No. They fired quite well when submerged. They would come to periscope depth if they could in order to verify targets, and destruction of same. The Captain or OOD would place the cross hairs on the target in order to get bearing and range. The data would be processed through the ‘Is-Was’, a primitive fire control system, and upon receiving a good solution, the torpedos would be fired.
The submarine would then clear datum in order to escape the depth charging they so richly deserved!
As an interesting side note, Japanese submarines were never used appropriately during the war, primarily serving as transports for troop insertion and materiel movement.
VB
Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.
{QUOTE}As an interesting side note, Japanese submarines were never used appropriately during the war, primarily serving as transports for troop insertion and materiel movement.{/QUOTE}
Correct although they still managed to sink the carriers USS Wasp CV-7, USS Yorktown CV-10 and the cruiser USS Indianapolis CA-35 with the greatest loss of life
at sea in the Navy’s history 888 men.
Mea culpa. Of course subs could fire submerged even way back when. I was trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to point out that a WWII sub had to be either practically at the surface to inflict injury upon surface ships or well below the surface to avoid getting injured by surface ships. They thus were vulnerable to depth charges in a manner that modern subs certainly are not. Surprise and evasion were paramount. Makes me wanna watch Das Boot.
As for the nuclear cans, the last one I read about said specifically that it could be adjusted for very slow sink rates – maybe to the extent that water temperature and salinity had to be computed. This gave the Viking more than enough time to fly to a safe distance, but not enough time for the sub to flee the huge kill radius.
[brief hijack]
The tactical nuke craze extended to air-to-air missiles and bazookas at one point. Even a dink little fighter could take out an entire bomber formation with one Genie missile, and two soldiers with no interest in having children could wipe out a tank column with one Davy Crocket. If the Cold War had continued, miniaturization might’ve gone a bit too far.
“Hey, comrade, you have light?”
“Yah, found American Zippo on battlefield. Here…” click boom
[/brief hijack]
Enigma was the codename of the German code machine. Ultra was the codename for the information that was obtained from decoding Enigma transmissions.
Basically, an Enigma machine was a set of wheels which could be rotated to various positions. Electronic circuits were formed between the wheels which transmitted a signal from one end to the other. So once the wheels were set, you typed in the letters of your message and the circuits scrambled them into new letters. The receiver set his machine to the same settings and typed in the scrambled message which the machine decoded back to the original.
The Germans placed complete reliance in the Enigma machines and refused to believe the code was breakable. However, as others have posted, the Poles succeded in duplicating the Enigma before WWII and turned their equipment over to the British when Poland fell.
However, having an Enigma machine was only half the battle. To decode the messages you needed to know where the wheels were set. So a lot of effort went into capturing enemy codebooks (such as the OP mentioned). Also British scientists (including Turing) developed early computers to test all possible settings until a intelligible message indicated they had found the correct ones. This back coding was based on a peculiarity of the Enigma that it never substituted a letter for itself.