Inside for a submarine, the absolute maximum of personal comfort. There were no analogues and never will be. Of course, for the majority, comfort is at the level of a compartment car, for the authorities - NE, but in other projects they generally sleep on torpedoes and nothing. There is so much space inside that, in addition to official sleeping places, one could easily find about twenty unofficial ones on each side, and not visible to the authorities.

1. Photo to estimate the size of the underwater giant. I am at the bow of the boat.

Above in the photo is the hatch through which they get inside the submarine. But I went further and made a video of how I ended up inside the underwater giant!

4. Slot machines in the recreation and relaxation area of ​​the submarine.

Service and technical premises cannot be posted on the Internet, so I photographed only recreation rooms.

5. Zone of rest and relaxation consisting of a swimming pool, sauna, solarium, slot machines and a sports hall.

Inside the boat there is a lounge for relaxation, a gym, a swimming pool 4 × 2 meters and a depth of 2 meters, which is filled with fresh and outboard water that can be heated, a solarium, a sauna sheathed with oak boards, a “living corner”. The rank and file is housed in small cockpits, the command staff - in two- and four-bed cabins with air conditioning, wash basins and TVs. There are two wardrooms: the first is for officers, the second is for midshipmen and sailors. Sailors call the submarines of this project the floating Hilton.

6. Pool.

9. Sports hall.

Project 941 haters often refer to them as "water carriers". It is nonsense. In skillful hands, the boat was an almost perfect weapon, capable of demolishing all major US cities with one salvo.

10. Zone of rest and relaxation.

11. Recreation and relaxation area.

Not far from the German city of Kiel, in the small village of Labe, there is a unique museum. This museum is unique in that it is a German submarine of the Second World War type VII, which has remained in the world in a single copy.

Photo 1. U 995 - German submarine museum

This settlement was chosen for the installation of the museum for a reason - the fact is that in Laboe there is a naval memorial, which at first was dedicated to the dead German sailors on the battlefields of the First World War, then began to be considered a memorial dedicated to all German sailors who died during the First and Second World Wars, and as a result, the German Maritime Union reclassified it as a monument to all the dead sailors of all nations and is a call for peace at sea.

Photo 2. Naval Memorial

History U 995

Let's go back to the submarine.

Photo 3. Entrance to the submarine

History reference:
At the end of the 42nd year, the production of a new type VII submarine began at the Hamburg shipyard, which was launched in the middle of the 43rd year.
The new submarine was based in Kiel, not far from Laboe, where the crew was trained, and then went to the naval base in Trondheim, Norway, where she began to serve from the summer-autumn of 1944. During the remaining time of the war, U 995 made 9 sorties, the main purpose of which was the Allied convoys. At the end of the war, the submarine was out of order, which was the reason that the Allied forces did not destroy it during Operation Deadlight. After the end of the war, she came under the jurisdiction of Norway, was repaired and served for about 10 more years, and then given away for free to the German authorities, who towed her to Kiel and carried out repairs to turn her into a museum. In the early 70s, the grand opening of the museum took place, where the notorious Admiral Dönitz was the first of the visitors. To date, the submarine is visited annually by tens of thousands of people.

This information was presented in an information booklet in English, which can be taken when buying a ticket.

Inside the submarine

We go inside and see the aft torpedo room and the electric motor control room.

Photo 4. Aft torpedo room

Electric motors were used during the lift. Thanks to them, the submarine continued to move without immersion in water, but this had a noticeable effect on speed.

Photo 5. Electric motor control room

In the room with electric motors, you can see the instruments and the control unit with the communication point, where the orders of the senior officers from the bridge were sent.

Electric motor control room

The diesel engine room is the heart of the submarine. A diesel engine is located here, followed by a mechanical engineer (usually 1-2 people). These sailors enjoyed greater privileges and were given more time to rest.

