Nevertheless, his testimony explained why Tullibee had vanished so suddenly and why no distress message had been sent.
It also confirmed that the crew had not simply disappeared without a trace.
There had been a catastrophic explosion, a rapid sinking, and at least a brief period when other sailors were alive in the water.
The tragedy was no longer entirely mysterious.
But its explanation revealed a disturbing vulnerability in American submarine warfare.
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The Dangerous History of American Torpedo Failures
The sinking of Tullibee cannot be understood without examining the problems that plagued American torpedoes during the early Pacific War.
The Mark 14 had been developed before World War II and entered combat with serious deficiencies.
For years, the Navy had relied on limited testing and had not fully identified the weapon's weaknesses under realistic combat conditions.
Submarine commanders soon reported repeated failures.
Some torpedoes ran deeper than their prescribed settings.
Others failed to explode after striking enemy ships.
Magnetic influence exploders, designed to detonate beneath a vessel's keel, sometimes activated prematurely or failed to function as expected.
Contact exploders could also fail when a torpedo struck a target at certain angles.
These problems created enormous frustration.
A submarine might successfully penetrate an enemy convoy's defenses, calculate an accurate firing solution, and launch a torpedo—only to watch the weapon pass beneath its target or strike without detonating.
Such failures wasted ammunition and exposed crews to counterattack.
During 1943, American naval authorities progressively investigated and corrected major defects.
But eliminating depth-control and exploder problems did not eliminate every danger associated with torpedo operation.
Guidance failures remained a separate concern.
A torpedo depended on its gyroscopic steering system to maintain the intended course.
If the steering mechanism malfunctioned, the weapon could turn away from its target.
In extreme cases, it could begin traveling in a circle.
A circular-running torpedo was especially dangerous because the launching submarine could find itself directly in the weapon's path.
There were documented incidents of American submarines being threatened by their own torpedoes.
USS Tang, one of the most successful American submarines of the war, was also lost to a circular-running torpedo in October 1944.