capt had a real bad time as PW. Bad loss for us besides as he was one of our cracker jack sub capts in spite of the bad torpedoes. I was reading one article about how all that came about and was handled, by whom and all and the arthur said it "bordered on treason". I'll agree to that.

I just googled Tang and that's it. If interested, Google USS Tang. Lots of good reading in the postings.

Mark
 
(quoted from post at 06:16:29 10/25/14) Trying to remember the name of the US sub that sank itself with one of the circling torpedoes. Tang or something like that. Capt and a few crew are all that survived. Capt had a real bad time as PW. Bad loss for us besides as he was one of our cracker jack sub capts in spite of the bad torpedoes. I was reading one article about how all that came about and was handled, by whom and all and the arthur said it "bordered on treason". I'll agree to that.

I just googled Tang and that's it. If interested, Google USS Tang. Lots of good reading in the postings.

Mark

Mark:

The whole military was like that. The US military knew about the performance of the ME109 yet were still buying the P40. Shortly after lend lease started they knew about the short comings of the Sherman tank but the Army decided that being inexpensive and easy to build was more important than building a better tank. When the Navy accepted the F4F Wildcat they knew about the ME109 and had heard whispers about the Zero. About the only decent equipment owned by the US military was motor transport, some of the navy ships, A few bombers, the 1911 and the M1 Garand. Yet when the Philippians were invaded the US force there were still using the Springfield 03A3. The list of faulty, just no good and obsolete equipment was astounding. Fighter aircraft, armor and more cost many Americans their lives because of budget problems and the isolationist movement. Christie trying to cover up the torpedo problems was criminal IMO. But the Army decision to forego developing a new tank was too. Just prior to the US entering WWII all of the Army senior brass was infantry. In 1939 when Germany launched the Blitzkrieg style war our infantry officers though the tank was just a support weapon to help out the infantry. They were as bad as the senior Navy officers who didn't believe aircraft were a threat. We had many young men, who willingly put themselves in danger while being provided with very poor, substandard equipment. Over 3000 died on December 7th 1941 because they were ill-equipped and not trained to meet modern threats. Then guys like Christie ordered sailors into life and death fights with faulty equipment all the while the US military was telling their respective service members that they had the best equipment in the world. Funny thing is, like with the Sherman, just because American industry could build 2,000 a month they could have say built a better tank at 1000 a month still beating Germany's 1200 a year and lost fewer tanks and more importantly crews in the process. Heck we could come up with a build, by the thousands P51's and P47 while also developing the F6F and F4U, building those by the thousands while building thousands of bombers but we couldn't develop a decent tank. The M26, of which about 200 where deployed right at the end of the war, was so poor mechanically that during the Korean war were pulled from service. Why couldn't we build a decent torpedo yet were able to deploy the Fido torpedo toward the end of the war that was very successful in not only sinking surface ships but also allowed us to use them in the Atlantic in anti sub attacks with the seldom heard of US hunter killer groups that we operated at the end of the war. The Fido was an acoustic homing torpedo that zeroed in on a vessels propeller. When the hunter killer groups caught a surfaced sub a fighter would attack to make it submerge and the torpedo plane would drop a Fido in the subs wake. The Fido could also be launched from as deep as 300 feet against say a destroyer trying to find the sub. Basically point the sub in the direction of the target and fire.

Sending people to war with substandard weapons when it's known they are substandard is criminal. The politicians who neutered the US military between the wars and senior brass who refused to at least learn about new developments should have been tried. People like Christie should have been shot. He tried protecting the Magnetic exploder because he was responsible for it's development. That failure may have cost him a promotion or cherry position. His refusal to address the problem and acknowledge that the torpedo was junk all over his future in the Navy was criminal.

Sorry for being long winded but providing training, weapons and equipment for our service members should not be based on the lowest bidder, but based on the best possible stuff they need to fight, win and survive to come home to the welcome they deserve! Someone once said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Rick
 

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