Japanese Mocked This "Failed" Torpedo — Until It Destroyed Japan's Biggest Cruiser in 30 Seconds

Описание: Why Lieutenant Isadore Kovar fired a "defective" Mark 8 torpedo at a Japanese destroyer in 1944 — and accidentally destroyed a 5,570-ton cruiser instead. This World War 2 story reveals how a manufacturing error measuring 0.005 inches created the most significant PT boat kill in naval history.

October 25, 1944, 03:35 AM. Lieutenant junior grade Isadore Kovar, commanding PT-137, blind without radar in Surigao Strait. Japanese destroyers were shredding wooden PT boats with searchlights and five-inch guns. Kovar fired one Mark 8 torpedo at a destroyer from 900 yards. Every Navy manual warned these torpedoes had a 30% failure rate. PT boat crews called them "swimming slot machines" because depth control was pure chance.

They were all wrong.

What Kovar's torpedo did that night wasn't a failure. The manufacturing defect made it run 15 feet deep instead of 10 — deep enough to pass completely under the destroyer's 5-foot draft and continue traveling until it struck light cruiser Abukuma 900 yards beyond. The explosion killed 37 crew instantly and crippled Japan's Destroyer Squadron One flagship. By October 26 — after B-24 bombers finished what the torpedo started — Abukuma became the largest warship ever credited to an American PT boat. 250 Japanese sailors died. And the "failed" weapon earned Kovar the Navy Cross.

This accidental hit demonstrated how manufacturing variations measuring thousandths of an inch could change naval warfare outcomes, proving that sometimes defective weapons hit targets perfectly designed weapons would have missed.

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