Use your mouse to click and drag left, right, up, or down for a full 360° view of the forward torpedo room aboard USS Pampanito (SS-383). Shift zooms in — Ctrl zooms out.
This compartment served as sleeping quarters for about 14 crewmen, who shared the space with 16 Mark 14 torpedoes — 6 in the tubes and 10 reloads. The torpedo tubes in the bow were always loaded and ready to fire.
Although the Mark 14 torpedo was an excellent weapon by the end of the war, it was a serious problem at the start. Three major flaws plagued it in the early months: the torpedo ran about 15 feet deeper than its set depth; a defective contact exploder failed to detonate even on a direct hit; and a flaw in the top-secret magnetic exploder — designed to detonate beneath a ship and break its keel — rendered that feature unreliable. After 18 months of investigation and field testing, all three problems were identified and corrected.