It sounds like one of these stories with educational/entertainment purposes rather than a description of an actual problem or event. I did find one reference -
"D. E. Stevenson attributes this story to Nancy Leveson, Software System Safety, STAR '93, Ontario at Darlington, Ontario. 1993.
A torpedo was designed to self-destruct if it turned 180 degrees. Unfortunately for the test ship the torpedo stuck in the tube and the captain turned the ship around for port "
It sounds mildly more plausible since it doesn't begin with the rather improbable torpedo design problem of 'submarines shooting themselves with their own torpedo'.
Still, if tasked with designing a reasonably safe torpedo, one of the very first things you're likely to come up with are 'armed' and 'safe' modes with the torpedo staying in 'safe' mode until it is about to be launched. The next obvious safety feature would be to make the torpedo return to 'safe' mode the moment significantly abnormal conditions are encountered - say, stuck in tube, wildly off-course, etc.
Adding a self destruct mechanism seems highly unsafe - there's the problem of the self-destruct mechanism malfunctioning and activating at an inopportune time. Additionally, if the torpedo has no idea where it is, the last thing you probably want is having it blow up - possibly near you or a friendly.
The actual stories of the difficulties developing WWII torpedoes are quite interesting and offer plenty of lessons in complex systems design, testing and deployment - see:
A design flaw that must have been particularly galling: "The conventional contact exploder was designed for the earlier, slower, 33 knot, Mk 13 torpedo. The newer, faster, 46 knot, Mk 14 torpedo had higher inertial impacts that would cause the firing pin to miss the exploder cap. " In other words, the more squarely you hit your target, the more likely the torpedo would fail.
"D. E. Stevenson attributes this story to Nancy Leveson, Software System Safety, STAR '93, Ontario at Darlington, Ontario. 1993.
A torpedo was designed to self-destruct if it turned 180 degrees. Unfortunately for the test ship the torpedo stuck in the tube and the captain turned the ship around for port "
It sounds mildly more plausible since it doesn't begin with the rather improbable torpedo design problem of 'submarines shooting themselves with their own torpedo'.
Still, if tasked with designing a reasonably safe torpedo, one of the very first things you're likely to come up with are 'armed' and 'safe' modes with the torpedo staying in 'safe' mode until it is about to be launched. The next obvious safety feature would be to make the torpedo return to 'safe' mode the moment significantly abnormal conditions are encountered - say, stuck in tube, wildly off-course, etc.
Adding a self destruct mechanism seems highly unsafe - there's the problem of the self-destruct mechanism malfunctioning and activating at an inopportune time. Additionally, if the torpedo has no idea where it is, the last thing you probably want is having it blow up - possibly near you or a friendly.
The actual stories of the difficulties developing WWII torpedoes are quite interesting and offer plenty of lessons in complex systems design, testing and deployment - see:
http://www.ww2pacific.com/torpedo.html
A design flaw that must have been particularly galling: "The conventional contact exploder was designed for the earlier, slower, 33 knot, Mk 13 torpedo. The newer, faster, 46 knot, Mk 14 torpedo had higher inertial impacts that would cause the firing pin to miss the exploder cap. " In other words, the more squarely you hit your target, the more likely the torpedo would fail.