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Aboard the ORP Błyskawica

Today, me and my wife went to Kosciuszko Square in Gdynia, and we took our camera with us. As luck would have it, the museum ship ORP Blyskawica was open, so I took a lot of pictures which may be of interest to the good people of the History forum.

Therefore, here's a little presentation on the ship. First, a little introduction.

History

The Błyskawica is the world's oldest still operational destroyer in the world. It is a vessel of the Grom class, laid down in Britain in 1935, in the J. Samuel & White shipyards on order of the Polish interwar government. Originally, she was the second and last ship of her class, comissioned into the Polish navy in 1937.

On August 30th 1939, the ship was part of three Polish destroyers to evacuate the country under the Peking Plan. The squadron transferred to Britain, where all ships became part of the Polish Navy In Exile.

During its service, Błyskawica mostly ran convoy escort duties, and participated in several surface actions against German ships. Some sources credit it with sinking two U-Boats, but I've been unable to corroborate them, though it had several close scrapes with them.

You can read more about the ship here

After the war, she was briefly taken over by the Royal Navy, before returning home. She was retired from active service in 1976 and turned into a museum ship, though it's still part of the Polish Navy, has a military crew and all equipment aboard is functional except for the No. 2 boiler and one steam turbine.

Interior

Sadly, only a small part of the ship is available for visitors: aft crew berths, now converted into a maritime exhibit, engine spaces, the No. 2 boiler and part of the main deck. I took photographs of the more interesting parts, along with all the museum plaques (which are, thanksfully, in two-languages).

Note: most of the weapons aboard are actually of Russian make, since most of the ship's service was done in Communist Poland (1949-1976)


Here's the deck/firefighting plan. Visitors can enter through an aft hatch into the berthing spaces below the aft battery, go through the engineering spaces, then back to the fore deck. The fore superstructure is off limits...bugger.


Ship's bell and commemorative plaques. They list: names of people involved in restoring the ship (far left), names of sailors killed in combat while serving aboard the ship (two centre ones), names of all the ship's commanders (far right), an award for taking 1st place in artillery drills in 1949.


Cutaway exhibit of a USSR-made Type 53/39 type torpedo
Information plaque for the torpedo


View forward, port side


A BG-1 depth charge
Information plaque for the depth charges


Depth charge projectors (port side) and aft depth charge racks


Type 08/39 contact mine, on display aft
Information plaque for the contact mine


Commemorative plaque mounted on the superstructure, behind the aft gun battery, thanking the crew of the Błyskawica for their part in the defence of Cowles from air attack




Aft gun battery: gun breeches, electric ammunition lift, fuze setter
Information plaque for the guns
Information plaque for the electric ammo lift


Interesting markings on the left gun breech, aft gun battery.


Entry into the superstructure from the aft side. Structure on the left is the base of the upper turret from the aft battery.

Below, in the aft berthing spaces, there's currently an exhibit about the interwar Polish Navy. There's a lot of historical information (in Polish, though, so I didn't include it here) as well as models of some of the ships serving.


The Wicher, a destroyer from an earlier class


The Błyskawica, for comparison


Crew berthing spaces, installed post-war. In WWII, the crew still used hammocks.

After clearing the berths, we descend into the two main engineering rooms of the ship...


Main saltwater pump: pumped water from the sea for use elsewhere on the ship


One of the two operational bilge/firefighting pumps
Information plaque for the bilge pumps

Cutaway model of the bilge pump


Starboard steam turbine (located in the aft engine room, jammed between other machinery...)


A peek into the port turbine, located a good ten metres fore from the starboard one, for some reason
Information plaque on the steam turbines


Massive fucking reduction gear assembly
Information plaque on the reduction gear



Electromechanical division command station, fore and aft panels. The entire command post is at most 2x2 metres, again jammed between machinery. I can't imagine what the noise must've been down there at full speed - the second station is located right behind the port turbine.



