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Ultimately, World War II was the first war won by technology, but within only a few weeks after the war began the U.S. Navy realized its torpedo program was a dismal failure. Submarine skippers reported that most of their torpedoes were either missing the targets or failing to explode if they did hit. The United States had to work fast if it expected to compete with the Japanese Long Lance, the biggest and fastest torpedo in the world, and Germany's electric and sonar models.
Hellions of the Deep tells the dramatic story of how Navy planners threw aside the careful procedures of peacetime science and initiated "radical research": gathering together the nation's best scientists and engineers in huge research centers and giving them freedom of experimentation to create sophisticated weaponry with a single goal - winning the war.
For this book, Robert Gannon conducted numerous interviews over a twenty-year period with scientists, engineers, physicists, submarine skippers, and Navy bureaucrats, all involved in the development of the advanced weapons technology that won the war. While the search for new weapons was deadly serious, stretching imagination and resourcefulness to the limit each day, the need was obvious: American ships were being blown up daily just outside the Boston harbor.
These oral histories reveal that, in retrospect, surprising even to those who went through it, the search for the "hellions of the deep" was, for many, the most exciting period of their lives.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Equipment, History, Industrial policy, Naval operations, Submarine, Torpedoes, United States, United States. Navy, Weapons systems, World War, 1939-1945, United states, navy, weapons systems, World war, 1939-1945, equipment and supplies, World war, 1939-1945, naval operations, Equipment and suppliesPlaces
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20th centuryShowing 2 featured editions. View all 2 editions?
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1
Hellions of the deep: the development of American torpedoes in World War II
1996, Pennsylvania State University Press
in English
027101508X 9780271015088
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2
Hellions of the Deep: The Development of American Torpedoes in World War II
1996, Pennsylvania State University Press
in English
0271036265 9780271036267
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WorldCat
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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