View Full Version : Soviet submarine D-2 (my pics, 56k warn!)
Well, better late than never - I took these on my visit to St. Petersburg last year and somehow put off posting them until now. So, here's a solid tour of it for ya - sorry for my crappy camera, though!
Today D-2 is on display at the historic St. Petersburg Hafen, near the corner of Nalichnaya Street and Shkiperskiy Protok ("Skipper's Creek") on the Vasilievsky Island. Admission was a measly 50rub (~$2) when I went there, with a full 1-hour guided tour (!) conducted by a real retired diesel sub captain (!!). He was an excellent guide, sorry I didn't get any pictures of him. You could tell he really enjoyed the job, and kept relating stories from his own career during the tour. You could tell by the way he talked and moved about the sub that he was a true submariner through and through :yep:
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0011-4.jpg
Some background - D-2 "Narodnovolets" is possibly the oldest war veteran sub (that is, a sub that went on combat patrols, sunk enemy ships and returned home safely) on display today. She belongs to the D ("Dekabrist") class of submarines, which are the first very Soviet design, built in the later 1920s. All 4 subs, of which this one is the 2nd, were named after famous revolutionary movements - the class' lead ship was named after the December uprising in 1825, and "Narodnovolets" was named after the "People's Will" movement, responsible for the assasination of the Tzar in 1881.
D-2 originally served with the Northern Fleet, but at the start of WWII transfered to the Baltic. In the shallow and heavily-patrolled waters there - the survival rate of Soviet subs in '41-'43 was about the same as U-boats in the Atlantic in '43-'45 - she made several successful patrols and sunk 4 German freighters. While Soviet subs in the Baltic are often subject to controversy for their role in the death of many German civilians that evacuated by sea in '44-'45 - D-2 is not subject to this, as all her successes occured in the early part of the war when the scales were decidedly against the Soviets.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0017-1.jpg
And before I get into the sub interior pics - just a few of her neighbour at the waterfront nearby - a PT boat!
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0006-3.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0004.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0002-2.jpg
I lived the first 14 years of my life just a half hour's walk from these two ships, but somehow I never toured the D-2 before. On the other hand I used to play with other kids on that PT boat (noone seemed to mind for some reason, I guess it wasn't looked after...). Both of them are in really good shape now though!
To be continued...
Wow, thanks for posting those, some nice pics and some interesting background info too. :up:
:D Chock
Some tech data on the sub -
She's about 900t in displacement, so about the size of a Type IX, but has much shorter range. She did about 18kt on the surface and 9 underwater. Her rated diving depth was about 90m. Armement includes deck gun (105mm?), flak (40 or 37mm?), and 8 torpedo tubes (6 fore, 2 aft. The aft tubes could only be reloaded in port).
A lot of her equipment was operated completely manually, including flooding valves and dive planes.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0018-5.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0019.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0020-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0025-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0034-1.jpg
to be continued...
Some closeups of the hull, screw and rudder. Love that old metal texture :D
The sub was operated as a training vessel after WWII, I can't remember until when exactly but possibly even until the early 80's. She was converted as a museum ship during the 90s.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0035-4.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0036.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0042.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0044-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0045-1.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0046.jpg
To be continued...
Some paintings on display in the adjacent building...
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0057.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0058-1.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0061-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0062.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0114-1.jpg
The last one depicts her in the pre-war period, assisting as a radio relay ship.
To be continued...
HunterICX
11-10-07, 04:30 PM
Nice pics mate,
she really is a good looking :up:
Now onto the interior tour, starting in the aft compartment.
The aft compartment is an odd combination of living quarters, torpedo room and motor room. The electric motors are underneath the forward part of the compartment (for display purposes, the flooring over one of them was removed).
Interesting story behind the boxes on the floor at the back of this picture - D-2 was the first sub to test these, they were an early air recycling apparatus. In 1936, D-2 spent 30 days submerged on the Baltic sea floor in a successful test of those. Not very useful for WWII, but eventually they came in handy on nukes :P
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0071-1.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0072-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0074.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0075-3.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0079-2.jpg
To be continued...
Still in the aft compartment, with tubes 7 and 8. They could only be reloaded in port.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0081-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0083-1.jpg
Here's one of the electric motors:
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0088-3.jpg
Russian subs, including D-2, boasted some of the most sophisticated escape gear of that period. There was equipment for every member of the crew to reportedly escape from depths up to 100m.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0090-2.jpg
Electric motor controls in the forward part of the compartment:
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0091.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0093-3.jpg
To be continued...
Diesel room in the next compartment!
