Were our torpedoes guided?

First, a couple definitions. To aim a torpedo is to point it at a target. It would then go directly in the direction where it was aimed. A guided torpedo is one that can be redirected towards the target by remote human control or by onboard sensors after it is fired.

Late in the war, we developed a few homing torpedoes, although with mixed success. The primary difficulty was in overcoming the noise of the torpedo itself in order to find the target. Other noises in the ocean, which had never been measured, would also affect the homing device. The intent was for these torpedoes to be aimed by the TDC and then run on the course stored in the gyroscope until, hopefully, the target noises allowed the homing mechanism to take over.

Most of our WW2 torpedoes were not guided. A few acoustic homing torpedoes were developed during the war. We developed a Mark 27 homing torpedo for submarines as a defensive weapon. Sailors called it a “cutie”. It was small and was just intended to disable the attacking ASW ship – a destroyer, escort, corvette, etc. If it sank the ASW ship, so much the better, but that wasn’t the primary objective.

We also had a Mark 24 Mine (actually a small homing torpedo) that was used by our aircraft to attack and sink U-boats in WW2 in the Atlantic. It was called a FIDO.

However, most of the torpedoes that we used, such as the Mark 14 and Mark 18 that we have in the forward torpedo room, were simply aimed. A target solution was entered into a gyroscope in the torpedo before it was fired. As noted above, these torpedoes would go straight out of the submarine for about 100 yards and then turn on its final course. Then they would go straight. That turn was part of the aiming of the torpedo, not guidance.