Looking fore

Looking aft
Inside the no. 2 boiler (the ship has three, no.2 is open for visitors)
Information plaque on boiler


Right outside the boiler, in Boiler Room 2
Some original markings on a huge-ass steam pipe.


Exit from the No.2 boiler room back to the deck


On the front starboard side, looking aft


Fore deck, anchor chain assembly


And the fore gun battery


Overall view from the stern

So...that's it. I have some gratitous photos of the sailing frigate you can see in the background, and a bunch of French training ships that were docked alongside the same pier. I haven't processed them yet, but I hope you will all enjoy these.

It is advantageous to have shafts of different length (and therefore, engines in different axial locations) in order to avoid some unfortunate vibrational effects.

These destroyers were beautiful.

My imagination wasn't sufficient to really appreciate the size of a ship's boilers, they're huge! Although I imagined them to be more filled with pipes, not mostly empty space.

The two turbines would probably not have fitted into the hull if placed side by side, or have insufficient distance to the outer hull, making them more susceptible to damage - maybe the designers also split the propulsion system into two independent units to ensure mobility after a hit.

Thak you for posting, and do post the other pictures too!

You can see in the diagram it is not a unit machinery ship. All the boilers are at one end, both turbines at the other. One hit can take out all of either one. Not a knock against the Poles though, only the USN had many destroyers with unit machinery at the time, and the Royal Navy didn't build any until late in WW2. Some people like Japan and the Germans never did it at all.

Great pictures BTW. The walk in boiler is really cool, its hard to imagine what so much mass of fan driven flame would look like, and its only one of three!

Sea Skimmer wrote:You can see in the diagram it is not a unit machinery ship. All the boilers are at one end, both turbines at the other. One hit can take out all of either one. Not a knock against the Poles though, only the USN had many destroyers with unit machinery at the time, and the Royal Navy didn't build any until late in WW2. Some people like Japan and the Germans never did it at all.

Great pictures BTW. The walk in boiler is really cool, its hard to imagine what so much mass of fan driven flame would look like, and its only one of three!

I must confess I didn't look at the graph that closely.

PeZook, can you edit the links in your posts ? Some of your links to pictures have the extension jpgl, the l preventing them from being opened directly after clicking on your links.

Raesene wrote:I must confess I didn't look at the graph that closely.

PeZook, can you edit the links in your posts ? Some of your links to pictures have the extension jpgl, the l preventing them from being opened directly after clicking on your links.

Yeah, I just noticed it. Unfortunately, the board won't let me edit the post, too much time has passed.

Here are the fixed links, though:

Information plaque for the electric ammo lift

Information plaque for the bilge pumps

Cutaway model of the bilge pump

Information plaque on the steam turbines.

Information plaque on the reduction gear

Information plaque on boiler

Some original markings on a huge-ass steam pipe.

Kinda clunky this way, but that's the best I can do, sorry.

So, having five minutes of free time, here are the aforemention gratitutous pics of other ships tied at the same quay (I only snapped a few, after visiting the Błyskawica we were in a hurry)


Sailing frigate Dar Pomorza, formerly a training ship operated by the polish Maritime Academy


The mainmast. Did somebody say learning the ropes is a basic skill?


Same ship, viewed aft from the stern of the Błyskawica



Three of five French training ships tied up side by side


Serious Dude seems obviously annoyed by streams of tourists walking all over the ship

And to finalize...


IT'S THE BLACK PEARL!!!

They have little historical relevance, but you asked, and I don't want to start another thread just to show those off

In the first ship post close is the interior to its original colour? It seems so Star Trek TOS in style.

spaceviking wrote:In the first ship post close is the interior to its original colour? It seems so Star Trek TOS in style.

Huh?

Ship interiors look the same as they did in 1976 when she was retired from active service, except for the aft crew berthing spaces which were converted into an exhibit (the two models are stored there, amongst other things).

Aah, the former Prinzess Eitel Friedrich. Though why do you call her a sailing frigate? She was always "just" a training ship.

