Japan's Long Lance Torpedo: The 'Hypersonic' Weapon of World War II?

Michael Peck

Security,

And why all "game changer" weapons don't always work out so well. 

When the Second World War began, the Japanese plan was to exercise patience to defeat a stronger foe. Under the "decisive battle" strategy, Japan would seize the Philippines, and as the U.S. Navy sailed across the Pacific to recapture Manila, it would be harried and worn down by persistent aircraft, submarines and destroyer attacks. Once the American battle fleet had been sufficiently weakened, the Japanese battle fleet would sortie out and sink it in a huge Jutland-style naval battle near the Philippines.

When U.S. Navy warships began exploding in the middle of the night, America realized it had a problem.

In the autumn of 1942, Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands near Australia, became the focal point of the Pacific War. For six months, U.S. and Japanese forces savagely battled on land, air, and sea to determine who would control the island and its strategic airfield.

For the U.S. Navy, which had belittled the Japanese as incompetent, Guadalcanal came as a shock. The disaster at Pearl Harbor could be explained by surprise and treachery, but the Navy left two dozen warships in "Ironbottom Sound" off Guadalcanal.

One reason was the "Long Lance," the Japanese torpedo that was the most powerful weapon of its kind in the early years of World War II. Developed in the late 1920s, the Long Lance, as Americans nicknamed it (the Japanese designation was the "Type 93"), was a remarkable device. In modern parlance, it would be an asymmetric weapon, designed to compensate for Japanese inferiority to more economically powerful Western nations. In some ways, it was the equivalent of hypersonic ship-killing missiles that China and Russia would use to counter the superior U.S. Navy.

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