Just a heads-up, I just caught the second of the 5 hours of 'Silent Service WWII' being aired on the 'History Channel' this week. New stuff I think. The first one was about Germany's sub service, and this one is about the U.S. sub service. Then they're detailing each development...'Torpedo development', 'TDC development', 'Sonar development', etc... Don't know how many of you get this channel, but it's really informative and interesting, I think the 'sub' stuff is new.
They really went into the development of the US 'TDC'. Also photos/movies of the Brit's capturing U-110 and the US capturing U-501. They also gave dates of developments, like the US early problems with torps, radar/sonar development, etc....very interesting.
Can't wait for a 'Pacific' version of Silent Hunter .

Good thing John Wayne solved the torp non-detonation thing.

Yea Bill, I saw that movie too...lol...

But what the 'History' channel says is quite different....the brass wouldn't listen to the troops, who complained for years.
Even old Al Einstein told them, in writing, that the 'detonator' was crushing on impact, before detonation, causing a dud.
He even suggested putting a 'cushion' in front of the detonator. They showed the letter he wrote.

But hey....it was a 'big shot' submariner who developed the detonator, he had all the pins 'painted', to make sure nobody tampered with his 'great' invention....as there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with the thing, dispite what everyone was saying...lol...typical :rolleyes: .
Some just got 'paint' from the storeroom, and fixed the thing in the field, then repainted the pin. Course this didn't fix the fact that most times they were running 14' deeper than they were supposed to.

They finally did a test in 1943 against a cliff in Hawaii, recovered a dud and took it apart.
Found the 'crushed' detonator.

On the 'up' side....the US TDC was much more advanced than any other in the world.

Great info....good program.
Beats the 'Simpsons' anyway.... .