Subs photos (2)

Typ VII (U-995)

At first I thought that only complete idiots would put U-995 in Laboe, instead in some big city like Hamburg for all to see, but later changed my mind somewhat. Anyway, Laboe is definitely out of the way for any casual or business traveller coming to North Germany, but on the other hand – less visitors is perhaps good for the sub.

Assuming you are in Hamburg, first you have to get to Kiel – presumably by train. Regional expresses leave from Hamburg every hour, and trip to Kiel lasts slightly more than an hour. At Kiel Hauptbahnhof (railway station) take taxi to Laboe, or city bus line 100, direction Laboe Hafen. Beware, simple logic would be for bus to continue in the same direction as the train you just left, but it's not. Line 100, direction Laboe Hafen in fact goes in just the opposite direction from the train you used to get to Kiel. Bus makes an 180-degree turn soon after leaving railway station stop, and assumes nearly the same direction as the train you used to get to Kiel, but it can be confusing... Read the sings on the bus itself and on the bus stops. After seemingly endless drive, with 3 zillions of stops, thru countryside with scattered farms and cows, you'll think you inadvertedly passed over border into Danemark, or were teleported to Nebraska, or Argentina or something, and then you'll finally arrive at Laboe (last stop for the bus 100), small seaside village in Kiel fjord. 15-minute walk along the ugliest beach in the world and there you are – U-995 shining on the sand like a beached whale! Whow! Germans! Why didn't they put the damned thing in civilization, in some city or proper museum? Afraid to hurt Jewish feelings or what? Oh, see it's the New, Sensible Germans...

As I said at first I thought only a complete moron would put such historical gem in a location like this, but then a "greater scheme" appears. Laboe is also home to Deutsche Marinebund and large Ehrenmal (monument and memorial) to German sailors of both world wars. Whole monument – located right next to the U-995 – is very nice, impressive, quite monumental and rather huge, but still it's a quite bizarre location. As it seems, monument was built after WW1, when Laboe was... nothing. It is still nothing but the ugly Baltic seaside village (come to Dalmatia, or anywhere on the Mediterranean to see what seaside villages should look like), but the funny thing is they try to push some sort of tourism in this pitiful place. So you have elderly German tourists relaxing in some sorta-kinda-would-be-resort, few hundered yards from well preserved (and rather huge and menacing) WW2 relic – bizarre, to say the least, and unpleasant for both the tourists and visitors interested in history. Not to mention that lots of sea traffic from the nearby Kiel canal passes right in front of the beach.

Apparently, when Norwegian government offered U-995 for sale in the sixties for the token price of 1 DEM, German goverment wasn't interested (again, it's those New Sensible Germans) but in stepped the Deutsche Marinebund and took the sub over. Marinebund didn't have much choice but to put the sub near their offices and Ehrenmal in Laboe, so that at least explains why the sub is where it is. Pictures that follow are from the sub, apart from the last few, that are from the Ehrenmal. Anyway, if you come to Laboe don't miss the Ehrenmal – I was out of memory space on my memory card in digital camera (despite it being a 256 MB one) and out of time, so didn't make more photos of the Ehrenmal itself, but it's impressive.

Good news about having the sub in Laboe is – only those really interested come here. I was completely alone on the sub for like 10 minutes, before some scattered German visitors came. Completely alone on the last remaining WW2 German Typ VII sub!! Touching the knobs, walking around, "feeling" the place... Fantastic stuff. Most of the photos that follow with me on the photo are made by putting the camera on some appropriate place and using the "timed shutter" feature on the camera, without help from other humans.

Anyway, if any German is reading this and considers spending his holiday in "beautiful" Laboe may I humbly suggest Spain, Italy or Croatia? Much nicer places and seaside villages, though, granted, we Mediterraneans don't have Typ VII relics lying around :o)

OK, on to pictures... This time visit started from the stern entrance, not the bow as in case of Tango class sub.

That's the first sight of U-995 from Laboe beach strand. Sunny day, but it was actually very cold.

That's me in front of sub – don't I look just smashing?

Starboard screw and rudder.

Another outside shot. View towards the bridge standing right in front of the entrance to the sub (of course, I'm talking about entrance built for visitors, cut into the sub's hull). I imagine all this stuff on and around the bridge produced lots of drag when the sub was underwater, reducing maneuvrability and speed.

Aft tropedo tube, and my face in front of it. Don't I look just smashing?

Electric engine and batteries room.

Electric gauges in electro engine room.

Diesel engine room.

Me standing in front of diesel engine. Don't I look just smash... oh, OK... As you may see it's rather roomy – roomier than I expected (my height is 186 cms, 6 foot-something for you medieval non decimal types).

Port....

...and starboard engine telegraphs in diesel engine room. Photos are made looking aft. If you look very carefully you'll see electric engine room and aft torpedo tube in the background, because of the excellent quality of my photos :o)) I rule. And look smashing to boot.

This is toilet, but the photo is very bad because it's made thru the stained window – the toilet itself is closed and locked (too bad, and I needed to take a pee... and number two... and wash my hands afterwards).

Hmmm, can't remember the proper naval term but this is where they cooked meals for 50+ persons. Zesty.

Crew bunks – picture is too dark. Sue me. Note the passage (circular door) in the bulkhead, where you enter the control room.

Now we're in the control room. Photos that follow go roughly in clockwise direction, starting from port (left) forward part of the room. Now to tell you quite frankly I don't know what is this piece of hardware (mail me if you know). Looks like some sort of "depth below ship" kind of sonar but I may be dead wrong here. It is located in the forward left part of the control room.

