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CHAPTER 28
TORPEDO: THE HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF A KILLING MACHINE
(Excerpted from an unpublished manuscript [pages 121–122] and
reprinted by permission of the author, Retired Master Chief Sonar
Technician David M. Hardy, USN)
On December 7, 1941, six aircraft carriers of the Japanese Imperial
Navy launched nearly 400 aircraft in a sneak-attack bombing raid against
the U.S. Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Twelve American
warships were sunk or beached, including every battleship in the Pacific
Fleet. Another nine ships were heavily damaged. Over twenty-four
hundred Americans were killed. A significant portion of the damage can
be attributed to conventional aerial bombs, but the real killer of the day
was the air-launched torpedo. Carried beneath the fuselages of Kate
bombers, the Japanese torpedoes cut through the shallow waters of the
harbor like knives, leaving swaths of fire and death in their wakes.
America was at war again, and again it had begun with torpedoes.
Twenty-three years later, in the Tonkin Gulf, off the coast of Vietnam,
the American naval destroyer USS Maddox was attacked by three North
Vietnamese patrol boats. The high-speed attack boats fired at least four
torpedoes at the American ship, as well as several rounds from their
14.5mm deck guns. The torpedoes all missed, and USS Maddox returned
fire with her own guns. Two days later, North Vietnamese patrol boats
conducted torpedo attacks on another American naval destroyer, USS
Turner Joy. As in the attack on USS Maddox, the Turner Joy came away
from the engagement without serious damage. President Lyndon B.
Johnson saw the attacks as justification for increasing U.S. military
presence in Vietnam. The ensuing escalation ultimately led to what we
now know as the Vietnam War.
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