oxygen torpedoes on IJN Cruisers

All, For a while now I have been looking into the purpose of the Japanese using oxygen torpedoes on there cruisers. I mean, couldn't they have used a torp not so likely to explode. Well after a bit of research I have decided(not entirely on my own) that the torpedoes are fine but what the Japanese should have done is did away with the Battle reload gear. Half the number of torpedoes and half the risk. Much easier to dump them after a fire is out of control. Of course this is all in hindsight using the war they fought as opposed to what they wanted. Besides I haven't found any examples of a single cruiser who fought two consecutive surface engagements before returning to port. What does everyone think?

Remember this is for cruisers only, not destroyers.

 

The Japanese spent considerable time in developing the LOX torpedo and with success they found they had a weapon with a considerable advantage over any that their opponets possessed. What followed could only be termed "Torpedo-maina" on the part of the IJN.
That is, the Imperial Japanese Navy became emfatuated with the oxygen torpedo as the great equalizer against the US fleet. It was to be the war winning weapon in the Juland-style great battle of the Pacific between the two fleets. Every ship that could mount these weapons, short of battleships, was given a very heavy battery of them.
New destroyers each mounted 8 or 9 tubes. Cruisers were given 12 to 16 tubes. Reloading was seen as a necessity to allow massive barrages of these weapons to be fired. The extreme was reached with the conversion of the light cruisers Oi and Kiatakami into, what today might be called "arsenal ships," torpedo cruisers. These two ships mounted no less than 40 torpedo tubes in quadruple mounts! They also held an additional 40 torpedoes for reload.
Torpedo drill, night action, and reloading became virtually a religious experiance for the Japanese navy. Any surface officer that intended to make had to be an expert at these evolutions or he was not going to be seen as fit for command.
As for use, there were a number of occasions in the early days of the war in the DEI when both destroyers and cruisers used their reload capacity either during a battle or to maintain contact and battle effectiveness after a fight. Off Guadalcanal there was more than one occasion when the Japanese fired two salvos of torpedoes reloading during the fight. The first and most prominent is First Savo Island. There the Japanese unleashed a full broadside of torpedoes on the Southern box of Allied cruisers and destroyers then finished the fight with gunfire. They then proceeded to the Northern box, reloading on the way, and gave that half of the Allied force another pasting of torpedoes and gunfire. It was the worst defeat at sea the US had ever suffered.

As the war progressed and it became obvious that torpedoes were not going to win the naval war they began to get removed from ships in favor of other equipment. The first to go were reloads on most ships. More AA guns typically took up the lost weight. Cruisers next lost half their tubes in favor of even more AA mounts. In some cases additional 127mm guns were added and in all 25mm singles and triples.

From the Japanese perspective of the time this made sense. The Long Lance could reach 40,000 yards at 38 knots giving it a performance that literally outranged the 6" or 8" guns on cruisers. Think about it. The Japanese had in this torpedo the equivalent of what essentially might be today a Tomahawk cruise missile, and their opponents were unaware it existed! How would you as a planner treat that advantage?
Additionally, light cruisers in the IJN were generally assigned as flotilla leaders for destroyers and were expected to add their fire in support of the flotilla. The heavies had to be able to overmatch the more numerous cruisers the US could be expected to field in the same way.

 

TA, your reply made me think of a question. Could the ships being attacked fire at the torpedo in the water with .50 cal. machine guns and get it to explode before hitting the ship ? Sort of like a phalanx gun shooting down a cruise missle inbound.

I know the bullets hitting the water go off course but perhaps large numbers of AA guns firing at the torpedo ???

 

You could . . . if you spotted it in time. Don't forget, most of the surface battles in the Solomons were at night. If torpedoes were spotted far enough away in daylight, the most effective defensive action was to "comb" the torpedo(s) by turning the ship into their path, thus avoiding a broadside hit.

 

The Japanese Long Lance is wakeless. This makes it difficult to spot like electric torpedoes. Only the steam driven ones (very common design) leave that tell-tale white wake in their path.
As far as a defense, there really isn't much one could do. Firing isn't going to do much as the rounds have no reliable underwater trajectory and don't travel very far. I suppose you might get real lucky with shallow set depth charges if you timed it like a NASCAR pit crew.

