How Conspiracy Theories Get Started...

Last month, I wrote about this moonbat who had a new take on the "American submarine sank the Kursk" story. Basically, they had pictures of the Kursk in drydock that showed a round hole; they claimed that this was made by an American Mk 48 torpedo, which they say is designed "to melt cleanly through steel sheet due to a mechanism at its tip that combusts copper."

This weekend, Chapomatic picked up the ball from Curt at Chaotic Synaptic Activity with a discussion of what the Mk 48 torpedo actually does; he even has a kewl picture! This got me to thinking, and I think I know where the documentary-maker got his idea about what American torpedos do...

Meet the Mk 50 torpedo. Now, I don't know much about this torpedo (although I did participate in the first OpEval with it in late 1991 on the good ship Topeka, and as OOD conducted the first successful evasion with a little tactic that immediately became known as "The Kennedy Maneuver" on the boat... we were big Star Trek:TNG geeks)... anyway, back to my story. Near the bottom of the FAS article, it claims the Mk 50 has a "shaped charge"; now, a shaped charge would, in theory, make a hole in a submarine hull. The only thing is: Mk 50 torpedos are not carried on submarines! The reason they supposedly have a shaped charge is that this allows for hull-penetration with a smaller explosive charge; the reduced weight is important for an air-delivered weapon. If weight isn't a concern, though, I'd much rather have a warhead many times bigger that breaks the ship in half, rather than one that makes a little hole (potentially in a free-flood area).

Conclusion: The moonbat documentary maker found some airdale or skimmer who supposedly knew what a Mk 50 did, assumed the Mk 48 does the same thing, and told him about it. Supplemental conclusion: The documentary maker, and the Brit weapons expert who helped him, are both asshats.