"WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH: THE GERMAN TORPEDO CRISIS" Topic

"For much of the war, the U-Bootwaffe fought its enemies "with a wooden sword," as Prien later so succinctly put it. German torpedoes failed again and again, to the point that it might be said that these same gray wolves which had so mercilessly decimated the Allied flock for the first four years of war had done so with a quarter of their teeth
missing.

In this thesis I will explore the issue of torpedo failures within the U-Bootwaffe during the first few years of war, a phenomenon that has come to be known simply as the Torpedokrise, or Torpedo Crisis. A strong argument could be made that the Torpedokrise constitutes to date the single greatest catastrophe in the relatively short history of the German Navy."

link

I knew the US Navy had a similar issue for the first few years of the war. I didn't know the Germans had the same issue.

Yea, they had major issues, especially during the Narvik campaign, but also for quite some time afterwards, up until about the mid-war period, IIRC.

A number of faults were found, eventually.

The thesis suggests they didn't get on top of the problem until 1942. They did so by pinching the British exploder design – which the British had previously pinched off the Germans in WW1.

If you've ever wondered why your late-model car, dishwasher, phone, or laptop work worse than the one you had 20 years ago – this is not a new phenomenon.

4th Cuirassier, just like the new Facebook!

The USN's torpedo problem was every bit as severe if not more so.