As has been described in several previous bulletins regarding Second World War American submarine torpedo problems, the Mark 14 torpedo was pressed into service with little testing. This resulted in a prolonged series of frustrating duds and "misses" attributed by Admiral Christie and BuOrd to a lack of skill on the part of submarine commanding officers. Only after Admiral Lockwood, ComSubPac, became convinced that his skippers might be right and the powers at Newport, Rhode Island and Keyport, Washington might just be wrong were serious tests on the torpedo conducted. The problems were identified and were manifold. The magnetic exploder was unreliable, the torpedo ran much deeper than set, and the firing pin on the contact exploder failed to actuate except when the torpedo struck the target at an oblique angle.

American submariners of the day had every right to be furious at the recalcitrance of torpedo designers to admit mistakes Indeed, several submarines were undoubtedly lost due to faulty torpedoes.

While it may be of little comfort to the submarine veterans of the Second World War, America was not the only nation to experience these problems.

German U-boat skippers returned to Lorient and Brest with tales of torpedoes that failed to explode on impact. The Type VII and Type IX boats carried two basic torpedoes. The G7a was a torpedo much like the Mark 14, both being driven by a gas turbine. The G7e was an electric torpedo much like the Mark 18. Both the German turbine-driven and the electric torpedoes used the same design in their exploder mechanism. Like their American counterparts, the G7a and G7e torpedoes had both magnetic and contact exploders. The magnetic exploder was flawed in its basic design. German torpedoes failed to explode or exploded immediately after leaving the torpedo tube. Unlike his American counterparts Admiral Doenitz believed his U-boat commanders and quickly ordered the influence exploders ripped out of the torpedoes. Still, the contact exploder had problems of its own.

It is interesting that the American and German contact exploder problems exhibited the same symptoms, but for different reasons. The bent and fractured impact pin was one of the American causes of for exploder failure, but the German problem stemmed from a different style of mechanism. The German exploder actuator was in the torpedo nose. A small propeller at the center spun in response to torpedo speed through the water. The arming device released a shield from the contact exploder's electrical contact much as the impeller did in American torpedoes. Surrounding the small propeller were contact arms, called "whiskers" which extended forward, then outward in a dog-leg shape. These were the equivalent to the American exploder firing pin. Upon impact, one or more of these "whiskers" were pushed backward and this action triggered the electrical charge. The design fault lay in the dog-leg fulcrum, the curvature of the contact arms and their length. When a torpedo struck its target at close to perpendicular, the arms were crushed at  impact. When the torpedo struck its target at an oblique angle the arms were depressed and the exploder worked as intended.

The German submarine command structure was centered in one man, Karl Doenitz who was able to forcefully represent his U-boat commanders' concerns to torpedo design engineers. The same problems on the American side were slow to be resolved because of multiple command layers. Admirals Christie and Fife in Australia were disposed to believe their colleagues in BuOrd and Admiral Lockwood found it difficult to go against his immediate subordinates in area commands. Eventually overwhelmed by obviously competent skippers, he got the ball rolling to correct the problems.