Years ago I got to spend a night on the USS Pampanito (https://maritime.org/uss-pampanito/) as a parent chaperone for a gaggle of elementary school kids.
Being a USN Balao Class fleet sub, it has probably twice the interior volume of a Type VII U-Boat. But after just a little bit of time you become aware of how oppressively small, and full, the space is. And it smells.
Even when the diesel engines aren't fired up for years at a time, it smells of diesel from one end to the other. And even when it is left with hatches open for 16 hours a day, and is only traversed by reasonably well bathed tourists, it smells of people. And even when it is tied up dockside in a 100% sheltered location (within a breakwater, in a bay, with no direct line of site to the ocean) it moves, all the time, and there are no windows of any sort to orient yourself visually to the movement. Put it all together, and seasickness is a real concern. And there aren't many bathrooms (in fact, only one of two "heads" was in use at that time). And that all adds to the smell as well.
I was very impressed by the experience. And I feel a real sense of wonder at what it must have taken to spend months in one of those boats out on the open ocean, never mind spending those months among fleets of other boats that want to sink you. And then to consider that most of the guys who did that were barely out of high school, putting all their confidence in the "old man", who was himself probably 27 or 28 years old …
Wow.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
's first experience with 1:4800 scale naval models.
