Japanese Never Expected American Subs To Reload 24 Torpedoes Underwater In 12 Minutes

Описание: Japanese Never Expected American Subs To Reload 24 Torpedoes Underwater In 12 Minutes

October twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-four, one hundred and eighty feet beneath the Taiwan Strait. The USS Tang's forward torpedo room had become a precision assembly line operating in near-total darkness, the only light coming from red battle lamps that painted everything the color of blood. Chief Torpedoman's Mate William Leibold watched his crew maneuver a three-thousand-pound Mark Fourteen torpedo through the cramped compartment, their movements practiced to the point of instinct. They had ninety seconds, maybe less, before Commander Richard O'Kane would need this weapon loaded and ready to fire.
Above them, through layers of steel and seawater, a Japanese convoy steamed through the night, unaware that the submarine stalking them had already fired twenty-three torpedoes in less than thirty-six hours, and was preparing to fire its twenty-fourth. What Japanese naval intelligence couldn't comprehend, what their entire doctrine of submarine warfare failed to account for, was that American submarine crews had transformed torpedo reloading from a cautious, methodical procedure taking fifteen to twenty minutes into a combat-tested operation that could be completed in under ten minutes while submerged and under attack.
The mathematics of this transformation would write themselves in the cold accounting of tonnage sent to the bottom. Japanese merchant captains who survived American submarine attacks reported impossible scenarios: submarines that fired six torpedoes, reloaded while still in contact with the convoy, and attacked again before escorts could establish an effective search pattern. Japanese naval intelligence officers analyzing these reports dismissed them as exaggerations born of panic, evidence that merchant sailors lacked the training to accurately observe combat conditions.
The truth was far more dangerous than Japanese analysts were willing to believe. American submarine crews, through thousands of hours of repetitive training, through innovation born of necessity, through commanders willing to push doctrine beyond its written limits, had developed a capability that fundamentally altered the tactical balance of submarine warfare in the Pacific.
The revolution had begun not in combat, but in the cramped training facilities at the Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut, where prospective submarine crews learned their trade in the years before Pearl Harbor. The standard curriculum for torpedo handling had been developed in peacetime, emphasizing safety over speed, caution over combat effectiveness. A torpedo reload in nineteen forty-one submarine school took fifteen to twenty minutes under ideal conditions: the submarine level and motionless, the sea calm, the crew working methodically through each step of the procedure.
This doctrine reflected the reality of submarine operations as the Navy understood them in the interwar years. Submarines would approach targets at periscope depth, fire a carefully calculated spread of torpedoes from their loaded tubes, then withdraw to reload at leisure while the target burned or sank. The entire tactical framework assumed that submarines had time, that they could disengage after firing, that the critical moment was the initial attack rather than sustained combat operations.

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