 

even modern day ships have torpedo mishaps...lol...come on, you gotta laugh
YouTube - Torpedo Malfunction

 

It's a myth that the Type 93 torpedo "Long Lance" was wakeless; it produced definite wake although it was much less discernible than that produced by a "steam" torpedo. However, it is true that attempting to shoot at any torpedo as a means of defense is more or less futile due to the speed of the torpedo and the effective engagement time.

There were many problems with the Type 93, not the least of which was that it was difficult to manufacture and the IJN always faced a shortage of them early in the war. The reload feature on many Japanese cruisers and destroyers was due to the Japanese doctrine of the "Decisive Battle" and the IJN accepted the risk of damage due to the detonation of their own torpedoes in order to enable maximum attrition of enemy forces. In actual operations, the Type 93 suffered from a lack of an on-board guidance system and, as a result, the Type 93 was pretty much useless beyond about 15,000 yards. There was not even a provision for tumbling the gyros at a preset distance, as in some German torpedoes, so any comparison to a "cruise missile" is completely superficial. In addition, the quality of the directional control system was poor and the Type 93 (as was true of most Japanese torpedoes) suffered from excessive "wander", (at maximum range, it was approximately 1,500 meters, or about six ship lengths) making a "Long Lance" hit at anything beyond 10,000 yards
a matter of luck.

 

For some reason the Guadalcanal conflict is the most interesting to me... I've read "the Cactus Air Force " by Thomas G Miller jr aboot six times now. Written in 1969, it's interesting to read the take on the conflict twenty some years after it happened. And again now almost forty years after the 1969 edition. What I took from the book was the awesome bombardment the pilots and marines endured by the Japanese navy trying to destroy Henderson Field and it's planes/fuel/ammo/men.The Cactus Airforce having to use some P-39's against high flying Zeros.Also the way the U.S. controlled the day, and the "Japs" by night.And the fear of the Long Lance.

 

Oh yea... And the story about a PBY having 2 torpedoes jerry rigged for a run in one of their most desperate hours. Can anyone confirm that story?

 

Probably not with a 50 cal. Torpedos tend to travel 20+ feet under water. 50 cal won't have much energy left at that point. On at least one occasion a plane may have intercepted one.

 

Poppy - that PBY torpedo attack happened . . . on 14 Oct 42, a PBY-5A delivered 2 torpedoes to Henderson Field on Guadalcanal for use by Navy TBFs stationed there. After arriving, the crew of the PBY learned that a Japanese resupply convoy was approaching but that there were no torpedo bombers available to attack it. The PBY's pilot, Major Jack Cram, volunteered to attack the convoy with the wing-mounted torpedoes. Diving on the convoy, Cram dropped his 2 torpedoes at a couple transports, and somehow evaded the Japanese AA fire; he scored a hit on one transport, and was awarded the Navy Cross.

 

I read that he hit the transport with two torpedoes. One of them "porpoised" and broke water, but followed the first torpedo into the side of the same Japanese Transport.

For the record, while flying back to Henderson Field, Japanese CAP virtually shot his PBY to pieces. "Mad Jack" Cram broke every flying law in the book about a PBY, but somehow managed to bring his Catalina back to land on friendly soil, although a number of Japanese aircraft continued to shoot at him until the very last moment.

After he landed, the USMC Air Base Commander royally read him the riot act and royally chewed his ass, while sincerely questioning his ancestory. He actually threatened Cram with a court martial, while at the same time, filling out the evidence necessary for him to get his Navy Cross. You really gotta' love the Marine Corps!

 

The story of the daylight torpedo attack on some Japanese transports by a PBY is confirmed in Richard Frank's "Guadalcanal". However, the torpedoes were not "jury rigged", the PBY was designed to carry either torpedoes, depth charges, or bombs and was quite effective at attacking ships. In the ciourse of just over one month, VPB-33, a PBY squadron in the Philuippines, sank over 100,000 tons of Japanese shipping. At the battle of Midway, it was a PBY that scored the only US air-launched torpedo hit in that battle.

What was unusual about the PBY torpedo attack on the Japanese transports at Guadalcanal was that it was executed in daylight; it was USN doctrine for PBY's to attack ships (except for subs) and other targets at night due to their very slow speed and lack of defensive armament. Radar equipped PBY's were quite effective as bombers at night due to their ability to attack without warning at slow speed and mast-head height.

