Another museum re-visit, much like >>65461773HMS Belfast is a light treaty cruiser, brand spanking new when WW2 started. She quite promptly ran into a mine and spent nearly half the war getting repaired. She then spent most of the remaining war up in the north sea, escorting convoys, shooting at Scharnhorst, looking for Tirpitz, etc.Later on she'd also show up for the Korean war, before being re-built a bit in the mid fifties, and being decommissioned in 1963.
Looking forward to where the starboard triple torpedo launcher used to be, it was removed and the area walled in during the 1955 renovations.
Since a large warship is something people have to live on; the laundry room.
Still plenty of use for wood on board, and with that a workshop for it.
Mail room.
The sound reproduction room, an in-ship "radio station" to play music and radio shows to help with morale.
Grating to help solve the conflicting design goal of wanting air, lots and lots of air, to get down to the engines, but also wanting to keep out any artillery shells that happened to be falling from the sky.
Bakery, with a view into the rest of the main kitchen.
Output end.
>>65466866>no commentary for the workshopare you a woman?
Going down towards the machinery spaces. And yes that shell hoist is right in the way, these ships are very much designed for their guns and machinery first, with the humans then squeezing in where there's spare room around all that.
>>65466879I'm mentally weekend-soggy enough that I got it mixed up a bit with the shipwrights workshop, and thought there was a sign visible in the photo. But now that you mention it, yeah, there isn't, so let's mention that that's the electrical workshop.
Airlock into one of the boiler rooms.
A small steam turbine with gearing, IIRC to drive one of the fans showing air into the boilers. Yes, this is a turbo steamship.
Boiler room ambience.
>>65466892can i see your pussy?
Neat thread.
DC generator with the steam turbine somewhat opened up.
Fuel injectors/burners for one of the boilers.
Emergency water redistribution system.
One of the previously mentioned fans to keep the fire breathing properly.
And we're off to elsewhere.
Down again, this time to the engine room.
One of the main steam turbines.
>>65466942Well, off in the background there at least. Here's the photo I was thinking off.
The ship has low powered but high efficiency "cruising" turbines for efficiency cruising, another set of less efficient but higher output turbines to add on for higher speeds, and another set of small turbines for going in reverse. And I guess if you wanted to spend a lot of time in a very small room you could always just give full steam to all of them and let the gearing try and sort it out.
Steam-powered freshwater distiller, to feed the boilers and crew alike. Can manage six tons per hours, and the ship apparently has more than one.
One of the two cruising turbines in this engine room.
And getting it all onto the prop shaft.
Facing the other way around form the previous pic.
Leaving the engine room.
Machine shop.
Another addition during the post-Korea refit, giving the grunts a specific place to sleep instead of just having them put up hammocks all over the place.
Bask in the luxury, the future is here.
Come get your rum.
Looking in at the shell hoists through a widow in the barbette.
A pair of hammocks.
Mess deck, once upon a time this would also have been hammock central.
Off into a barbette to have a look at the shell hoist feeding station.
The way down into the powder storage. (No entry for tourists unfortunately.) Possibly the best protected place on the ship to be stationed, but in return if something does go wrong down there they'd promptly flood the place without bothering to give anyone time to get out first.
Popping into A turret, here's the less harmful end of one of the 155mm guns.
With the ship at action stations the guns crews would sleep in the turrets, a lot of fun during arctic convoys since the walls and ceiling are just single slabs of steel armour with no thermal insulation whatsoever. Well, until the ice layer on the inside started building up at least, an inch was apparently not unheard of. Things didn't improve in a hurry once you returned south either, as that meant you had to live with the ice gradually melting away again.
View forward form the Admiral's bridge.
Twin Bofors 40mm mount.
Ammo lockers.
Administrative.
The reason it's called the flag deck isn't overly esoteric.
Main gun director.
4" guns
>>65467079bewbs
>>65466818You hitting Cambridge? They have a bunch of museums over there and punting's a good time.
>>65467090No, Bovington was the only excursion out from London during this trip.
Operations room.
Main bridge.
The captain's sea cabin.
Well, off on the right there...
An officer's cabin.
Officer's mess.
Back when Belfast cleared a mine the detonation was enough to crack the keel, but there was still only a single fatality. Though that one fatality... chemical burns due to a cracked bottle of battery acid.
Before the refit there sued to be a walrus shelter here.
Once more into the citadel.
Because ten thousand metric tons of steel can make magnetic compasses get funny ideas. Also no declination to worry about.
Probably whit a faint wiff of ozone and notes of burnt copper back when it was all in use.
The fire control table, a mechanical computer that figures out how to aim the main guns.
Soap and tobacco storage, stuffed into a spare nook way away from all the other foodstuffs and whatnot so the strong smell wouldn't ruin anything.
At some point it was decided that the helm should probably be in a place less prone to getting shot off than the bride. Much to the delight to whoever got to spend his entire shift just staring at a wall.
And that's that. Archive for those so inclined: https://www.mediafire.com/file/cnl3c49j7jh5i7f/England_-_HMS_Belfast_2026.zip/fileOther archives: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4v4c0uwexuyo7/My+PhotographsOverall one of the best museum ships I've visited, getting to go down into the boiler and engine rooms sadly isn't very common. I think just about the only surface ship with even greater access (and not by a lot) would be HMS Halland at Maritiman in Gothenburg.
And now I notice that the image counter is just at 145 (well, 146 with this one). Apparently I missed five of the photos I had ear-marked for posting along the way. Oh well, it's all in the archive, so I guess we have a few spots left open to illustrate things if any discussion ensues.
Still have my cup from my own trip. Very nice.
