![]() ![]() I have toured the Nautilus in the past and wanted to repeat that experience. The Nautilus has been removed for renovation and is scheduled to return in the fall of 2022. Unfortunately, the USS Nautilus is not currently located at the museum. If you get claustrophobic in small spaces, then I would also recommend avoiding the sub. There are a lot of steep stairs and tight spaces, and on occasion we needed to climb through smaller entry-holes. *Please note that the USS Nautilus is not at all equipped for people with physical disabilities or other mobility impediments. Entrance to the museum is free, and there's plenty of free parking. The rest of the museum was equally interesting, with plenty of exhibits on the US Navy in both peace and wartime. There are small signs distributed throughout the submarine to explain the various functions, and the overall experience gave us much better insight into the lives of people living in the submarine (oftentimes for weeks or months on end). There's a lot to see and learn here, and you get to board an accurate, life-sized submarine (the USS Nautilus*) to learn more about the living conditions of those running the submarines. There's a set of stairs into the torpedo room, I believe through the forward torpedo hatch, and the rest of the tour is inside the hull.This captivating, hands-on museum isn't as well-advertised as some of the other activities in the area, but is absolutely worth a visit. I'm not sure they cut the hull forward at all. Thanks, I was thinking maybe they'd glassed out the hull outside the mess. The enlisted crew of Nautilus was somewhere around 100, so it's not like they didn't need quite a few seats. Septembean removed several of the tables for visitor access.Just google for "submarine mess" and you will see that it is fairly typical. Is it really that big? It's like a sub in a movie. Maybe on par with the Nautilus museum for raw quality, but larger and with broader, more generalist scope.Ī very long time ago (like 20 years probably) I was on the USS Silversides in Muskegon MI, which was probably similar to the other fleet boats (she is afloat though) I vaguely recall the main building having excellent exhibits, and the vessels being well preserved but not as tourable / well explained as say Midway. I did go to the one in Seal Beach, CA, which sounds pretty similar, except for the lack of a conning tower.Īctually I take that back, I’ve also been to the Australian National Maritime Museum (Sydney) (a decade ago, so I can’t really write a review) which has an excellent museum building and an interesting fleet of tourable vessels. We may have come in from the other direction. A lot of the smaller ships don't measure up. You've definitely seen some of the best ones. The only major naval museums I’ve been to so far are Midway and Nautilus, and now I worry I’m spoiled.ĭid you stop by the US Submariner’s memorial? It’s hard to miss on the way to Nautilus from the highway, they have the conning tower from USS Flasher and granite walls listing all the US submariners killed in WWII, as well as panels depicting every boat lost including date and cause. Virginia was still 4 years from commissioning, and she and her sisters are where the bulk of the fleet is now. Back then, the Los Angeles-class was the backbone of the fleet, while they're leaving service quickly these days. The changes since then haven't been huge, and the bits I was taking pictures of for reference use were from there. ![]() One wing was an excellent look at contemporary submarine warfare, but "contemporary" means c.2000. How does a museum exhibit get dated? I would think that if it was accurate at the time, then that's it, it's right. I believe the reactor has been removed entirely 4 and they haven't done anything else with the aft section of the boat. ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, you only see the forward torpedo room, the ship control spaces, and the officer and crew living spaces. I suspect this was because space onboard was very limited, so they didn't want long backups. The audio tour was also pretty good, 3 probably because it wasn't too long. The mannequins were used consistently, instead of just being in one or two spaces, and done pretty well, which made them less obnoxious. The signage was good, giving enough context for someone reasonably interested to figure out what they were looking at, without being stupidly obvious. The entire boat was glassed off, primarily because there simply wasn't room to let visitors through spaces without putting them in touching range of important things. It was full of glass and mannequins, normally two pet peeves of mine where museum ships are concerned, but it was done well enough that I didn't mind them too much. ![]()
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