Allied Machine Donates Boring Tools to USS Pampanito Restoration
Appears in Print as:'Company Donates Boring Tools to WW II Submarine Restoration'
Wohlhaupter tooling helps preserve World War II submarine.
Edited byAngela Osborne
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After receiving a Wohlhaupter boring head, the museum machine shop contacted Allied Machine and Engineering to see if boring bars and inserts could be donated to help further the U.S.S. Pampanito preservation. Photo Credit: San Francisco Maritime National Park Association
Allied Machine and Engineeringrecently donated various boring bars and inserts to be used with a 1954 Wohlhaupter boring head on theU.S.S. Pampanito restoration project. The Pampanito is a World War II submarine located in San Francisco which opened to the public in 1982. Since then, it has been the goal of the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association to return the submarine to the condition it was in when it left San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1945.
In order to more efficiently repair and restore the submarine, an on-site machine shop was developed. Volunteer machinists come to the shop, which is tooled up for manual work, and repair or replicate small quantities of parts. Larger quantities of parts are often machined in CNC shops. After receiving a Wohlhaupter boring head, the museum machine shop contacted Allied Machine to see if boring bars and inserts could be donated to help further the vessel preservation.
The donated tools will be most immediately used toboreout parts for waterproof lamp housings that are used on the submarine. These waterproof lamp housings were part of large waterproof binoculars that stayed out of the water when the submarine dove down to 300 feet. The lights enabled the crew to see the reticules or the lines that told them how wide or tall an object was or let them make calculations. Although these were missing on Pampanito, drawings were found, which makes it possible to create replicas. In the future, the donated Wohlhaupter boring tools will also be used to machine internal grooves in bronze bearings that are used on the submarine.
Ongoing restoration projects in the machine shop include repairing parts that are broken and need touched up to maintain the historic fabric; developing replica parts for pieces that are missing from the submarine but are needed to better understand the functions of the vessel; and creating replica parts to replace original pieces from the submarine that break over time but are needed for safety.
