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The Mark 14 torpedo was the United States Navy's standard submarine-launched anti-ship torpedo of World War II. This weapon was plagued with many problems which crippled its performance early in the war, and was supplemented by the Mark 18 electric torpedo in the last two years of the war. Nonetheless, the Mark 14 played a major role in the devastating blow US Navy submarines dealt to the Japanese naval and merchant marine forces during the Pacific War. By the end of World War II, the Mark 14 torpedo was a reliable weapon which remained in service for almost 40 years in the US Navy, and even longer with other navies. ==Development== The Mark 14 was designed in 1930 to serve in the new "fleet" submarines, replacing the Mark 10 which had been in service since World War I and was standard in the older S-boats. Although the same diameter, the Mark 14 was longer, at , and therefore incompatible with older submarines' torpedo tubes. The Mark 14 was designed at the Naval Torpedo Station (NTS), Newport, beginning in 1922. It had a fairly small warhead and was intended to explode beneath the keel where there was no armor.〔 This required the sophisticated new Mark 6 magnetic influence exploder, which was similar to the British Duplex〔Fitzsimons, Bernard, general editor. ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of 20th Century Weapons and Warfare'' (London: Phoebus Publishing, 1978), Volume 8, p.807, "Duplex"〕 and German〔Dönitz, ''Memoir''.〕 models, all inspired by German magnetic mines of World War I. The Mark 6 exploder, designated Project G53, was developed "behind the tightest veil of secrecy the Navy had ever created."〔 Exploders were tested at the Newport lab and in a small field test aboard USS ''Raleigh''. At Christie's urging, equatorial tests were later conducted with ''Indianapolis'', which fired one hundred trial shots between 10°N and 10°S and collected 7000 readings. The tests were done using torpedoes with instrumented exercise heads: an electric eye would take an upward-looking picture from the torpedo; the magnetic influence feature would set off some gun cotton. Inexplicably, no live fire trials were ever done with production units. Chief of Naval Operations William V. Pratt offered the hulk of ''Cassin''-class〔Fitzsimons, Volume 5, p.541, table.〕 destroyer ''Ericsson'',〔 but prohibited the use of a live warhead, and insisted the Bureau of Ordnance (commonly called BuOrd) pay the cost of refloating her if she was hit in error.〔 These were strange restrictions, as ''Ericsson'' was due to be scrapped.〔Between 1934 and 1936. Fitzsimons, Volume 5, p.542, "''Cassin''".〕 BuOrd declined.〔 A service manual for the exploder "was written—but, for security reasons, not printed—and locked in a safe."〔 In 1923, Congress made NTS Newport the sole designer, developer, builder and tester of torpedoes in the United States. No independent or competing group was assigned to verify the results of Mark 14 tests. NTS produced only 1½ torpedoes a day in 1937, despite having three shifts of three thousand workers working around the clock.〔 Production facilities were at capacity and there was no room for expansion.〔 Only two thousand submarine torpedoes were built by all three〔NTS, Alexandria, and Keyport. 〕 Navy factories in 1942. This exacerbated torpedo shortages; the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force had fired 1,442 torpedoes since war began. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mark 14 torpedo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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