I think you're referring to the raid on Taranto, where they used Swordfish biplanes to attack the Italian fleet.
You also mentioned Pearl Harbor, which is a well documented case of using modified torpedoes, so that got me thinking: maybe they used modified torps on the Taranto raid as well?
The way i understood it is that the torpedo restrictions are not only about the warhead surviving the impact with the water. It's probably acceptable knowledge to all of us that if we drop too high or too fast the impact with the water will probably damage the torpedo, that's the obvious part.
However, from reading the 4.10 documentation i get the idea that the combination of speed and altitude at the time of drop factors into another restriction, namely the torpedo's angle of impact to the water.
If it's too shallow, the torpedo is not sufficiently submerged to make optimal speed (maybe the propeller is only half-submerged?), but if it's too steep the torpedo goes too deep and can't self-correct its course, so it ends up missing?
I'm not exactly sure about how it works so maybe someone from TD can explain better, but it makes sense to me if it more or less works that way. After all, these were not modern torpedoes and they were somewhat sensitive in terms of guidance and malfunctions, not to mention duds and premature detonations. Incidentally, this last one would also explain the need for excessive arming distances. I'm not an expert on torpedoes so corrections are more than welcome if anyone can share some references, it just happens to make sense to me from what i've read in combat reports and seen in-game when i used to play silent hunter 3 with some realism mods a few years ago.
As for the Pearl Harbor attack i vaguely remember that in order to drop at the correct angle and still do it after passing the torpedo nets, they added extra stabilizing surfaces to the torpedoes carried so that they would run closer to the surface.
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