USS Pampanito on Deck

Description

USS Pampanito on Deck
The USS Pampanito, a Balao-class fleet submarine, was commissioned in late 1943 and went into action in the Pacific at the height of WWII. During her patrols from early 1944 through mid-1945, Pampanito prowled the sea lanes of the western Pacific, decimating the convoys that were the life blood of Japan’s far-flung maritime empire. By the time she was ordered back to Pearl Harbor for overhaul in the summer of 1945, Pampanito had sent five Japanese ships, 27,332 tons, to the bottom. But Pampanito’s proudest day was 15 September 1944 when she rescued 73 British and Australian prisoners of war who had survived the sinking of a convoy taking them to Japan as slave labor. Today, Pampanito is a floating museum permanently docked at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.