SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Soviet submarine D-2 (my pics, 56k warn!)

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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/p...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/p...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/p...PICT0006-3.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0004.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...PICT0018-5.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0019.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0020-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0025-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...PICT0035-4.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0036.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0042.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0044-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0045-1.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0046.jpg

To be continued...

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/p...PICT0071-1.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0072-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0074.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0075-3.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...PICT0081-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0083-1.jpg

Here's one of the electric motors:
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...PICT0090-2.jpg

Electric motor controls in the forward part of the compartment:
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0091.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0093-3.jpg

To be continued...

Diesel room in the next compartment!

http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...PICT0101-1.jpg

Serious Das Boot vibes from this one! :D
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...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/p...6/PICT0111.jpg

Looking aft from the compass room into the diesel room. (Das Boot vibes again!)
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...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/p...PICT0122-1.jpg

Kids playing with the observation scope.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/PICT0123.jpg

Me playing with the observation scope :lol:. All I could see was light.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...PICT0129-3.jpg

To be continued...

Looking forward from the control rooms into various quarters.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...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/p...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/p...PICT0142-2.jpg
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...6/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/p...6/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/p...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/p...6/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/p...6/PICT0161.jpg

Gas masks and escape gear.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0158-1.jpg

The cover of Tube 4
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0168-1.jpg

One of the bunks, sans mattress
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p...PICT0175-2.jpg

To be continued...

Very nice! I like! High-five! :D