USS Pampanito use old and new equipment donated by community to restore the iconic submarine

If you thought old machining technology was dead, you are wrong. Old technology still has some niche use cases, mainly when used alongside new machining tech. Volunteers working with the USS Pampanito are using old and new equipment donated by the machining community to restore the iconic submarine.

For those that may not know, USS Pampanito is the submarine the US built to do patrols in the Pacific Ocean during the second world war. Since then, it has been used for a series of other tasks, including naval training during the 1960s. Due to old age, operators of this machine later started using some of its parts to fix other submarines. The USS Pampanito was finally retired in 1982. Since then, it has only been used as a tourist attraction at Francisco Maritime National Park Association at Fisherman’s Wharf.

The works of restoring this submarine are a continuous process since it is a very old machine lying in corrosive salty water. The Maritime Park Association, which is currently handling the submarine, is also working towards restoring the parts that were removed to fix other submarines. The main goal is to have the submarine in a working state.

The restoration process started in the mid-2000s when the Maritime Park Association created a machine shop dedicated to fixing this submarine. Since then, the machining community has donated equipment, including an old Bridgeport milling machine, a LeBlond lathe, a drill press, and many more.

One of the recently donated equipment includes the 1954 Wohlhaupter UPA 3 boring head. Volunteer machinists on this project say that this machine will make it much easier to face, recess and undercut on a manual milling machine, just like the Bridgeport used to create several Pampanito’s parts. Allied Machine & Engineering provided ½” shank boring bars and ½” and ¾” adapters that work with this boring machine.

The first project to use these newly donated tools will be creating replica lamp housings for the submarine’s waterproof binocular sights. These lamps went missing, but lucky enough, drawings have been found, so they can be used to create replicas.

Pekelney, a volunteer machinist for this project, expressed his gratitude to the machining community for their generosity. He said, “ Donations like the one from Allied and other suppliers and machinists are enabling the association to preserve this piece of history.”