[ARC5] Torpedoes (After WWII)

[Mike Morrow]

Carl wrote:

> And the current fleet heavy duty torpedo, the MK-48 has been deployed since 
> 1972 with a number of upgrades since it is a modular design.
> http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=950&ct=2

My boat, the ballistic missile submarine USS Daniel Boone (SSBN-629), still
retained a significant war load of the WWII-vintage Mark 14 steam torpedoes
through the mid-1970s.  I was surprised at that, and I wondered if any
came close to being assigned to my father's sub, USS Sawfish (SS-276),
during WWII.

We also carried the Mark 37 electric homing torpedoes, and the Mark 45
ASTOR nuclear warhead torpedo.  The latter was a real pain...being a
nuclear weapon caused all sorts of administrative requirements in port,
including continuous monitoring by the 4FZ alarm system and always
needing the presence of two or more men in its vicinity.

By the late 1970s, we had eliminated the Mark 14 and Mark 45 units,
kept the Mark 37 units, and added the USN's star performer, the
Mark 48.

USN ballistic missile submarines before the late 1970s typically had
a better torpedo fire-control system than the attack submarines did,
even though the attack submarines were the torpedo launch specialists.
This is because of the computational power provided by the Poseidon
SLBM fire control digital geoballistic computers, one of which could
when not at Battle Stations Missile be assigned to the Mark 78 digital
target motion analyzer (TMA) for the torpedo fire control system.
(I was the TMA operator for Battle Stations Torpedo.)  The attack subs,
in contrast, lacked that computer power and had only a weakly-capable
Mark 51 TMA.

All that changed by the late 1970s, as redundant light-weight low-volume
computers like the AN/UYK-7 became available for attack sub service.
Those began then to get state-of-the-art fire control systems.

Mike / KK5F