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The pre-war issue torpedo had the disadvantage of leaving a visible trail of bubbles on the surface on its way to the target. The standard torpedo of the war suffered from early problems with its internal depth-keeping equipment, and its firing pistol, but these ....

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.... of the war though. The weapon was designed to lock onto the loudest noise after a run of 400m from its launch. This often proved to be the U-boat itself and standard issue-orders were to dive immediately to depth of 60m after launch from a bow tube while a stern shot was to be followed by a complete silence in the boat. Two U-boats were almost certainly lost when hit by one of their own T5 torpedoes, U-972 in Dec 1943 and U-377 in Jan 1944. Variants All the German U-boat torpedoes were 53.3cm (21 inch) in diameter and had a warhead of 280kg. (The T5 had two important pattern-running devices, which could be applied to various torpedo types. Th ....