On the night of 8 April 1942, off Cebu, the Japanese cruiser Kuma and the torpedo boat Kiji were attacked by PT-34 in concert with PT-41. Both PT boats reported seeing multiple torpedo hits on the Kuma from their attack, but according to Japanese Navy records examined after the war, the Kuma was hit in the bow by one of the torpedoes fired by PT-34, but it failed to detonate.[3]
PT-34 was attacked near Kauit Island by four Japanese F1M "Pete" floatplanes from the Sanuki Maru on 9 April 1942,[4] in the aftermath of the Kuma attack. With three feet of water in the engine room, Lt. Kelly beached the boat, and abandoned it. PT-34 was later strafed by Japanese aircraft, set on fire and destroyed. The crew suffered one KIA, one DOW, and three WIA. Kelly was later transported out of the Philippines along with three other officers of the squadron.[3] The executive officer Iliff David Richardson remained in the Philippines with the guerrilla forces, and later an account of his experiences were published in a book (later made into a film) American Guerrilla in the Philippines.
After a torpedo attack in concert with PT-34 on the Japanese cruiser Kuma on April 9, 1942, PT-41 became the last remaining PT boat of the squadron (PT-34 was sunk in the aftermath of the attack and PT-35 was burned at Cebu). With no more torpedoes available for PT-41 to use, it was commandeered by the United States Army to patrol Lake Lanao, Mindanao. It was destroyed by the Army on April 15, 1942, to prevent its capture while being transported via road to Lake Lanao.
Popular culture
The exploits of PT-41 are portrayed in the 1945 film They Were Expendable directed by John Ford with Robert Montgomery, John Wayne and Donna Reed.
From what I read, the early war USN torpedoes not only frequently fail to detonate, but also often went off course, even was cases that the torp did a U-turn and hit the ship that launch it.
From what I read, the early war USN torpedoes not only frequently fail to detonate, but also often went off course, even was cases that the torp did a U-turn and hit the ship that launch it.
The one everyone's heard about is the Mark 14 torpedo (which was mainly used by submarines), which had three main problems and one rare one; the circular runs. If the torpedo didn't circle around and hit you in the tail, the magnetic exploders (the best way to sink a ship is not necessarily to poke a hole in it but to detonate the torpedo a couple feet below it, creating a cavity which breaks the keel of vessels that are either light-duty like freighters or which have torpedo bulges; magnetic exploders were supposed to "sense" the ship as they passed under it) were designed in a different part of the world from where they were employed and thus commonly detonated early in reaction to the Earth's magnetic field. Then, if it made it to the target ship, it was extremely likely that the depth keeping system would be running too deep because it was designed with a much lighter warhead installed and both test rigs used to verify it were incorrect by the same amount in the same direction and so the torpedo would run a few meters below the target and head off into the sunset. Assuming your torpedo made it to the enemy ship and hit it, the better shot you made the less likely your torpedo was to explode: the harder a hit the nose took (i.e. the closer it got to a 90deg impact on the hull), the more likely the contact explosion pin would bend instead of setting off the warhead.
A decent number of these problems didn't exist in other torpedoes used in different applications, but the Mark 14's "perfect storm" of defects along with the government's stubbornness in even acknowledging it had any problems at all becomes generalized as "all American torpedoes were flops." However...
The PT boats represented here used the Mark 8 torpedo, which was fraught with difficulties in launching on top of having a weak warhead. The torpedo's gyro was sensitive and launching it when the boat wasn't level would generally cause it to misguide. That's assuming you could get it out of the tube, as they were launched with a powder charge that commonly became damp in the pacific humidity and failed to explode which would also cause the torpedo to "run" in the tube, overheating and detonating the engine (but not the warhead). And, even if you got it out and running, it was entirely possibly for the powder charge to set fire to the lubricants in the tube, giving the enemy a grand smoke signal pointing out where they were under attack from. A bit later in the war they changed to using Mark 13 torpedoes which were decently reliable in their own right, carried a bit more of a much more effective explosive, and were launched by simply rolling them off the side which eliminated most of the problems of the Mark 8.
That BuOrd torpedo scandal (70% failure rate on the Mk14!) gets my hackles up every time I read about it.
The bit that gets me is that the BuOrd did everything they could to avoid admitting there might have been even the smallest chance that they could have made a mistake to the point of blaming the submariners for the problems, and I'm not even American!
KaboomAnd launches!!
A direct hit using torpedoes!
The PT boat passes 180m to the rear of Kuma.Kuma and Kiji (torpedo boat) were ambushed by American torpedo boats.Spotlight, kuma!PT34 closed in and released its torpedoes at 900m!!Damn! PT boats, kuma!?Kumaaaaa!
I'm done for.........That's not going to hit! Kuma!However, it missed.Despite being lightly damaged by Kuma's shelling, it approaches even closer!!Yeah!Kuma's machine gunners are injured as well!!No, that way!It was a dud.
Actually, it happened frequently.
