Near to Blyskawica is the Gdynia naval museum (about a 2-minute walk). This is a well-presented museum with many artifacts in both internal galleries, and an equipment park – lots of guns, torpedo tubes, torpedoes, mines, range-finders, depth charge throwers etc. Mostly of Soviet origin, but also several from the interwar ships built in Britain and France. They have a fairly complete set of equipment from one of the Skory’s which was being scrapped at the time the museum was established. The equipment inside is well maintained, with those outside being progressively refurbished in what is clearly an ongoing battle against weathering and deterioration. Signage is generally not bilingual, however I am told they are working on replacing the signage with more informative signs that will be bilingual. One item of particular interest is a searchlight from Gneisenau. Gneisenau was scuttled in Gdynia at the end of the war, and later salvaged by the Poles, but I am told that unfortunately very few artefacts were saved from her. The museum has two preserved warships. Batory was a small patrol boat, and the first warship built in Poland when the country was re-established after WW1. It is apparently just a shell with nothing in it, but the exterior is relatively complete. The second warship is the ex-Norwegian Kobben class submarine Stord, which served as Sokol in the Polish Navy. She is mounted in front of the museum, and has had horizontal accessways cut into the submarine fore and aft, so that visitors can walk right through the sub. Due to Fire Service restrictions, only 10 visitors are allowed in at a time, so to avoid queues they sell timed tickets – just 10 tickets each 30 minutes, which severely limits visitor numbers, so booking would be recommended. This is a new exhibit – she only opened in March but has since been closed to the public for unspecified technical reasons. I only got onboard thanks to a letter of introduction from another Polish researcher. These submarines have a very heavy armament – 8 bow tubes – but no reloads, and loading the lower tubes is not easy. Torpedoes are loaded into the upper tubes from outside the sub. But to get them into the lower tubes, they have to disassemble the crew living quarters, draw a torpedo into the submarine from an upper tube, lower it, and then push it out into one of the lower tubes – and then rebuild the crew quarters. The process takes about 8 hours!The periscope is still working, and you can look through it, but they have restricted the traverse to prevent it being used to look into the apartment windows behind the museum!One of the diesels has been removed from the sub to allow the after accessway to be cut into the submarine (but it has been preserved by the museum offboard). The museum has a good gift-shop, with many books (all in Polish) – and yet again I left the museum with a heavier bag than I had arrived with!
