How effective early homing torpedoes were in the Second World War

How effective were early US homing torpedoes during the Second World War?

Once production models matured, they were good weapons for their wartime technological context even though later torpedoes were much more capable.

The first American batches were imperfect because acoustic guidance and production engineering were still new. Later weapons became useful anti-submarine systems by the standards of the Second World War. The panel warns against evaluating them solely beside postwar descendants whose sensors and control systems benefited from further development. Their significance lies in introducing a workable homing capability during the conflict rather than matching the performance of later generations.