Date visited 29 July 2022
After a week of barely tolerating the most boring island on earth, I took matters into my own hands, and flew from Bali to Surabaya today to visit the Surubaya Submarine Monument - which basically consists of the Whiskey class submarine Pasopati mounted up on stocks near the centre of town.This was one of a large number of warships supplied to the Indonesians by the Soviets in the 1960s during their brief flirtation with Communism (a list that at one time included one of the Sverdlovs). Pasopati served in the Indonesian Navy from 1962-1989.She is in a pretty good state of preservation - most of the internal fittings are still there, although one of the diesels, one of the motors, and many of the torpedo stowage racks have been removed - probably to provide better access. While I was there they had a team of workers painting and preserving the hull, which is a promising sign.There was minimal signage, and none of it was in English, however there was a guide who spoke fluent English who accompanied me through the ship - although her depth of knowledge appeared to be at the level of "this is a torpedo". The public tour involves going in through a door cut in the hull into the forward torpedo compartment, walking down the length of the main deck to the after torpedo compartment, and then out through another door cut in the hull. There is no access to the conning tower, or onto the casing.Getting to it was easy - I just showed a picture of it on my phone to a taxi driver at the airport, and he took me straight there ($15). Getting back to the airport was a bit harder - Surubaya isn't a tourist city, and there aren't taxis circulating on the streets or waiting in ranks. Fortunately the English-speaking guide came through, and ordered me a taxi online through an Indonesian app.One thing that always strikes me with submarine museums - I have toured around 26 preserved submarines - including boats built in Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and the US - and with the exception of Nautilus, they are all very similar in internal layout - so similar that if you took away the signage, it would often be difficult to tell them apart from the inside!