Thanas wrote:Aah, the former Prinzess Eitel Friedrich. Though why do you call her a sailing frigate? She was always "just" a training ship.

Well, the way I was taught, frigate is a rigging type (three masts, square rigging plus a gaffel sail on the mizzen and ) in civilian sailing. It has nothing to do with military applications in this case.

EDIT: By the way, the Kruzenstern (another frigate) is going to be visitng Gdynia today, and I'll be there. So if people are interested, I can provide some pictures of her, too

PeZook wrote:

Thanas wrote:Aah, the former Prinzess Eitel Friedrich. Though why do you call her a sailing frigate? She was always "just" a training ship.

Well, the way I was taught, frigate is a rigging type (three masts, square rigging plus a gaffel sail on the mizzen and ) in civilian sailing. It has nothing to do with military applications in this case.

I may just be lacking in English sailing terms. The German term is Vollschiff, which
I always thought meant a fully-rigged ship.

Thanas wrote: I may just be lacking in English sailing terms. The German term is Vollschiff, which
I always thought meant a fully-rigged ship.

Well, each nation has its own nomenclature which doesn't always translate very good to other languages, and mutated horribly over the years anyway

Frigate is just one example: technically, Nelson's HMS Victory was a frigate. Except it wasn't, because it was a military ship and they had completely different nomenclatures. In Poland, a large ship like the Dar Pomorza can also be called a yacht and it would be technically correct. A sloop in the Royal Navy could have been anything from a 5 meter boat to a 30 meter two-master, but not today it can't, because a two-master is a schooner by definition, and so on...

Serves us right for still using terms coined in the wonderfully non-standardized age of sail

I've always had a soft spot for the Poles. There are few memorials more touching than ones commemorating Polish dead from the Second World War, which often come with the epitaph "For our freedom and yours".

Many thanks for posting the pics. It may be worth noting that according to the Wiki, the Błyskawica has been invited to make a visit to England in 2012. The people of Cowles want to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the ship's lonely defense of their town.

Too bad her sister, Piorun, was scrapped by the Brits after the war. The Piorun holds the disintinction of having fought the Bismarck and lived to tell the tale. And, according to legend, her Captain even sent this message to the Bismarck before attacking:

I am a Pole!

Any idea what all the hatchs are in pic 5?

What ship was shown in the last picture (the black Pearl)?Do you have any more pictures of her?

She got some really nice lines, as far as I can tell, not like those boring sanitized lines of the modern frigate...

Zinegata wrote: Many thanks for posting the pics. It may be worth noting that according to the Wiki, the Błyskawica has been invited to make a visit to England in 2012. The people of Cowles want to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the ship's lonely defense of their town.

This is really cool, but I doubt it will happen. While the sailors aboard Błyskawica assured us all the equipment is kept in working order, significant space has been set aside as museum spaces, and she has nowhere near a full complement, no modern navigational equipment and I'm not even sure if it has a radio. There are also no engineers in the polish navy trained to operate eighty year old steam turbines - she'd have to be towed there, which is just...humilitating.

Zinegata wrote:Too bad her sister, Piorun, was scrapped by the Brits after the war. The Piorun holds the disintinction of having fought the Bismarck and lived to tell the tale. And, according to legend, her Captain even sent this message to the Bismarck before attacking:

I am a Pole!

I know of that legend, and it is totally awesome, thought I have to point out the Piorun[/b] was not Błyskawica's sister ship, it was an ex-british N class destroyer transferred to the Polish Navy In Exile by the Brits. At was a replacement for the Grom, which was the sister ship you're probably thinking about. It was lost at Narvik.

Aaron wrote:Any idea what all the hatchs are in pic 5?

I don't know for sure, but they're probably a what remains from a basis of the fore triple torpedo launcher, which was removed during one of the refits and replaced with extra Oerlikon AA guns. Similar hatches were under the torpedo launcher still there.

LaCroix wrote:What ship was shown in the last picture (the black Pearl)?Do you have any more pictures of her?

