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
Bet the former COB would not be happy with all of that corrosion.
One would hope, not so much for our sake but the sake of the Ivan crews, that those boats get scrapped one day soon. I can only imagine the enormous and meticulous overhaul it would take to make either of those hulls seaworthy, and knowing just how meticulous Ivan is NOT it would sadden me to see any crew take those boats back to sea. Death coffins just waiting to bury someone.
I’ve read reports of Ex-Soviet submarines being allowed to sink pierside for lack of crew and funding to keep them operational, a number of those hulls being nukes. Talk about an ecological disaster in the making.
Great photo essay, btw. I’ve seen one similar, but this is a more expansive tour of the boat.
Commander ‘Mander had a link in one of hisposts several months ago with a nuber of pics showing a bunch of Soviet navy ships in very bad shape. Some on their sides in shallow water.
I can remember all the Soviet Seapower propaganda the Navy used to put out for our internal consumption. My reserve unit watched a bunch of it. Even thought they were the enemy (contra Curtis LeMay) it is a bit depressing seeing so much seagoing steel turning into cancerous corrosion.
AW1 Tim had a post like that just this month. A very frightening photo.
I, too was appalled by the condition of the boat. Rust, rust, rust. I liked the cat though, didn’t know the Russians had cats.
After seeing the images of the hull, I was thinking the interior spaces would also be in very poor condition – however I was surprised to see that the interior did not seem to be so bad. Probably only a partial crew assigned to the sub?
More rust in that there one boat than in the entire US sub fleet. Makes one realize that a Mk-46 wasn’t going to do much more than antagonize the beast.
*sigh* if only a dirty paper skimmer puke sonarman like me could have seen things like this 20 years ago…
Still very cool, and the rust isn’t much different than what we had in our knox-can FF’s of the mid 80′s. Fair amount of maintenance req’d for anything made of steel sitting in Salt water, physics and all that.
One word: ADCAP.
Can any of my fellow FAW’s comment on the number of peaks in a “Pin Banger” for one of these?
dc cat-man: Please translate for this poor geezer ex-USAF bus-driver. Or if it was “Ping” Banger, I think I know what you’re talking about. Otherwise…
A pin banger was the description of a pen on paper going from edge to edge smoothly and rapidly.
That’s all I know about that sort of thing…
MADMAN MADMAN MADMAN!
Indeed.
No doubt at all when you overfly that baby.
Sure doesn’t look like the same boat we saw in The Hunt For Red October…
Methinks that they used that movie as a tool to boost military funding, showing the superiority of Russian submarines… you know. The Vast Right Wing / Iron Triangle Conspiracy. Those bastards.
Still, great essay.
-CG
The Russian Navy has a different perspective on rust; they make their hulls thicker and let them corrode. As the thickness or depth of the corrosion increases ion transport gets harder and the rate of corrosion goes down, approaching nothing; unless you do something silly, like needle gun the corrosion product off allowing a fresh start, the hulls will last.
In which case, Thomas, they do not efficiently engineer their vessels from the start. At the same time the ion flow finishes the rusting in their steel and titanium hulls, there would already be so much gamma ray bombardment in their hulls to make her a cobalt anchor and hence make her even weaker.
The idea of “if it rusts faster and we do nothing about it, it can only rust so much” is inherently flawed. But then again, who am I, an electrical/nuclear engineer, to argue with their Rust-osophy.
So maybe a MK46 would do the job just fine, after all?
more *really* dead subs here: http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/07/abandoned-submarines-near-alexandrovsk.html
and here: http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/07/submarine-graveyard-in-nezametnaya-cove.html
Sweet photos. If anyone ever finds any photos of a ship with the (Cyrillic) letters CCB-33 please post a link. She (Or he, in Russkiy) is kind of an ugly vessel but has (had?) a signifigant electronics fit.
Sad to see so much industrial and technological output just wasting away.
regards,
Phalanx08
Picture of CCB-33 at this link down aways.
http://www.snariad.ru/otherships/otherships_ural/
Spasiba, Mr. pdxjim!
regards,
Phalanx08
I’m reminded that I would never have made it as a spook nor the desire to try.
Haha, yeah, ScottTheBadger,
A mk46 would do just fine. Although, I was once told by a Gunners Mate that a well placed .50 cal could take out a Ticonderoga Cruiser…. Who knows, none of this stuff has ever been “battle tested”, if you will.
Unless you count .
That hyperlink is Operation Praying Mantis.
Damn A href
Someone with a DeLorean could make a few hundred million dollars, selling those pictures to the Navy, 20 years ago.
People would kill for pictures like those, and unfortunelly I believe a lot of people died trying to take such pictures.