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0100-3.jpg
The diesel engineer's station. Next to it are tools and machines for making repairs at sea.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0101-1.jpg
Serious Das Boot vibes from this one! :D
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0103-3.jpg
Just forward, an odd little compartment, the compass room. Most space in it taken up by the huge gyrocompass.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0110-2.jpg
Looking forward from the compass room to the control room. Note that unlike many museum ships, D-2 has all the circular hatches preserved, and you have to duck like a submariner to go through them (not great for those of us with low mobility, but a thrill for a healthy sub fan ;))
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0111.jpg
Looking aft from the compass room into the diesel room. (Das Boot vibes again!)
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0112-3.jpg
To be continued...
I believe this is the air ventilator, in the compass room. Is that what it looks like?
Whether it is or not, the tourguide captain happily told us that the main ventilator - the noisiest machine on board according to him - still functions, and at the hit of a switch it indeed roared into action. :D
Likewise, all the alarms and speaking tubes on the boat are fully functional, as he also gladly demonstrated.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0116-1.jpg
Controls in the very cramped central compartment. It's tiny compared to the Zentrale on U-boats or the control room on US fleet subs.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0122-1.jpg
Kids playing with the observation scope.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0123.jpg
Me playing with the observation scope :lol:. All I could see was light.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0130-1.jpg
They let me climb up the conning tower ladder and peer in to take a picture. It was neat.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0129-3.jpg
To be continued...
Looking forward from the control rooms into various quarters.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0119-2.jpg
Me chilling in the officer's mess (and no, the rope was blocking the area with the table on which I put the camera! We were allowed to sit there.)
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0137-3.jpg
Batteries in the bilge. Most of the battery compartments, however, were cut away to make room for displays on the sub's history.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0142-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0144.jpg
Like this exhibit about the sub's very first combat patrol in 1942 when merely a day out of port, it got tangled in a German sub net during a storm. Germans had their nets connected to alarms to alert ships and aircraft if anything was caught, but due to the rough seas, the captain gambled that the alarms were turned off (otherwise they would be ringing all the time) and surfaced. The crew spent the next 3 nights in stormy seas trying to free the sub, mostly by cutting the steel net with axes :o
They succeeded and continued their patrol.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0148.jpg
The sub's most famous attack involved no sunk ships, but one very large ship damaged. The railroad ferry "Deutschland", converted to transport German troops, was spotted under escort in the baltic. The captain attacked her and scored a hit before being detected. While the huge ferry escaped intact, a very large number of German soldiers aboard were killed. German sources put the number of dead from this attack at 600, Russians at 700, the neutral Swedish (the attack took place closest to them) placed it at approximately 800 troops killed. Quite a somber reminder of just how destructive these weapons are.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0150-2.jpg
To be continued...
Great stuff. Thanks for showing is those photos :up:
Moving on to the very typical forward compartment...
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0171.jpg
6 torpedo tubes and their reserves, as well as most of the crew's quarters, were located here.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0161.jpg
Gas masks and escape gear.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0158-1.jpg
The cover of Tube 4
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0168-1.jpg
One of the bunks, sans mattress
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0175-2.jpg
To be continued...
And there's me trying to load a tube :p
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http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0181-1.jpg
And that was mostly it - but here's some more exterior shots for an encore...
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0184-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0190-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0189-1.jpg
Deck gun and conning tower.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/myspb2006/PICT0188-1.jpg
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THE END :D
TteFAboB
11-10-07, 05:24 PM
Very nice! I like! High-five! :D
bigboywooly
11-10-07, 05:27 PM
Thanx for that
Great pic
And shows how history should be displayed
:up:
Jimbuna
11-10-07, 06:14 PM
Some reeeeeeally cool shots there :rock: :up:
FANTASTIC shots tovarish!! Love the shots, very clear and interesting. That sub seems to be kept in very good shape as a museum boat. I must say, despite the differences, the similarities among the subs of the time are amazing. :up:
Oh and what kind of camera do you have?
CptSimFreak
11-10-07, 08:08 PM
good pics. Too bad I never visited that musum... :oops:
good pics. Too bad I never visited that musum... :oops:
Don't feel bad. I lived right next to it for 14 years, in fact I went fishing with some friends right under its bow, and never visited the inside until last year. Well worth it though.
FANTASTIC shots tovarish!! Love the shots, very clear and interesting. That sub seems to be kept in very good shape as a museum boat. I must say, despite the differences, the similarities among the subs of the time are amazing. :up:
Oh and what kind of camera do you have?
I use a really crappy no-name 3 megapixel camera :oops: I took thousands of pictures with it on my trip to Russia last year though.
And yea, I agree, there are a lot of parallels with this one and many subs of its period. Nowadays with SHIV being my main subsim fare, it really reminds me a lot of early fleet boats. In fact its performance is very similar to those. What's interesting, though, is some obvious differences between this, being a 20's boat, and later WWII-era boats. Not obvious ones so much as internals. There's a lot more buttons and other obviously-electronic devices you see aboard boats in SHIII and IV than this one!
