μblog: engineering from the trenches

One place of general interest that I visited while in Ukraine was Balaklava. This depot for diesel submarines is located close to Sevatopol, which is one of the key Russian/Ukrainian (and Soviet) naval installations in the Black Sea. So important that it was negotiated that Russia still controls a substantial part of the naval base and keeps a majority of its Black Sea fleet there.

Balaklava considered to be a good naval installation since ancient Greek times and served well during the second world war. One of its strengths is that the inner harbor is almost completely blocked from the outside by cliffs making it hard to see and easy to defend. It was commissioned to become a submarine base in early 1960s with the intention of servicing diesel submarines and storing nuclear warheads. For this reason, as can be seen below, the base was constructed underneath a mountain with multiple levels of blast doors so as to be able to take a direct nuclear hit from armaments of the time. For the same reason, the city was removed from almost all Soviet maps and fell under strict military control.

The first few pictures are of the outside areas. There are two entrances to the submarine facility, one facing the open water and one facing the harbor. Both have heavy blast doors that could be closed in the event of a nuclear strike.

Next, we went through the entrance to the service area. One of the seven dry-docks is shown as well as a passage way that allows travel between the two entry ports. This is the area that was also designed to become a fall-out shelter when necessary providing housing and supplies for approximately three thousand individuals. Unfortunately, much of the technology has been removed leaving only the core infrastructure.

Next, we went through a series of tunnels that made up the nuclear depot. The warheads were prepared here and were transported to the service area on heavy hand-trucks so as to avoid any possible mechanical shocks. It should be noted that the walls are lined with sound-proofing material and the temperature is naturally around 50F on a hot summer day. A small museum has been constructed in place where the warheads were stockpiled and prepared.

Update: Only days after this photo post, a story appeared on Ars Technica linking a post at Monster Maritime which links to an image on Microsofts’s Virtual Earth which shows an Ohio-class nuclear submarine in dry dock at a navy base in Washington state. Interesting details such as propeller design are visible.