RE: Mk24 and "Cutie"
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: September 26, 2000 08:59PM
The 'cutie' was designed as an anti-ASW weapon. Most smaller ASW craft were slow, and they were slow when stopping to listen with sonar, so there was a reasonable vulnerability to be exploited.
The problem is the region where they were used.
A Fido was dropped on a submerged U-boat, and hunted the slow moving U-boat in the quiet depths of the ocean - where the U-boat was the only source of sound. It worked well.
When the 'cutie' was fired at a surface ship, wave noise proved very distracting, and the weapon did not work well. Add to this that by '45 when the 'Cutie' was deployed most fighting was in very shallow water - reflections from the surface waves off the sea floor also caused problems. The Barb, face to face with a Japanese destroyer, fired cutie after cutie only to have them home in on the seafloor mud (not much help). Basically the cutie was a failure. The German T5 acoustic homing torpedo was mostly a failure for the same reason: distraction by wave noise, and it was easily decoyed by Allied countermeasures.
This was the difference I meant to draw between the cutie and the fido - not the inner working, but the tactical useage and results. Thanks for helping clear up my confusing wording.
The problem is the region where they were used.
A Fido was dropped on a submerged U-boat, and hunted the slow moving U-boat in the quiet depths of the ocean - where the U-boat was the only source of sound. It worked well.
When the 'cutie' was fired at a surface ship, wave noise proved very distracting, and the weapon did not work well. Add to this that by '45 when the 'Cutie' was deployed most fighting was in very shallow water - reflections from the surface waves off the sea floor also caused problems. The Barb, face to face with a Japanese destroyer, fired cutie after cutie only to have them home in on the seafloor mud (not much help). Basically the cutie was a failure. The German T5 acoustic homing torpedo was mostly a failure for the same reason: distraction by wave noise, and it was easily decoyed by Allied countermeasures.
This was the difference I meant to draw between the cutie and the fido - not the inner working, but the tactical useage and results. Thanks for helping clear up my confusing wording.