Originally Posted by George

The mistake was deciding they were too expensive to fire in peacetime, a costly mistake.

Is this not hindsight ?
And, if they were fired in peacetime,and the problems were revealed, would there have been sufficient time to solve the problem ?
And, how to solve the problem ? Improve the existing torpedoes ? Or to produce new ones if this was possible ?

The British Covenanter tank was used only as a training tank,after 1710 had been built . Was it possible before the war to know its deficiencies that would occur during the war ?
For the torpedoes: a lot of the problems were caused by magnetism in the Norwegian fjords .Was it possible to know this before the war by having more tests ?
The same for the Panther and Maus tank,who were developed/built during the war and revealed big problems when they were used in combat .
There is also the question of time : more tests would/will slow down the putting into use of new weapons .

Westland built a twin engined heavy fighter called the Whirlwind.A contemporary of the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane, it was the first single-seat, twin-engined, cannon-armed fighter of the Royal Air Force.

When it first flew in 1938, the Whirlwind was one of the fastest combat aircraft in the world and with four Hispano-Suiza HS.404 20 mm auto cannon in its nose, the most heavily armed. Protracted development problems with its Rolls-Royce Peregrine engines delayed the project and few Whirlwinds were built, if Rolls Royce Merlins had been fitted it could have been a very successful aircraft. During the Second World War, only three RAF squadrons were equipped with the aircraft but despite its success as a fighter and ground attack aircraft, it was withdrawn from service in 1943.

The designer of the aircraft was W. E. W. Petter, who went on to design the English Electric Lightning jet interceptors, which as a matter of disinterest I refueled at RAF Wattisham in 1970. An amazing aeroplane, which until recently flew at Thunder City in Cape Town South Africa

There was the Russian Mig-23 that crashed into a Belgian farm house in 1989...

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war...ing-a-boy.html

Originally Posted by lljadw

Is this not hindsight ?
And, if they were fired in peace time, and the problems were revealed, would there have been sufficient time to solve the problem ?
And, how to solve the problem ? Improve the existing torpedoes ? Or to produce new ones if this was possible ? For the torpedoes: a lot of the problems were caused by magnetism in the Norwegian fjords .Was it possible to know this before the war by having more tests ?

Both the US and Germany had fuse problems that would have been detected with testing. The US fuse only worked at sharp angle, straight and slightly off straight on shots failed.
The German magnetic fuses failed in open ocean attacks. Their contact fuses also failed. The WWI contact fuses worked fine, but between Wars they became increasingly complex to the point of failure. Some at the time of discovery argued to just put the WWI design back in production, but a new one was designed instead.

Originally Posted by George

Both the US and Germany had fuse problems that would have been detected with testing. The US fuse only worked at sharp angle, straight and slightly off straight on shots failed.
The German magnetic fuses failed in open ocean attacks. Their contact fuses also failed. The WWI contact fuses worked fine, but between Wars they became increasingly complex to the point of failure. Some at the time of discovery argued to just put the WWI design back in production, but a new one was designed instead.

Was it possible in peace time to know that weapons would fail in war time and was it possible in peace time to improve these weapons so that they would not fail in war time ? It is questionable that testing in peace time would reveal shortcomings in war time .
And,one should also not exaggerate the results of the failure of German magnetic fuses in open ocean attacks. How many allied ships were saved by the failure of these fuses and how many would be lost if some of these fuses did not fail ?
If 100 fuses were used, how many did fail ?

Originally Posted by lljadw

Was it possible in peace time to know that weapons would fail in war time and was it possible in peace time to improve these weapons so that they would not fail in war time ? It is questionable that testing in peace time would reveal shortcomings in war time .
And,one should also not exaggerate the results of the failure of German magnetic fuses in open ocean attacks. How many allied ships were saved by the failure of these fuses and how many would be lost if some of these fuses did not fail ?
If 100 fuses were used, how many did fail ?

If we are going to discuss torpedoes I found this to be an interesting paper on the German G7a and G7e models.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthe...99&context=etd

It is a pdf file entitled: Wolves without teeth: The German torpedo crisis in ww2 by David Habersham Wright.

Hopefully the link will work.

I know about a huge military mistake in peace time. When Sweden got a whisky on the rocks. A Soviet submarine entered the Swedish archipelago close to one of our naval bases and runs aground.

https://coldwar1981.weebly.com/sovie...s-aground.html

Originally Posted by I3BrigPvSk

I know about a huge military mistake in peace time. When Sweden got a whisky on the rocks. A Soviet submarine entered the Swedish archipelago close to one of our naval bases and runs aground.

https://coldwar1981.weebly.com/sovie...s-aground.html

Was it the Whiskey or Foxtrot class that was easy to find as they were generally surfaced while they put out the fires?

Originally Posted by MontyB

Was it the Whiskey or Foxtrot class that was easy to find as they were generally surfaced while they put out the fires?

I don't know. I remember a Yankee class surfacing in the mid Atlantic after a fire. I have seen the movie K-19 The Widow Maker. It was based on a true story (I haven't looked it up how true it was) But according to the movie, it was a fire and a reactor failure that caused the accident.

The US Navy suffered tragic submarine accidents as well. The USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher. When a submarine gets technical problems, the consequences can be severe. We saw it with the Indonesian submarine and the Argentinian submarine quite recently