Submarine Heart

Are you still complaining about the size of your own kitchen? Then sympathize with the local "chef", who was supposed to cook dinner for a team of 40-50 people on a low-powered two-burner electric stove. It is very difficult to turn around in this space. Plus, the lighting is poor. The pan is fastened with a chain with a lock - apparently there were precedents to take it out.

Photo 6. Lunch from the chef

Photo 7

The number of beds was always less than the number of crew, and often two people shared one bed. This did not cause any inconvenience due to the fact that there was a shift method, according to which it turned out that one of the sailors was on duty, and the second rested, slept, had lunch and was engaged in other personal matters.

Photo 8. Regiment of an ordinary soldier

The largest room on the submarine is the control center and cabin.

Photo 9. Hatch to the submarine control center

Orders were given from here, the route was laid and active life was in full swing. In addition to following orders from above, each officer was aware that he must save the lives of his team. Navigation charts, a periscope, a radio room and other devices for monitoring the movement of the submarine are located here.

Immediately after the control center there is a radio room and a reception point, they are located parallel to the sleeping quarters of the officers of the submarine - thus it turns out that even during their rest they should be the first to receive information about the situation in the area, or orders from above, plus interceptions of allied radio signals. Interception is a responsible task, which, as a rule, was performed by people with excellent hearing and good reactions in order to catch the signal of the enemy as early as possible. Largely due to the decoding of the Enigma code by the Allied forces, German superiority in the Atlantic was lost.

Radio room - in addition to communication with the coast and other submarines, much attention was paid to intercepting enemy signals

The officers were the only ones with their own regiment, plus some personal space. Personal space was expressed in a locker and turnkey compartments where they could store dress uniforms, personal belongings, letters from home.

Officers' personal space

He seems to have told about everything, but one more question remains the main thing - what about a latrine? There is a latrine, of course. The officer staff has a personal one - with a washbasin, the rest of the crew has a common one. I provide a photo of the officer's amenities, it's a pity that through the glass.

Photo 10

The last room, and perhaps the most combat part of the submarine, is the torpedo room.

Photo 11. Torpedo room

One of the most responsible tasks was for the maintenance personnel of the torpedo room. Basically, the submarine had 5 torpedoes - 4 were loaded into the torpedo bays, and one was for reloading.

torpedo room

Torpedoes for the U 995 weighed about 300 kg, had an electric motor and, when fired, developed a speed of about 30 km per hour. Reloading the torpedo room was, perhaps, the most important work of the rank and file.

The torpedo room was the last one in the U 995 museum. At the exit you can find an automatic machine, as in many places in Europe, which can turn your 5 cent coin into a medallion with the image of a landmark for 1 euro. Not being a particular fan of this entourage, I nevertheless made a medallion for myself.

At the exit of the museum

Afterword

The trip to the museum is over. Visiting such places has always been a priority for me, because I have always been interested in how life was carried out during one of the largest and bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century. The U 995 submarine museum is not the largest, but it is unique. It is unique in that here you can fully immerse yourself in the atmosphere that reigns at a depth of hundreds of meters under water - when you cannot know for sure whether you will surface tomorrow or remain at the bottom of the sea depths: without the exact coordinates of the place of your death and without the grave that could visit relatives.

How to get there:

From the city of Kiel, take bus number 100 to Laboe - we get off at the harbor stop and walk along the coast to the monument.
The cost of visiting the museum is 4.5 Euro.

If you happen to travel to the north of Germany, be sure to visit these places and feel the spirit of history.

Goodbye, Labe!

> Inside a nuclear submarine.

Do you want to get inside the world's largest nuclear submarine, which can be entered by a simple, non-military person? Then welcome to the photo tour of the Cité de la Mer museum in Cherbourg, France.

Cherbourg is a city on the English Channel in the north of the Cotentin peninsula (Normandy). The city is known to many by the phrase "Cherbourg umbrellas", the movie of the same name was released in 1964. In the cruise terminal of the city there is a museum "Cite de la mer" - "City of the Sea", after walking around the city a little, we headed there.