And yea, I agree, there are a lot of parallels with this one and many subs of its period. Nowadays with SHIV being my main subsim fare, it really reminds me a lot of early fleet boats. In fact its performance is very similar to those. What's interesting, though, is some obvious differences between this, being a 20's boat, and later WWII-era boats. Not obvious ones so much as internals. There's a lot more buttons and other obviously-electronic devices you see aboard boats in SHIII and IV than this one!
Well, I guess no TDC then. :D Kind of like the "sugar boats" - did you find out how they aimed torpedoes? Were they steam, gyro angle or straight runners? What was the periscope like? Sorry for the questions, the Soviet Navy in WWII is one of the lesser known stories, even among those into the Eastern Front. I did find Admiral Kuznetsov's (head of the navy in WWII) memoir online which are instructive but still a lot to learn.
http://admiral.centro.ru/start_e.htm
AntEater
11-11-07, 03:24 PM
Wow, I had seen on the Net that D-2 was preserved, but I had no idea how well preserved she is.
Did anybody yet visit K-21 in Murmansk? Or S-56 in Vladivostok?
I wonder in what condition these two are.
Regarding the attack on the rail ferry Deutschland (2300 tons), it took place on 19th October 1942.
D-2 had allready sunk a 4000 ton freighter on this patrol and damaged another vessel (according to german sources) when it attacked the Ferry which was carrying around 1000 Soldiers on leave from the postings in Norway.
I wonder how almost half of those could have been killed by a hit which was not fatal, especially since I couldnt find anything about loss of life in my literature; which doesnt mean there was none, only that I couldnt find anything except a short notice in Rohwers "Chronology of war at sea". Maybe a fire, but the Ferry Deutschland continued operation throughout the war and was used for the east prussia evacuation in early 1945. Apparently the ship survived the war, but had to be given away as reparations, so that a new "Deutschland" ferry was build for the route in 1952.
I find it suprising that such a major troopship disaster wouldnt be mentioned in more detail.
Ok, the picture is somewhat idealistic, since there were hardly regular german warships to escort a ferry running Trelleborg-Gedser. If there was an escort, it was converted Trawlers, not Z-Class destroyers.
But rather I suppose they didnt expect a soviet sub attack that far west in the Baltic, almost in the Kattegatt.
Interestingly, D-2s Captain was named Lindberg.
Regarding soviet WW2 subs, I have Kolyshkins "In arctic depths", published in Chrushew's time around 1960, but that, as the name implies, covers arctic fleet subs only. I read it in german translation, published by the GDR.
Of course he claims the Germans still cover up the fact that the Tirpitz had to abandon the PQ-17 sortie due to heavy damage by K-21.
:D
But apart from occasional propaganda and vastly inflated sinking claims (apparently the arctic subs sank every german vessel in Norway twice) it is better than nothing as a source.
Seems soviet subs operated pretty similar to US ones in 1941. Submerged attacks only, mostly they dived away directly after firing torpedoes, so that the success of an attack was only judged by explosions.
Torpedoes could apparently be fired off angle, but there was nothing like a TDC. At least soviet torpedoes (only steam ones) were very reliable and there were no dud problems.
He describes some missions of D-4, and apparently the D-type submarines were a nightmare to operate, especially in arctic conditions. They took extremely long to dive, over a minute.
I find it suprising that such a major troopship disaster wouldnt be mentioned in more detail.
In former times it was for sure politically "unwelcome" and today it is "unsexy" to wite about all those stuff.
I feel that it is no problem to start any investigation about big and terrible war activities from WW I, but there are still deep emotions about any try to investigate grave human losses of WW II. There is still not a culture of true and documented history just because it is probaby to early..?
Sniper31
11-11-07, 06:47 PM
Very cool pics and narrative of your visit to D-2...very cool indeed.:up:
AntEater
11-11-07, 06:59 PM
I find it suprising that such a major troopship disaster wouldnt be mentioned in more detail.
In former times it was for sure politically "unwelcome" and today it is "unsexy" to wite about all those stuff.
I'm not talking wartime propaganda reports, but rather official recordings. Basically, normally if something happened at sea, it's in the Rohwer. Prof. Rohwer spent 60 years of his life researching 5 years of his life.
Especially successes of allied submarines against german merchant ships are his speciality so I would be rather suprised not to read something about it at his site.
Maybe I should mail his staff...
http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/angriffe/asaindex.htm
Rohwer dug out the Struma tragedy, for example.
Here's his entry on this case:
19.10.42 15571711 sj D-2 2T sw dt -Dfe -Dfe Konung Gustav V Deutschland 3150 2972 /= 55.11n 19.13e
10sm S/ Trelleb.
