Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Really cool! I guess this installation is now a museum as there are displays of uniforms and armaments.
?
Балаклава = Balaklava.
Sevastopol, Ukraine
babelfish does a fair job of translation.
http://world.altavista.com/
Entrance photo has what looks like range markers [white signs on stakes] descending in size up the hill]. Guides to conning the returning sub on the surface or by periscope to the entrance? When the nav aids line up from far away, you’d be on the right heading. Doesn’t look like much room to maneuver other than a straight shot in.
Shipmates,
I tell you what, though, it would be easy enough to find the entrance and approaches by tracking the radiation plumes, at least for the HEN class boats. Hotel, Echo and November were all early designs and used a single-loop reactor system. If that last phrase “single loop reactor” doesn’t give you the willies nothing will.
I remember well seeing images of an Echo II that suffered a reactor/steam plant casualty and stretchers and body bags lining the deck. Men in radiation suits and gas masks walking past them and taking notes and readings.
I would love, before I pass on, to be able to go to Russia and swap sea stories with some of the sailors I flew against back in the day. I have always had the greatest respect for the Soviet Submariners, for the risks they took in those boats they crewed. That’s not a hit against our guys, nossir, not at all… just recognizing a worthy adversary.
Respects,
AW1 Tim
The honored foe, absolutely.
When the Kursk was lost, the father of the one of the crew, himself a retired submariner, said his son had told him not to worry:
“Its only five days, Dad”
I grieved for that man, and his boy.
All their lost tomorrows, taken by the sea.
As the layman here, for the moment, all I can do is resort to being dumbstruck and childish and say – wow, cool. Especially considering the time it was built.
CptJ: I thought those same things when the Kursk was lost. All that promise, all those sons.
Broken link? No pics
Scroll to the top of the page where the pix will be found.
Reminds me of the base in Das Boot. Very impressive.
I’ve amended the link – that should work better.
2 questions:
A) do we (the US) have any cool bases like that for our subs?
B) given that this base was build decades ago, could our modern bunker busting bombs do a number on it?
Thanks
Tomas
Tomas,
I don’t know of any bases like that in the US, and based on the blast hatches and tunnels, it seems to me that baby was made to withstand some of your smaller nukes. Might take a while to tunnel back out again, and might not like what you found when you got back to light, but it’s a regular Cheyenne Mountain on the sea.
It’s a small old diesel submarine base, now a museum, since Ukraine has only one sub. Even in the Soviet times Black Sea Fleet, being an auxiliary one, was rather small and had no nuclear-powered subs. These diesel submarines nevertheless carried cruise missiles and torpedoes with nuclear warheads, with US 6th Fleet and its Mediterranean bases as their main adversaries.
So, yes, being a part of a doomsday machine, this base was designed to withstand nuclear attack. And its hatches and tunnels are two-way, they also had to contain a possible nuclear disaster inside the base.
There are two really huge submarine bases in Russia that can probably withstand any imaginable attack. Hundreds of megatons wouldn’t scratch them. One is in the Northern Fleet, another is in the Pacific. In the early 90s, with USA and Russia discussing nuclear disarmament, the US government officialy declared that the USA had no such huge and well-defended submarine bases and had no intentions to build them, so Russia should not build any more of such, too (not that we wanted to, they were really expensive). If I’m not mistaken, it went into the treaty.
Those huge bases as well as some of the smaller ones are still operational, so no pictures.
Some comments on babelfish translation:
- were constructed first servicemen, then were joined Moscow, Tbiliskiye and Kharkov metrostroiteli
metrostroiteli — subway construction workers.
- complex is in 1995, museum is opened 3 Chervnya (June) 2003
…. — the base was abandoned in 1995, the museum was opened in June 2003.
Well, good to grant into the byloye sublimity of the navy OF THE USSR…
…Well, welcome to the former grandeur of the Soviet Navy…
Captions:
General panorama Of the balaklavskeye bunch…
…of the Balaclava Bay.
Portal for the duct inlet of boats from the bay.
…for the entry of boats to channel from the bay. Or, to put it short, the entry portal.
4 still separately it added: “recall by the unkind word of those mudakov, which prosrali complex and those, who plundered it”
(It’s a comment on the mural which says ‘Remember the war 1941-1945′)
…I’d like to add “remember unkindly also those jerks who f..ed up the base and those who plundered it. (It was vandalized during the period when it was already abandoned but wasn’t converted into a museum yet.)
Portal for going out of boats to Black sea
…the exit portal
“Visor” is a screen or canopy, like in ‘canopied entrance’. It has partially collapsed.
germukha, batoport — a caisson.
‘article’… Actually, it’s ‘device’. ‘Device number ####’ could mean a 3/4″ bolt, or a nuclear warhead. It was supposed to boost security, since one had to know numbers to understand the overheard talk. However, since nobody talked about bolts in such way, ‘device’ has got to mean a nuclear device.