General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
Re: Post war tin fish.
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: October 22, 2001 09:17PM
<HTML>Most accounts I have read credit thhe recovery of torpedoes from the U-570 as being instrumental to the US electric torpedo development.
At first the US bureau was ordered to copy and field a 'chinese copy' [no offense, but an accurate quote of the politically incorrect phrase of the day meaning an exact, bolt for bolt, copy made without necessarily understanding how it worked] of the German electric torpedo. When it was discovered that the US method of torpedo firing was different enough that a German torpedo would be damaged during firing the bureau went its own way. There clearly deep debt to the captured German torpedo in terms of concept and technology, but the detailed design was domestic. After that the bureau went its own way.
It is quite possible that other captured examples, and other secret (and perhaps still classified) avenues such as Superkraut has alluded to may have also played a role.
However, post war the US seems to have quickly gone its own way.
Though we have gone down this road before, the point I was trying to make is that smart people on all sides of the Atlantic were trying very hard to advance weapons technology. Most evolutionary improvements were obvious to the designers of the times, and many were arrived at in parallel without outside aid. Just showing who came first does not necessarily prove cause and effect. You need more proof than that.</HTML>
At first the US bureau was ordered to copy and field a 'chinese copy' [no offense, but an accurate quote of the politically incorrect phrase of the day meaning an exact, bolt for bolt, copy made without necessarily understanding how it worked] of the German electric torpedo. When it was discovered that the US method of torpedo firing was different enough that a German torpedo would be damaged during firing the bureau went its own way. There clearly deep debt to the captured German torpedo in terms of concept and technology, but the detailed design was domestic. After that the bureau went its own way.
It is quite possible that other captured examples, and other secret (and perhaps still classified) avenues such as Superkraut has alluded to may have also played a role.
However, post war the US seems to have quickly gone its own way.
Though we have gone down this road before, the point I was trying to make is that smart people on all sides of the Atlantic were trying very hard to advance weapons technology. Most evolutionary improvements were obvious to the designers of the times, and many were arrived at in parallel without outside aid. Just showing who came first does not necessarily prove cause and effect. You need more proof than that.</HTML>