That means that Lindenberg shot two torpedoes shot two torpedoes at 1557 and 1711 at two seperate ferries, one swedish (Konung Gustav V) and one German (Deutschland), missing the Swede and damaging the German. The = means repairable damage while / means missed.
So the incident is recorded, only no mention of heavy loss of life, which in other chases is often reported by a footnote.
Btw, according to the database here, D-2 spent a full month on war patrol in the western Baltic, sank one ship for 4000 tons and damaged one (one additional ship was claimed but not confirmed in german records).
That's one hell of a patrol in such a rather obsolete boat.
D-2 made three further war patrols in 1944/45, always with Kapitan 2nd Rank Lindberg in command.
Btw, there's a fourth soviet WW2 submarine preserved, Lembit in Tallin.
Great pics there. Were they any Russian wiz wheels used for targeting available for you to see?
Yep, the last names can be a real irony. Considering I've got a serious German (and Finnish) heritage myself, I always found the war quite sad in that way myself.
Glad you actually dug up some of this info on Deutschland since I have not been able to find much myself. The incident was something that always kind of fascinated me; and yea, there really is not that much info on it.
I wouldn't call the D class totally obsolete, but it was certainly not terribly modern. The 4 boats performed quite well actually, D-2 was not even the top scorer among those. I believe D-1, which was lost in the war, did better. Considering the conditions they were in, that's pretty remarkable.
I've read some general stuff on Soviet subs, but I'll have to read a bit more of the specific literature. Would love to visit more Soviet boats - thanks for the tipoff on Lembit, there's a good chance I'll visit Estonia as well.
I'm kind of curious about the Sch (Schuka) class submarines that the Soviets had. On paper they look similar to Type VIIs, but I'm curious just how similar/different they would be...
PS - I haven't seen any whiz wheels. They may even have something like that, but I hadn't asked. I was going to take a second tour of the sub during my visit there and try to pester them for more technical stuff, but I ran out of time :(
nikimcbee
11-11-07, 08:57 PM
Those are nice photos! When I was in St Petersburg in 94, our tour bus drove by the sub on the way back to the train station to go back to Moscow. My wife and I were in the area, and I didn't know the sub was there!!!:damn: :damn: :damn: It killed me that we couldn't stop to see it. On the way out, I also saw a glimpse of a Kilo in the Neva, I wanted to take picture, but it was twilight and I didn't have a good camera, plus I was on a moving bus. :shifty: :damn:
TLAM Strike
11-15-07, 05:59 PM
Fantastic photos.
BTW I think some of that equipment is not WWII era but from the 70's since it looks just like the gear on the Jullett SSG toured by Timmyg00. I dout even the Russians kept that equpment in production and use for 30-40 years!
http://www.pbase.com/timmyg_00/k77_juliett
Fantastic photos.
BTW I think some of that equipment is not WWII era but from the 70's since it looks just like the gear on the Jullett SSG toured by Timmyg00. I dout even the Russians kept that equpment in production and use for 30-40 years!
http://www.pbase.com/timmyg_00/k77_juliett
I'm sure some of it may be new - however on the tour we were told that during the museum conversion, a lot of old equipment was re-fitted to the sub to be period-accurate. Certainly some parts are just "the closest thing", but a lot of it does look authentic. Nothing jumped out at me as non-period technology there, as I said - I was actually more struck by the absence of a lot of newer (compared to this) equipment I got used to seeing aboard WWII subs in SHIII and IV...
nikimcbee
04-13-08, 04:48 AM
Cool bump!
CCIP, I didn't recognize you w/o the fur hat and the kalashnikov:rotfl:
Ochen interesno CCIP. Spasibo.
I was amazed as to how similar the hull is to that of a VII
nikimcbee
04-15-08, 02:36 AM
Can you go up into the conning tower?
bookworm_020
04-15-08, 08:56 PM
Great photos and thanks for posting. I got some serious "Das Boot" daydreams from some of them. Something about the word "Alarm!" and runing like mad through hatches along the full lenght of the boat.:arrgh!:
:lol:
I don't think going up to the conning tower is part of the tour, but they didn't mind me climbing up the ladder and taking a peek (and the photo you see).
Thanks for the bump :D Would be nice if more people saw these pics. Even in the absense of the fur hats and all...
krashkart
10-11-10, 09:21 AM
BUMP
;)
Herr-Berbunch
10-11-10, 09:46 AM
Lovely pics. It always amazes me how people don't check out the local attractions where they live, but will blindly walk by them for years :nope:, and I'm as guilty as the next man, or frau.
:yeah:
Castout
10-11-10, 11:18 PM
Excellent pictures thanks for sharing them.
Hehe, good to see these pics are still up and being looked at. Great memories - wish I could go back and see it again!
Castout
10-12-10, 01:47 AM
Aye missed them then.
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