She got some really nice lines, as far as I can tell, not like those boring sanitized lines of the modern frigate...

I do, actually. Me and my wife went out to sea aboard it to meet the Kruzensterhn, so I have pics of it at the quay and on sea. It's a former fishing boat converted to a XVIth century galleon. If anybody wants it, I could post pics of it and and the Kruzensterhn itself.

I am definitively interested in the galleon conversion. From the look of the far away pictures, they did a decent job.

I leave that modern stuff like the Kruzensterhn to people with no proper sense of aesthetics...

PeZook wrote: This is really cool, but I doubt it will happen. While the sailors aboard Błyskawica assured us all the equipment is kept in working order, significant space has been set aside as museum spaces, and she has nowhere near a full complement, no modern navigational equipment and I'm not even sure if it has a radio. There are also no engineers in the polish navy trained to operate eighty year old steam turbines - she'd have to be towed there, which is just...humilitating.

Well, don't rule it out just yet, the inability to use the main engines could be solved with enough giant outboard engines strapped onto the stern. A couple 1000hp units would easily get the ship moving, providing that something can be done to get power to the rudder and lights.

PeZook wrote:
Serves us right for still using terms coined in the wonderfully non-standardized age of sail

Well they were standardized in the RN: HMS Victory is a First rate ship of the line with one hundred guns, a 74 gun is a third rate ship of the line and so on down to frigates and sloops of war. I think that navies to day should revert to a rating system, its better than trying to fit the arbitrary post 1918 idea's to modern fleets when it clearly does not work, the old rating system told you exactly what a ship was capable of on paper, these days one would never know.

Sea Skimmer wrote: Well, don't rule it out just yet, the inability to use the main engines could be solved with enough giant outboard engines strapped onto the stern. A couple 1000hp units would easily get the ship moving, providing that something can be done to get power to the rudder and lights.

Perhaps, but I doubt the Polish navy would be willing to go to the expense, when we can't even afford to buy weapons for the Gawron-class corvette, and have to use cannibalized ex-Soviet sets

Stuart Mackey wrote:Well they were standardized in the RN: HMS Victory is a First rate ship of the line with one hundred guns, a 74 gun is a third rate ship of the line and so on down to frigates and sloops of war. I think that navies to day should revert to a rating system, its better than trying to fit the arbitrary post 1918 idea's to modern fleets when it clearly does not work, the old rating system told you exactly what a ship was capable of on paper, these days one would never know.

That may be true, but much of the world did not actually draw their traditions from the Royal Navy. The Polish naval tradition mostly comes out of Dutch and French influences, for example. Also, were the sloops standardized as well? I was under the impression that anything not mostly square-rigged and under a certain number and weight of guns was a sloop.

LaCroix wrote:I am definitively interested in the galleon conversion. From the look of the far away pictures, they did a decent job.

I leave that modern stuff like the Kruzensterhn to people with no proper sense of aesthetics...

I finally got around to downloading the pictures from my camera, but since they have even less historical significance than the second batch posted here, I'll just make a thread for them in AMP.

Wouldn't want to annoy Thanas, after all

I ran out so fast to look for that thread that I forgot to say thank you... Thank you!

Then I noticed you haven't posted, yet.

LaCroix wrote:I ran out so fast to look for that thread that I forgot to say thank you... Thank you!

Then I noticed you haven't posted, yet.

I'm still at work, sorry

I'll process and post the pics as soon as I get home.

"Interesting markings on the left gun breech, aft gun battery."

I would assume the N is for naval.
The second line is its designation - a Quick Fire Mark 16* gun. The original MK XVI had a jacketed tube from the muzzle to breech. The Mk XVI* replaced this with a different assembly.
The third line is the manufacturer, William Beardmore and Company. They had been shipbuilders at one point, but the yard had closed in 1930 and become part of a Royal Ordnance Factory. The company continued in steelworking.
I would assume the fourth line is a serial number.
The fifth line is probably for a left gun - I would expect the other gun in battery to have an R there.