The museum consists of two large buildings and one important exhibit on the street. Now we are in the first hall, where there is a souvenir shop, a bookstore, a bathyscaphe, entrance ticket offices.

Let's go outside to the courtyard - here is another bathyscaphe and the world's largest nuclear submarine, which an ordinary person can get into.

Here is the boat, it is called Redoutable, translated from French - formidable. She was laid down in November 1964, was commissioned in March 1967, and entered service with the French Navy in December 1971.

In order to get inside the boat, you need to stand in a huge queue, but we were lucky, we were almost alone inside the boat, so I managed to photograph the empty halls and corridors.

Before entering, you take a special player, which is very common in European museums. It has a numeric keypad, you put on headphones and wander around the halls, at the entrance to the hall there is a number that you need to dial on the keyboard. After dialing the number with headphones, the automatic audio guide tells you interesting stories. This is, for example, the reactor turbine control room.

This console displays various temperature parameters in the reactor circuit. Apparently, after the situation with Japan, everyone already knows that a nuclear reactor is a boiler through which water is passed, which boils and pressurized steam turns turbines that already generate the energy necessary for everything on a boat or at a power plant in order to send it to consumers .

Reducer - a device that reduces pressure. How exactly it works on a nuclear submarine, I don’t know, but if you know, don’t tell me anyway, since this is a military secret. 🙂

This is the main “control panel” for the boat, we call it BCH-[number] (BCH - warhead), I didn’t notice such terminology with them, they just indicate the numbers of the compartments. By the way, all the equipment on the boat was preserved exactly in the form in which it was at the end of operation. The only exception is the completely dismantled compartment with a nuclear reactor.

This is water desalination equipment, next to it is equipment for filling and blowing ballast tanks, due to which the submarine floats or sinks.

Pay attention to the length of the living compartment corridor. The life of a submariner, of course, is not so hot. Here, of course, it is very crowded, the atmosphere presses. Even in the cabins of the “management” you can’t really turn around, it’s not for you aircraft carrier or even more so a cruise ship.

This is part of the lounge for the rest of the fighters. Interestingly, the camera, which hangs on the top right, hung there during the operation of the boat, or appeared there after turning it into a museum. Regarding the salon and recreation, I heard that even in our submarine fleet they give, depending on the rank, one or another amount of wine. I wonder how much it is drunk on a boat by the French, known for their addiction to wine from lunchtime?

This is a galley on a submarine. By the way, the total weight of the boat is 8 thousand tons. Its length is 128 m, and its diameter is 10 m. The numerical strength is 135 people. Speed ​​- 20 knots, which was developed by an engine with a capacity of 16 thousand horsepower.

And this is a shop for the preparation and storage of products. I wonder where they keep the wine? If I were a French engineer, I would make a tank for wine, one cubic meter for each day of the transition. Apparently, that's why they decided to make it atomic in order to make room for tanks with wine, instead of tanks with diesel fuel (just kidding).

The boat was armed with M1 ballistic missiles with a range of up to 2,000 km. In 1974, they were replaced by new M2 missiles, and then by M20 - each missile could deliver a nuclear warhead with a capacity of 1 Megaton to a distance of up to 3 thousand km. The boat was taken out of service in December 1991, and put on the stocks in the museum shortly before its opening in 2002.

We walked inside the boat for more than an hour, then through the bow compartment we went back to the exhibition complex. On the right, young people look at the largest aquarium in Europe. Some time after this trip, I visited the largest aquarium in the world located in Atlanta, USA.

The exhibition hall contains various exhibits about the conquest of the depths of the sea.

A reflection of a photographer can be seen in a showcase with devices for divers. 🙂

Transparent fish. I don't know the name.

The largest full-length aquarium in Europe. The height of the aquarium is 10 m.

Nearby there is a swimming pool with slopes. If you climb the stairs and climb into the bathyscaphe (in the background), you can look at the stingrays from under the water. Only works if you are a child. 🙂

On the way back, we will look at the courtyard from another point. In the distance you can see the marina for sailing yachts and catamarans.