This is the observation scope, that occupies the central place in the control room. Scope is looking forward, only just slightly to the left (port) side. German WW2 boats had two scopes – observation and general all-round scope you see here and attack scope in the small room in the sail. Note the doors in the bulkhead in the background, engine telegraphs, and rudder controls (helm), in the extreme lower right end of the picture. Rudder is controlled electrically using the brass knobs.

Engine telegraphs and voice tube for communicating with the engine room. These are above the helmsman (rudder-man) station and are also visible on the previous photo.

Planesmen station(s), with their controls and gauges. There are two planesmen, and two planes controls – left is for the forward planes, and right for the aft planes. This picture looks straight to the starboard (right) side of the sub. Planes, just like the rudder, are controlled electrically, using the brass knobs clearly visible on this picture. Large wheels you see were used only as backup, if electric power fails. You may ask yourself why the rudder control has only knobs, no backup wheel, like planes control? Backup rudder wheel is located in the aft torpedo room, near the rudder itself.

To the right of the planesmen station, there are mechanical valves for sub's ballast tanks.

This is fu*king brilliant, *excellent* photo. Not only because I'm on it and look smashing, but because you are able to get the feeling of the size and "arrangement" of the control room from it. Photo was made by putting the camera in some hole on the sub's side and using the timed shutter on the camera – full sized human would not be able to make this photo by holding the camera in his hands because of the size of the room. Note the aft planes control in the back, and ladder to the sail and bridge in the extreme right of the picture.

Depth gauge (Tiefenmesser) up close. This is the same depth gauge you see on previous picture.

Map desk in the control room, as viewed from behind the observation scope. This is what the captain would see if looking slightly back over his left shoulder (of course, if he's behind the scope pointing directly forward, not if he's in the toilet). In fact you can see the eye-piece of the scope in the extreme right part of the picture.

View up the ladders to the sail and bridge. Visitors are not allowed to go there (there's wire grid to stop them). What you see directly above is the small room with the attack scope. Captain would go there when conducting torpedo attacks. This room is very tiny, there's space only for one person, sitting behind the scope.

Listening (sonar) room. We left the control room and are moving towards the bow. Sonar room is to the right (starboard) side.

Sonar equipment up close.

Radio room, that is forward of the sonar room, also on the right (starboard) side.

Radio equipment up close.

This is captain's room. In fact it's not exactly a "room" – just a separate space on the corridor, opposite of the sonar and radio room, on the port (left) side of the sub. There were no doors, so I don't know whether the captain could have a bit of privacy or not. Head of the bed is towards the bow. Note the radio.

Captain's room, view towards the stern.

Captain's radio up close.

NCO and enlisted men beds. This room is between radio room and forward torpedo room.

Forward torpedo room, detail of the torpedo propulsion mechanism.

Forward torpedo room. Torpedo ready for loading into the tube.

Forward torpedo room. Stairs are leading to the exit for visitors, cut into the sub's hull. Also, the floor is not the real WW2 floor – it was significantly lower than this, this floor is built later to accomodate the visitors.

Torpedo tubes up close. Note the unusual way tubes are numbered (especially Rohr 4 – with Roman numeral IIII instead of more usual IV). Note also the mechanism for setting the torpedo parameters in the background.

Tubes are loaded and I'm going to sink something right after we take a photo. Do I look smashing or what? Black vertical lever below my left arm is "trigger" that lets compressed air into the tube and sends torpedo on its merry way.

Lamps showing which tubes are loaded and which are not, replicated in many sub sims (SH2 included). Note that Rohr 4 (Tube 4) is written as IV, while on the tube itself we have IIII. This apparatus is above the tube I, and is visible on other photos as well.

Mechanism for configuring the torpedos – I am sure there is some specialised German and/or English term for this but it escapes me right now. Note my hand "toying" with the settings. Don't do this at home, kids.

View to the bridge after visitors leave the sub, with boat's emblem, AA guns, all the antennas, scopes and stuff...

Forward starboard dive plane.

Sub's bow. Note how thin and sleek it is. Also note the torpedo tubes' doors. This is taken with me standing on the beach in front of the sub, holding the camera in my hand.

German C12 naval mine from WW1, photographed in front of the Ehrenmal museum. This is excellent mine copied by, among others, British and Italians in both WW1 and WW2, but is unrelated to U-995 or subs in general, strictly speaking.

Torpedorechner (TDC, or torpedo computer) taken from U-995 is displayed in the Ehrenmal (museum/memorial), not in the sub itself. Again, it's obvious where sub sim developers and their artists drew the inspiration for game interfaces.

That's it, I'm leaving Laboe with its main tourist attraction (save for the U-995) – World's Ugliest Beach. Sea traffic from Kiel canal passes in front of the village, and it's not as sunny as when my visit started (see the first photo).

There you go, hope you enjoyed the visit :o) These two pictorials contain exactly 100 photos.

After visiting the Soviet sub first, I was really amazed as to how the German sub seemed... hmm, well, "simple". I know there are 20-30 years of sub development between Typ VII and Soviet Tango class, and I know Tango is around 2,5 times larger (displacement-wise) than Typ VII, but it does not seem all that much "on paper". Still, the Soviet sub is at least 5 times more complicated in its internal design (I don't mean technology, I am talking about boat's "architecture").

In other words: imagine I am ordered to run from bow to stern on a sub. On German Typ VII I'd do it in 20-some seconds straight on one level, no ladders, with perhaps one bump on an elbow. On Soviet Tango class I'd need like 2-2,5 minutes to complete the run, I'd have to change levels (using ladders) 3-4 times, and I'd make two bumps in the head, three elbow and knee hits, and four injured ankles, accompanied with two dozen of curses, if you get what I mean? :o)

Bye, if you have any comments or questions let me know...

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