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Really?1?!
Oct. 28th, 2013 11:08 pmSo, I'm in Long Beach, CA visiting my sister and seeing the sights. One of those sights is the RMS Queen Mary, permanently moored in Long Beach. It's neat to visit, but not $30 to get on and $8 to park neat. Moored next to the Queen Mary and physically dwarfed by her is the ex-Soviet submarine B-427. I took the tour.
My God, I have never been on board a shittier piece of shit boat in my life! The boat, commissioned in 1971 (!) has to be the worst-designed naval vessel I have ever seen! The crew accommodations are tiny, and interior partitions are done in wood! (!!?!?!) This is a modern warship, a submarine, full of Soviets who smoke like chimneys and are in a submarine, and they built the damn staterooms out of wood!
The seven watertight compartments are separated by the smallest hatches I've ever seen (think "manhole covers with delusions of grandeur) and some of the crew (including the entire engineering gang) are sleeping essentially in a passageway in the engineering compartment. The aft torpedo tubes are not reloadable, and the electronics are state-of-the-art 1950s. I was concerned walking on the damn thing in port - no way would I get underway in it.
It does, on the other hand, provide a nice corrective to the idea that the US Navy's way of doing things is the only way.
My God, I have never been on board a shittier piece of shit boat in my life! The boat, commissioned in 1971 (!) has to be the worst-designed naval vessel I have ever seen! The crew accommodations are tiny, and interior partitions are done in wood! (!!?!?!) This is a modern warship, a submarine, full of Soviets who smoke like chimneys and are in a submarine, and they built the damn staterooms out of wood!
The seven watertight compartments are separated by the smallest hatches I've ever seen (think "manhole covers with delusions of grandeur) and some of the crew (including the entire engineering gang) are sleeping essentially in a passageway in the engineering compartment. The aft torpedo tubes are not reloadable, and the electronics are state-of-the-art 1950s. I was concerned walking on the damn thing in port - no way would I get underway in it.
It does, on the other hand, provide a nice corrective to the idea that the US Navy's way of doing things is the only way.