At the exit of the museum, in the parking lot, a car with Indian numbers was found. It is not entirely clear how she got here, to the westernmost part of France on the English Channel.

With this post, I open a series about our small tour of Europe in August, when we visited France, Belgium and Switzerland. In the next post, I will talk about the interesting, important and widely visited Mont Saint-Michel.

2011 © Text and photographs Vladimir Filippov.

UPD: questions and answers.

Q: enemies and with these boats they wanted to sink the fleet of the USSR?
A: What does this have to do with it? This is a museum boat. Where do we have these? So that you can go with your child, see, turn the valves, listen to the guide in 10 languages ​​of the world, shoot inside calmly and for free, so that everything is clean, in place, you don’t have to go to the other end of the country for this and you also have your own boat Was the site official? Tell me, I don’t know this, if there is, I’ll definitely go on the weekend and make a report.

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Even when we sailed to Suomenlinna, we spotted a submarine standing in the docks. In the brochure that we were given at the box office, I read that this is a museum and you can easily get inside. And we did get inside.

But first we went to the dry docks. Two women were sitting there and talking. If I'm not mistaken, this is a small cafe.

Cozy, what

But the docks themselves

By the way, this is one of the oldest and most active dry docks in the world, which today is used to service wooden ships.

This is how the dock looks from a different angle

She's right behind that wall

Here it is - the Vesikko submarine (Vesikko - mink (from which fur coats are made)). Finnish submarine with a displacement of 254 tons. Designed in the 1930s. She was part of the Finnish Navy during World War II.

Since I am absolutely not inflated what is where in this boat, I will continue to talk about the boat itself. And the photos will be slightly unrelated.

The submarine "Vesikko" was designed by the Dutch company "Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw » .

She was built in Finland at the Crichton-Vulcan shipyard in Turku in 1933. She was the prototype (named CV-707) of the German Type II submarines. Between 1933 and 1934, German sailors tested the CV-707 submarine in the Turku Archipelago. In 1936. After testing, the CV-707 submarine was purchased by the Finnish Navy and received the name Vesikko.

Submarine "Vesikko" took part in the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940) as part of the Finnish Navy. Like other boats, she patrolled the Gulf of Finland, fighting against the Soviet Baltic Fleet.

We were not allowed to climb to the second floor.

On December 1 and 19, 1939, the boat made attempts to attack the cruiser Kirov and the battleship Marat, which were damaged by Finnish coastal batteries.

How can one understand something in these countless faucets?

During the Second World War, the Vesikko submarine continued to patrol the Baltic. But, due to the large number of mines laid by the German and Finnish Navy in the western part of the Gulf of Finland, the ships of the Baltic Fleet were practically locked in their ports, and the boat had almost no opportunity to attack enemy ships. Nevertheless, on July 3, 1941, she launched a torpedo attack on the Soviet merchant ship Vyborg with a displacement of 3,500 tons. In the last years of the war, the Vesikko submarine was used mainly as part of escorts..

Raise the periscope!

During the Second World War, the Vesikko submarine continued to patrol the Baltic. But, due to the large number of mines laid by the German and Finnish Navy in the western part of the Gulf of Finland, the ships of the Baltic Fleet were practically locked in their ports, and the boat had almost no opportunity to attack enemy ships. Nevertheless, on July 3, 1941, she launched a torpedo attack on the Soviet merchant ship Vyborg with a displacement of 3,500 tons. In the last years of the war, the Vesikko submarine was used mainly as part of escorts.

According to the Paris Peace Treaty between the USSR and Finland in 1947, Finland could not have its own submarines. In this regard, the Vesikko submarine remained abandoned in Suomenlinna. But in the end, the Finnish government decided to sell it to anyone who wanted to buy it. Then the former crew members of the submarine decided to restore and save her..

Engine room

Does anyone know what this device is called?

