USS Cavalla

		Japanese Carrier Shokaku sunk by Cavalla just before Great Marianas Turkey Shoot
USS Cavalla (SSN-244)

USS Cavalla Web Site

American Undersea Warfare Center

USS Cavalla News & Updates

Cavalla from the parking lot with Stewart in the background.

Cavalla's bow.

A torpedo appears to be emerging from one of her after torpedo tubes.

Looking aft from the deck.

Looking forward from the after deck.

Betty going foreard to descend below decks to the forward torpedo room.

Looking forward in the forward torpedo room. Origainally there were six forward torpedo tubes, but the upper two were removed in the 50's to accomodate a new sonar array, when she was converted to a SSK, hunter killer configuration (cold war). Notice the pipes and controls everywhere.

Bunks above the torpedos in the forward torpedo room.

As we move toward the rear of the sub a look back at the forward torpedo room.

Officer's galley.

Again, notice how cramped everything is. The men who lived and worked on this ship for months at a time were very special men. The rectangular hole in the bulkhead on the left above the counter opens into the officers mess.

Officer's ward room. The big white thing is an AC, some later WWII submarines did have AC. Books I've read said when a diesel submarine first dived, the inside temp would go to almost 100°.

The control room. Note another large AC unit (big white box) and everywhere you look every square inch is covered with controls..

Crew's mess looking aft. A TV showing a video about the Cavalla, Betty is watching. And still more controls etc.

She is pointing out controls in the crew's mess area.

Another shot of Betty in the crew's mess.

Chart of submarine's class in the US Navy, the Cavalla is a Gato class sub.

Looking aft from the crew's mess at the crew's bunk room.

The 1600 HP diesel, in the forward engine room, originally there were two diesels in this room. One of the Cavalla's original 4 diesels and two of it's forward torpedo tubes were removed after WWII when the Cavalla was used as a cold war hunter killer submarine (fast attack). As far as I know the US currently has several classes of submarine, and two main types, smaller Hunter Killer (fast attack) and larger missile submarines (boomers). All US submarines are now nulcear powered.
At the beginning of WWII, diesel were not widely used, and hence, there wasn't a supply of refined diesel fuel. Each WWII fleet submarine, could carry 110,000 gallons of raw dirty bunker fuel which they could obtain from many sources. To make this work, the bunker fuel is pumped through a centrifugal purifying system and then stored in a day tank that has a capacity of 600 gallons. In turn, the day tank feeds all the engines BTW, 110,000 gallons of diesel fuel gave the sub a range of 11,000 nautical miles, it could stay on patol for about a month and go from Pearl Harbor to japan and back. A fleet submarine had 5 diesel engines, 4 16000 HP for propulsion and maintaining the batteries and one 440 HP for supplying electricity for operating the sub's equipment.

Looking aft from the forward engine room. The space on the right was originally a 4th diesel engine.

Betty walking between two more than 1,600 HP diesels in the after engine room. The Cavalla originally had four 1600hP diesels and a 500HP auxillary diesel, for a total of 6900HP. This was an awfully noisy (and hot) place when the diesels were running.