Yep, I know the tacky wax drill. Also remember lapping exhaust valves in the steam torpedo shop at Pearl. When I was on Barbel we no longer did the tacky wax thing. MK 16-8's were really tight and the O-rings on the exhaust valves held up well. Only shot a couple of MK 14-5's during those years. Only did it so my junior TM's could get that wonderful experience. No tacky wax on them either.

Did you ever recover a MK 14 at sea and post-run in the Torpedo Room? I did it one time on Cusk. What a goat-rope! The king post and boom were rusted into their mounting location in the superstructure. Our Chief Torpedoman was the only person on board who had ever recovered at sea before so he taught everyone. He had us rig up a tail line with a length of chain on the end. The end of the chain had a big metal loop on it so you could run the chain through the loop and create a noose. The idea was after you snagged the exercise head with a nose line you would pass the tail line over it and let the weight of the chain carry it down to the tail cone. while your doing this, your passing the hoisting strap over the nose line also. Got a guy in the water pushing the hoisting strap down the air flask, bow planes rigged out with a guy with the boat hook on it, the Chief is yelling directions, the Gun Boss is yelling at the Chief, and the XO is a self appointed safety observer with a whistle. There was a very small sea running and when we would get a surge the torpedo would bang against the tank top, or start surging up and down. What a cluster ****. It all kinda worked and we got the torpedo back aboard. The forward room didn't want to post run it but the Chief made-em do it. They made sure the Wardroom heard about it. AAHHH for the life on a Fleet Snorkel. There were advantages to being in the trailer.