The Russian submarine in Providence
Aug. 29th, 2003 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinYesterday, Kibo and I went to Providence, RI and visited ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jwgh and Kerri Hicks. The touristic high point (as opposed to the meeting-nice-people high point) was our visit to Juliett 484 aka K-77, a Soviet submarine that you can crawl through. This is extremely cool if you like looking at Cold War military hardware, or just marveling at the misery of the sixty-odd guys who had to live in there. It was, of course, unbelievably cramped inside, and must have also been terribly hot, noisy, and stinky while under way. K-77 was diesel-electric-powered. During the tour you go through the chamber containing the gigantic diesel engines, which heated up to something like 160 F when they were in operation, so the usual method of reading the gauges was through a glass peephole in the bulkhead. At one time the sub had nuclear missiles in it, quite possibly aimed at me, though in the later part of its career it just followed American warships around.
Kibo had been there before, and apparently got something of a guided tour the first time. This time, we were left to our own devices after watching a five-minute safety video, so Kibo did all the pointing and describing (there are also signs plastered everywhere). One thing we wondered about was the missile firing station, with a peculiar little CRT and a sort of pistol-grip thingy locked in the panel with a cable coming out of it. Kibo thought the pistol might be some sort of light-pen targeting device; I figured that these things typically have their target coordinates set numerically, and that only the trigger on the pistol and the mechanism for enabling it would be important. Then again, the sub carried cruise missiles rather than ballistic ones. I'd like to know more about precisely how that worked.
After its military career was over, this submarine spent a while in Helsinki with a compartment on its lower deck converted to a restaurant. Later it was unsuccessfully hawked on eBay, then used to film the movie K-19: The Widowmaker, which I have not seen (they fudged a little: K-19 was a different class of submarine, with a nuclear reactor). There's still a life ring on the upper deck with "K-19" stenciled on it, and a few modifications inside that were made by the movie crew.
Among items found inside the submarine was a Russian translation of an Anne McCaffrey Pern novel.
jwgh and Kerri Hicks. The touristic high point (as opposed to the meeting-nice-people high point) was our visit to Juliett 484 aka K-77, a Soviet submarine that you can crawl through. This is extremely cool if you like looking at Cold War military hardware, or just marveling at the misery of the sixty-odd guys who had to live in there. It was, of course, unbelievably cramped inside, and must have also been terribly hot, noisy, and stinky while under way. K-77 was diesel-electric-powered. During the tour you go through the chamber containing the gigantic diesel engines, which heated up to something like 160 F when they were in operation, so the usual method of reading the gauges was through a glass peephole in the bulkhead. At one time the sub had nuclear missiles in it, quite possibly aimed at me, though in the later part of its career it just followed American warships around.Kibo had been there before, and apparently got something of a guided tour the first time. This time, we were left to our own devices after watching a five-minute safety video, so Kibo did all the pointing and describing (there are also signs plastered everywhere). One thing we wondered about was the missile firing station, with a peculiar little CRT and a sort of pistol-grip thingy locked in the panel with a cable coming out of it. Kibo thought the pistol might be some sort of light-pen targeting device; I figured that these things typically have their target coordinates set numerically, and that only the trigger on the pistol and the mechanism for enabling it would be important. Then again, the sub carried cruise missiles rather than ballistic ones. I'd like to know more about precisely how that worked.
After its military career was over, this submarine spent a while in Helsinki with a compartment on its lower deck converted to a restaurant. Later it was unsuccessfully hawked on eBay, then used to film the movie K-19: The Widowmaker, which I have not seen (they fudged a little: K-19 was a different class of submarine, with a nuclear reactor). There's still a life ring on the upper deck with "K-19" stenciled on it, and a few modifications inside that were made by the movie crew.
Among items found inside the submarine was a Russian translation of an Anne McCaffrey Pern novel.