This compartment was the sleeping quarters for about 14 crewmen, who shared the space with 16 Mark 14 torpedoes - 6 in the tubes and 10 reloads. The torpedo tubes in the bow of the boat were always loaded and ready to fire.
Although the Mark 14 torpedo was an excellent torpedo at the end of the war, it was a fiasco at the beginning. At the start of the war the Mark 14 torpedo had 3 major flaws that made it difficult to isolate the problems that were leading to little damage being done to the Japanese. The Mark 14 torpedo ran about 15 feet deeper than it was set. It also had a flaw in the contact exploder that caused it to not blow up even though it had hit the target. Finally, there was a flaw in the design of the top secret magnetic exploder that was supposed to blow up under a ship and break its back. After 18 months of work these problems were finally corrected.
