The Type 93 was the most potent torpedo of the war, by an enormous margin. In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing that the other combatants mostly abandoned the concept of running torpedo engines off of compressed pure oxygen, given how much doing that added to range, speed and payload (the British did a little bit of oxygen enhancement for the torpedoes aboard the Nelsons, which of course were never used except for trying to finish off the already-destroyed Bismarck). I guess their tendency to explode on startup dampened everybody’s enthusiasm a little bit. I don’t think Hornet was sunk by one, though, since she was sunk by a submarine and Japanese subs didn’t carry them (too dangerous and heavy to have oxygen generators aboard submarines).
People tend to poo-poo Japanese military technology from WWII, but without question they had by far the most deadly torpedoes and the most deadly guided missiles. Also the Yamatos would have beaten any battleships they encountered in a one-on-one duel, so arguably they had the best battleships, too.
The Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo finally finished off Hornet with 4 24-inch (610 mm) Long Lance torpedoes.
The subs crippled her, her own mates tried to scuttle and sink her but the ijn finished her with 93s.
Oh, and the yamato/musashi were insane, crazily over built and over gunned, they could probably have taken the iowas in a fair fight, which the iowas would never have given them and won by dint of their incredible fire control and hopefully unneeded incredible damage control and resilience, coupled with better sea keeping and ludicrous speed straight to plaid.
The iowas could have crippled the Yamato, trying to sink her was another question.
The Type 93 was the most potent torpedo of the war, by an enormous margin. In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing that the other combatants mostly abandoned the concept of running torpedo engines off of compressed pure oxygen, given how much doing that added to range, speed and payload (the British did a little bit of oxygen enhancement for the torpedoes aboard the Nelsons, which of course were never used except for trying to finish off the already-destroyed Bismarck). I guess their tendency to explode on startup dampened everybody’s enthusiasm a little bit. I don’t think Hornet was sunk by one, though, since she was sunk by a submarine and Japanese subs didn’t carry them (too dangerous and heavy to have oxygen generators aboard submarines).
People tend to poo-poo Japanese military technology from WWII, but without question they had by far the most deadly torpedoes and the most deadly guided missiles. Also the Yamatos would have beaten any battleships they encountered in a one-on-one duel, so arguably they had the best battleships, too.
I see what you did there.
Also:
The subs crippled her, her own mates tried to scuttle and sink her but the ijn finished her with 93s.
Oh, and the yamato/musashi were insane, crazily over built and over gunned, they could probably have taken the iowas in a fair fight, which the iowas would never have given them and won by dint of their incredible fire control and hopefully unneeded incredible damage control and resilience, coupled with better sea keeping and ludicrous speed straight to plaid.
The iowas could have crippled the Yamato, trying to sink her was another question.