What kind of computers are there? Levers and faucets!

But this is the "bedroom" for the crew.

As you can see, there are not very many places. I can't imagine how you can live for months in such close quarters.

It seemed to Oleg Kuleshov not enough to walk around the heavy nuclear missile cruiser TK-208 "Dmitry Donskoy". Together with a camera, he climbed into the largest submarine in the world.

To get inside the cruiser, you need to enter through a bulge in the wheelhouse, which is called the "tide". After going up several ladders, the land visitor finds himself under the commander's bridge at the upper wheelhouse hatch.


The upper hatchway leads directly to the main command post (GKP), which is also the central post. The GKP meets with a variety of monitors, control panels for rudders, general ship systems, missile and radio-technical weapons. This is the brain of the ship. You can't take pictures here. If you go further along the corridor, you can get into the wardroom.


When a submarine is at sea, officers feed here. When the boat is at the pier, various meetings are held in the wardroom, as well as watching films.


Since the autumn of 2007, an exposition dedicated to the Battle of Kulikovo has been located in the wardroom of TK-208. It appeared thanks to the patronage of the nuclear submarine "Dmitry Donskoy" of the State Museum-Reserve "Kulikovo field" in the Tula region.


The Battle of Kulikovo took place in September 1380. Despite the fact that exactly a century remained before the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, it was the battle that forced Mamai's troops to turn back and marked the beginning of the liberation of Russia.


According to legend, Sergius of Radonezh blessed the Russian prince Dimitri Ivanovich, who later received the nickname Donskoy, for the battle that took place between the Don and Nepryadva rivers.


The exposition presents the arrowheads of Russian soldiers of the XIV century, as well as a quiver with arrows.


The mace from the exposition is not just an exhibit, but an important instrument with the help of which the ceremony of initiation into submariners is carried out. "Dmitry Donskoy" is the only submarine where the mace replaces the traditional sledgehammer in the rite.


The rite of passage is held by everyone who first dived under water, regardless of position and rank. "Pervoraznik" need to drink a ceiling lamp (0.3-0.5 l) of outboard sea water. After that, he must kiss the mace (on ordinary submarines, it is replaced by a swinging sledgehammer). The most important thing is not to get hit in the teeth (for this you need to kiss the mace / sledgehammer at the end). The performing virtuoso receives a submariner's certificate and - depending on the mood of the crew - a present in the form of a roach, although there are also commemorative seals on both halves of the soft spot.


A submariner who served at Severstal, similar to Dmitry Donskoy, recalls that the ceremonies were always fun: “... fearless turbinists kissed a sledgehammer smeared with fatter grease. They arranged concerts and theatrical performances at sea - at the North Pole, Neptune with a mermaid and devils walked around the boat and handed out certificates of conquering the pole to everyone. On April 5, 2000, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Russia Vladimir Putin, who was on board the K-18 Karelia nuclear submarine, was offered a glass of sea water from a depth of 50 m. ate dry. They did not dare to offer a sledgehammer.

For the physical recreation of the crew inside the boat there is a salon, a gym, a solarium, a sauna sheathed with oak boards, a 4 × 2 pool and a depth of 2 meters, which can be filled with both fresh and outboard water with the possibility of heating.


Submariners go to the sauna all the time, but more often at the base. At sea, the regime of service is always tense - not up to saunas.


In the pool, when the boat is at sea, the water is outboard, but in the base it is only fresh.


There are three rooms in the commander's cabin. The first is the meeting room.


The second is the commander's cabin.


In the cabin of Oleg Tsybin hangs the St. Andrew's flag, under which then the captain of the second rank made the first trip to the sea as a commander.


The third room in the captain's cabin is the cabin of the flagship (or the senior on board).


Surprisingly, the Dmitry Donskoy nuclear submarine has its own photo laboratory.


Opposite the photo lab hangs the 4th issue of the Periscope photo newspaper. It is made by a one-person editorial board.