Excellent ships and a large fleet could not compensate for a critical testing failure. American and German torpedo problems before the Second World War, along with Japanese problems during it, provide parallel examples. In each case, the weight of an established system encouraged people to presume that familiar procedures remained adequate. A navy needed accurate trials and an empowered reformer willing to say that reassuring legacy data no longer described real combat performance.
Notable Point · 26:55-28:26
Torpedo failures reveal testing inertia across navies
Torpedo problems in the American, German, and Japanese navies show how institutional confidence could preserve a defective system until someone had authority to challenge it.