The F5W combined low speed with erratic control

The F5W could be dropped from a useful height and advertised a very long range, but those headline figures concealed an almost unusable attack profile. It entered the water at about 13.5 knots and slowed toward 3.9 knots over its run, leaving even ordinary shipping time to evade it. More seriously, it lacked effective depth control and could curve or spiral away from the target because its lateral guidance was rudimentary. Germany nevertheless obtained about a thousand of these weapons, making the defective design a substantial share of its early wartime aerial-torpedo supply.