Pampanito is much bigger than I expected. I thought submarines were crowded.

The boat is long but narrow. It is almost 312 feet long. However, the pressure hull, where the crew lived and worked, is only 16 feet in diameter and around 280 feet long. The bottom level is all machinery with much more equipment on the main level such as the tops of the engines and generators, fresh water stills, torpedo tubes, reload torpedoes and the boat’s controls. As a result, there isn’t much room left for the crew.

The submarine looks much bigger from the outside than it does from the inside, particularly with 80 crew members on board.