See: History article #15: Black Cat PBYs

 

On 19 June, 1944, during the battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese carrier Taiho was launching a strike when one of the pilots who had just taken off noticed a torpedo wake heading for the Japanese flagship. The torpedo was one of six launched by the USS Albacore. The pilot deliberately crashed his plane into the water immediately ahead of the torpedo to save his carrier. He was successful in stopping that particular torpedo, but another one struck the Taiho abreast the forward elevator and caused leaks in the forward av-gas storage tank, leading to a massive induced explosion over six hours later which dooms the Taiho.

This is the only occasion I'm aware of in which a plane successfully diverts a torpedo, although I have read that a torpedo running close to the surface may have been detonated by a plane strafing it. I cannot confirm that information.

 

It's the first time I hear about this story. Thanks for posting this. I would imagine more planes would have diverted surface torpedoes. In a way it could be compared to wing tipping V1s in the air except that underwater targets would be rare opportunities because difficult to spot.

 

Thank you for the information lwd. That makes sense. What I based my question on was what I see in Hollywood movies, a torpedo running on the surface. I should know better by now !

 

What got me originally started on this thread was the oxygen torp's. Then took a bit of a tangent. ...Is it possible the oxygen torpedoes were originally invented by the Germans ? Who discarded them because of their inherent danger? ...Because weren't the Komet rocket powered interceptors powered by T-stoff and H-stoff . Which were very unstable as well? Are these chems similar?..Probably a dumb question but I am curious...
And as well... Thanks for the info on the PBY torp attack at Guadalcanal. I reffered to the book written by T. Miller in "the Cactus Air Force" on page 130 : " While Cram's crew rigged manual releases for the two torpedoes that could be operated from the PBY's cockpit , Renner, Cram, and the squadron commanders planned a coordinated attackon the Japanese transports." . They were flying a PBY-5A. He had a full crew. Only the co-pilots seat was empty because " No one ever flew in that seat except Geiger." ...Why would they need to hook up a manual release?
The book states that only 1 torpedoe hit its' mark....
And , as an aside: I always thought the term was "Gerry rigged" meaning that the German soldiers were noted for being able to put together something that worked from whatever was at hand . ...Have I got the term "Gerry can " wrong as well? Meaning the handy German fuel containers...Or is that "jury can"? hehe
Anyhoo, am enjoying the forum. ...TGIF....cheers bra's

 

The Royal Navy was the first inventor of LOX torpedoes. They got working models but could never work out the bugs of fueling them underway and of safely operating a LOX plant on a ship. After several bad accidents they gave LOX torpedoes up as unworkable.
The Japanese preservered with the same idea and worked out the bugs of underway fueling. You can see one result on the earlier Fubuki class destroyers of this. There are a series of curved tubes running between the stacks and the torpedo mounts. These were for transfering the LOX to the torpedoes. They found cleanliness of the system and ensuring that all piping had very gentle bends was the secret to safe operation.
I don't think the Germans ever bothered to experiment with these torpedoes and I know the US didn't up through the beginning of the war.

 

That is incredibly interesting to me. None of the(cheap) books I have mention anything about how the "LOX" operated. Never really thought about it. I will search aboot it....By the way...Did I hear something about why the super Soviet sub (Kursk?) sunk. The show I saw may have said that it was caused by an explosion in the torpedoes because of a propellant leak dripping from a torpedoe onto torpedoes? Were the torpedoes carried by the Kursk propelled by LOX?..And don't get me started about that new cavitating torp now in use.

 

My source was Richard Frank's book "Guadalcanal". I don't have the book immediately available, but working from memory, I believe Lt. Cram's PBY was not assigned to a regular squadron, but was used by one of the senior commanders to travel around the theater. As such, the standard wing racks may have been removed to save weight and drag. If that was the case, it may have been necessary to reinstall the release mechanism normally fitted in the cockpit. In any case, standard PBY's were fitted with wing racks which could carry bombs, torpedoes, or depth charges.

See;History article #10: Black Cat PBYs

I'm not sure of the etymology of the term "jerry-rigged", but I have never seen it spelled with a "g". The term "jury-rigged" is a nautical phrase dating back to at least the 18th. century, and denoting an emergency rigging arrangement or repair where the standard rigging, spars, or other mechanism on a ship has been damaged or destroyed. As far as I know, "jerry-rigged" and "jury-rigged" have no connection except that they have the same connotation.