Good Submarine Museums

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by ShadowOps

I have heard alot of good things about the U-505 exhibit in Chicago. I am tempted by that one because it is the only (to my knowledge) U-Boat in America, but from what I hear its a rather short guided tour, I prefer to go at it at my own pace, but then again if it was up to me I would spend all day in there!

The museum/exhibits are quite spartan like there. You would be hard pressed to occupy yourself for a whole day there, or the staff would start asking you to leave as they would start seeing you as a nuisance and clogging up the exhibit. It's really very simple, the u-boat itself is sitting on the dock and you walk through the entire length of the interior compartment.

From the nature itself of the boat being small it can be difficult at times to stay in one place for a prolonged period if you want to carefully inspect/photograph something. You'll get the full u-boat experience of constantly having to move/contort yourself so others can pass through. While that's cool in its own way as that's how life was like, it can start to become a major irritation getting asked to move aside every 5 minutes (or less) as visitors go through while you try to photograph something or make a close inspection of a certain section.

Don't remember when you said you might be going, if its anytime in the next 3 months you won't have that problem at all. Since the musuem is right on the docks of the lake it will be severly cold (Chicago is always known to be cold, but anyplace close to or adjacent to the lake is significantly colder) in which case as long as it isn't closed (in the case of a major snowstorm or monsoon rainfall) you'll probably have full roam of the boat. Went there myself while I was there once at the beginning of April and it was very cold there (Scottland in winter type cold if you've ever been there) and was one of maybe half a dozen people that went through it while we were there that day.

Plus there's a lot of cool stuff to do in Chicago anyways, the pizza there among many other things is legendary and a lot of cool places to see.

If by chance your retired Navy/Marines there are some other museums on North Island and Point Loma here in San Diego, but you need to have access to the base in order to see them - i.e. retired/reserve/active duty. They are open to the public in respect to anyone that has access to the base can see them, but the general public is not allowed to go see them (only way around it is to go with something that is retired and be "their brother for the day" which would get you inside)