Talk:Mark 14 torpedo

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[edit] Withdraw service date?

This weapon has a fascinating wartime history, and its problems in WWII are something worth telling and definitely something worth remembering in modern procurement, design, and maintenance. Can anyone confirm the withdraw from service date that I found? I honestly can't find it again, although I have a reference stating that a phased withdraw began in 1975. Ponches79 01:41, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, your "out of service" date looks right. I'd have said '79, for some reason. Have you got access to Friedman's Naval Weapons? It's got every USN system in it. I think Alden mentions it, too, in Fleet Submarine. (I'll have a look in Friedman's Design & Development at my local in the next couple & see, while I'm tracking down IJA's disbelief in the numbers of Marines at Guad...) Trekphiler 19:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mark 14 or XIV?

Only one gripe: page title should be XIV. Trekphiler 19:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Nice job on the page. Now maybe I can add from Silent Victory without my head exploding over the g*d*m stupid miserable b*st*rds behind the Mk14, including a Sub Force Admiral, no less, senior SOB Ralph Waldo Christie, who was on the design team & had an Australia command in the war & who should have been publically crucified. (And I don't even know an actual submariner!) Trekphiler 19:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Gripe noted, but the die was cast by someone before me. Note that the Mark 18 Torpedo page not only has Arabic rather than Roman numerals, it also has a capital "T". Perhaps it's time for all the torpedoes to be moved to standardized name pages. Binksternet 06:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
BTW, thanks for expanding the article with so much more detail. Nice work. Hope you don't mind my breaking up some of the more complex sentences containing multiple commas... Binksternet 06:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Blair makes it pretty easy, until you try to distill it into categories, rather than keep it chronological, as he does. No beefs with your fixes, generally; my grammar is a bit rough in first drafts... I did take out some of the detail, trying to keep only what's really relevant to the Mk14. And I only raise the 14/XIV issue (same would apply to 18/XVIII) because it's within the WP Weaps Project; maybe an appeal to that page can get this one moved to "Mark XIV". (Don't ask me how it's done...) Trekphiler 19:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps the 14/XIV issue isn't so important. Roscoe and Milford use the Arabic numerals. I don't have any kind of official document originals to see what the gov't called it but I suspect that both nomenclatures were used depending on which Navy department was involved. Binksternet 19:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, that was my bad--I started this article (it seemed like a big gaping hole to me) and my primary source was Roscoe's Pig Boats, and he used "Mk 14" rather than "Mk XIV." Ponches79 05:15, 04 February 2008 (UTC)


Here's an article about torpedo nomenclature. This writer says it's been Arabic numerals since the Bliss-Leavitt Mark 4 around 1910-1912. Binksternet 20:08, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Huh. Blair (Beach, too, IIRC) always used Roman. A matter of preference, I guess. Or previous experience. Leave the page alone, then. (I still think Roman is classier...) Trekphiler 00:08, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aren't you acute?

I took out the "acute angle" ref because it's not relevant there; if you want to mention Daspit (among others) stumbled on it, feel free. (I wouldn't, 'cause you risk getting a laundry list of those who did/didn't, & having to document them...) Trekphiler 00:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Circulars

I'd rather not have circulars be brought up to turn the three-fold problem into a four-fold one. I don't think it was as widespread as all that... and some other fish had this occasional problem as well. USS Tang (SS-306) was lost to circular but I wonder if it wasn't a Mark 18 electric that did her in. Roscoe doesn't say. At any rate, the circular-run problem wasn't universal; wasn't a design problem. It was more a usage or handling or factory defect problem. Let's demote the mention of circulars to lesser status. Binksternet 02:29, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It sank at least 2 boats, not counting Tang (which was a Mk18), & scared hell out of half a dozen or more. (I just couldn't find them all in Silent Victory...). It was a design flaw; the Mk15 had collars to prevent it, on a more/less identical design, & surely submarines deserved equal protection. (Notice the Mk18s didn't have them, either...) Trekphiler 00:29, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I'd read somewhere, perhaps in Silent Victory or Clear the Bridge, that anti-circling was intentionally not applied to submarine torpedoes. The theory was that the only offensive counter measure of a submarine under depth charge attack would be to launch a torpedo intentionally set for circling. It's been several years since I read this, and I can't source it, but I recall the author was not enthusiastic about the theory.
Never heard that before. It's not in Silent Victory, & I don't recall it in Clear the Bridge (especially since Dick lost his ship to the Mk18 circular...), but I seem to recall he criticized the Mk18s for not having the protection, when DD fish did; maybe he said it, & I don't recall. Have to read it again. (It's been a few yrs...) Wouldn't have been Grider's book or Sherman's book, would it? Haven't read Wake, & it's been even longer since War Fish. It could have been a German source/ref, 'cause the Ger late-war fish did a "spiral" trick, & I vaguely recall it was used against DDs. No? Trekphiler (talk) 14:26 & 14:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008

Article reassessed and graded as B class. --dashiellx (talk) 15:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)