A problem with the Long Lance torpedoes was their potential to explode if the ship was on fire. Some speculate that the torpedoes may have damaged more Japanese ships than Allied ships due to this problem and being used to scuttle friendly ships.

I'unno, if the ship was on fire your chances are probably nose-diving, LLs or no.

BlastingNaba said:

I'unno, if the ship was on fire your chances are probably nose-diving, LLs or no.

I was incorrect. It was not fire, but impact that could set them off. Shock damage could set them off and the warhead was so large it could sink a destroyer if it went off.

With all the American air attacks both the cruiser and destroyer captains had to worry about these torpedoes going off in their tubes. Chikuma managed to jettison her torpedoes before being hit at the Battle of Santa Cruz.

Chokai was not so lucky at Leyte Gulf.

ithekro said:

A problem with the Long Lance torpedoes was their potential to explode if the ship was on fire. Some speculate that the torpedoes may have damaged more Japanese ships than Allied ships due to this problem and being used to scuttle friendly ships.

Agree.
While the Long Lance was indeed IJN's ultimate weapon & harassed the ships of Allied Powers, as the Pacific War was progressed, the Long Lance was becoming their express ticket to an afterlife.
Due to the Long Lance had the enough havoc to blow up size of a heavy cruiser, as well as how their ship's armor(including the torpedo tubes) was so thin & weak(enough to be penetrated by .50 BMG) at that time, often the American pilots (who often came with massive numbers) preferred to target it specifically for easy kill on the IJN ships.

Eventually, this 'Asymmetrical(hope I'm saying right term for this case)' war asset that costing same as Ki-84 Hayate was becoming one of IJN's weakness as the time went on.

Easy, go play Kancolle Arcade, get Takao, and use her to launch torpedo. Then we'll know where the tubes are.

ithekro said:

A problem with the Long Lance torpedoes was their potential to explode if the ship was on fire. Some speculate that the torpedoes may have damaged more Japanese ships than Allied ships due to this problem and being used to scuttle friendly ships.

It wasn't an issue with DDs, every DD was vulranble to having torpedo or depth charges detonated. This was acceptable though since the ship was also unarmored and vulnerable to a single shell blowing up a powder magazine, that was just the nature of the game. When it came to DDs the torpedoes definitely made up their risks in terms of hits lesser weapons might not have attained. The Destroyer in any case revolved around it's torpedoes, in a large surface action the torpedo was to a very real extent the destroyers 'main battery' so accepting some increase in risk to greatly improve them was logical.

It's not for a cruisers though as they're a different animal. A simple counting off the incidents shows that IJN cruiser torpedoes sank or crippled more Japanese cruisers then they ever did enemy ships, they were also useless as hell because at the ranges cruisers would be trying to use them (at least 10,000 meters in most cases) it was basically impossible to hit something with the slightest awareness. Unlike a DD a cruiser's guns are definitely it's main weapon, and it's employment in combat emphasis this point as does the fact it's armored to withstand shells. Any torpedoes carried are genuinely secondary and a careful weighing of the risks vs gains must be made.

This then creates a catch 22 in that armor really only works at a distance, and distance is also the best defense against shells in general by reducing enemy accuracy, but torpedoes really only work up close. This is before you even get into how putting a bunch of pure oxygen and literally tons of high explosives on deck somewhat defeats the point of armoring your magazines. This is also only considering the high performance Japanese torpedoes, for other nations whose torpedoes could barely even reach 10km on a reasonable speed setting torpedoes on cruisers were laughably useless and did almost nothing but create an explosive hazard on deck. (though the lack of pure oxygen generators nearby at least made the mounts drastically less dangerous)

ithekro said:

I was incorrect. It was not fire, but impact that could set them off. Shock damage could set them off and the warhead was so large it could sink a destroyer if it went off.

Chokai was not so lucky at Leyte Gulf.

It wasn't the warhead that was the issue with the LL it was the Oxygen, any torpedo warhead under going a full blown sympathetic detonation would likely doom a destroyer or inflict heavy damage on a cruiser. The thing is actually setting off the warhead by shock action was hard, the designers aren't morons, these things didn't have hair triggers. They were specifically designed to be extremely hard to accidentally explode. Straight up setting off the warhead usually required a near direct hit by something nearly the size of that warhead, most cases involved large aircraft bombs or torpedoes more or less directly striking the tubes. Fragments and remote detonations elsewhere in the ship pretty much never did it.

The problem with the Long Lance was one of he big reasons no one else went with oxygen torpedoes despite the concept being nothing new. Pure Oxygen is actually really dangerous and hard to work with. Pure oxygen pretty much makes everything more reactive and if any of it leaks it creates a monstrous fire hazard. You also need to carry oxygen generators rather then merely air compressors only adding to the hazard. This all made a Japanese torpedo installation a monstrously more dangerous fire hazard then any foreign equivalent, even worse is that a fire fueled by pure oxygen is so intense it's much harder to douse with conventional means (it can't be smothered by lack of Oxygen obviously and the much higher flame temperatures make breaking the heat portion of the fire triangle harder as well).

Think less 'house/campfire' and more 'blast furnace/blow torch'.

And while explosives going off instantly from a direct hit was very rare explosives going off indirectly as result of fires, was very, very common. Thanks to the presence of huge amounts of pure oxygen these mounts were far easier to ignite, far harder to extinguish, and the fire was far hotter reducing the time between ignition and cook off. In basically all cases what happened with cruisers wasn't that the warheads were hit and exploded, but rather that a fire was started on deck and the presence of tons of pure oxygen rapidly created an inferno to intense to even approach which quickly started cooking off warheads.

This was a hazard unique to Japanese installations and made their tubes a far bigger surviablity liability.

LOOK AT HER WAIST/HIP GEAR, IDIOT ADMIRAL.

LOOK AT IT.

THE TORPEDO MOUNTS MUST BE IN THERE SOMEWHERE!

The Type 93 Torpedo greatest assest may have been it's speed instead of the range, considering that long range salvos were largely innacurate (KanColle replicates that on the torpedo support expeditions) and their relative effectiveness in the close-ranged battles of the Solomons Campaign.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-067.htm

Just felt throwing in more historical stuff in here.

The hits the Long Lances did get early in the war were attributed to mines or submarines by the Allies because at night they didn't see the Japanese launch torpedoes from such ridiculous ranges. Japanese night fighting ability is not be underestimated. Nor are their optics. Radar on Allied ships as the war progresses evens out that advantage, along with out-numbering the Japanese in many cases.

If you wanted to have a totally unfair scenario in a naval war game, pit the Japanese against the Italians...at night. The Italians will likely not even see the Japanese coming or going, yet still die horribly to Japanese torpedoes and gunfire.

Guardian54 said:

LOOK AT HER WAIST/HIP GEAR, IDIOT ADMIRAL.

LOOK AT IT.

THE TORPEDO MOUNTS MUST BE IN THERE SOMEWHERE!

They're on her thighs in the official CG. But because they're small, people don't even notice them.