I used to pass the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport every working day back in the late 1980s on the ferry on my way to work in HMS Collingwood, but it wasn't until last year that I finally got to spend any time at the place.The museum is home to three submarines. The Alliance was one of the A-class built at the end of WW2, which was extensively modernised post-war in a similar way to the US GUPPY upgrades - and ended up being quite similar in configuration to the subsequent Porpoise/Oberon class boats that I am much more familiar with. To go onto the boat you had to book onto a tour, which they were running once every hour or half-hour, and then get shown through as a group by a tour guide who seemed to know his stuff. While that did provide you with a running commentary on the boat, it did make it difficult to take photographs of the interior of the boat without lots of other visitors in the way. The boat is mounted up out of the water, right next to the harbour. Access is via ramps and through holes cut in the side of the submarine, so relatively accessible for those with limited mobility.The second submarine is Holland I - the very first RN submarine - that was salvaged and restored in 1982 after it sunk while it was being towed to be scrapped in 1913. It is on display inside a specially built climate-controlled building. Unusually for such a small submarine, there was access inside the submarine (but not a lot of headroom!). Some of the equipment is still there, including the propulsion machinery and a torpedo tube.Inside the main hall of the museum, they have a Polaris missile, and all the things you would expect to see in a naval museum - models, photographs, periscopes, etc. And also the third submarine at the museum - the x-craft midget X24. This submarine was separated at one of the joints so that you could see inside of it.Around the grounds there are several other artefacts including the conning tower of WW1 submarine E17 and a propellor from the boomer Repulse. There was good signage throughout the museum, and a well-stocked gift-shop. Access to the museum was through a single ticket which also gave access to several other museums in Portsmouth, including Explosion, and the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard - but not D-Day Story. It also included a ferry that you could use to get between the submarine museum and Portsmouth Dockyard. They used to also have archives here which I was able to obtain documents from remotely about 20 years ago, but I don't know what has happened to their materials now with the integration into the broader Museum of the Royal Navy.p.s. according to my museum ships database there was also supposed to be a German Biber midget submarine here, but there was no sign of it - so perhaps it has been loaned to another museum, or maybe my database is just wrong.
Links and References:
Dechaineux, P, 1984, Absorbing Secret of an 80 Year Old, Navy, 46 (1), pp34-35