Silent Service

Season 1, Episode 3: The Torpedoes of World War II

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Only a few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy experienced a failure of critical technology--the torpedoes that armed its fleet of submarines were defective. The ensuing debacle ranks as one of the great near disasters of WWII. We'll see how the exigencies of war clashed with entrenched bureaucracies and egos of the naval ordnance establishment. After two years of frustration the submariners prevailed and with effective weapons went on to achieve remarkable results.