HMCS Ojibwa

[Chicken lights]

This is an Oberon class submarine. I’m a little fuzzy on the dates but it served for 33 years, from the 1960s to the late 1990s. It was primarily a Cold War submarine.

It’s a British design and build, it was replaced with the Victoria class subs.

Typically subs last about 15 years. From what I was told parts and maintenance are the reason for this. As far as this sub, it was at the point where the whole thing needed to be refitted to keep it seaworthy, it was terribly outdated.

 

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This was originally equipped with British Mark 37 torpedoes. Weighing about 3500 pounds apiece. They were a straight fire design, meaning the bow had to face the target. There were rear facing torpedo tubes, but, apparently no-one had successfully used them to engage an attack.

The Ojibwa has never fired a torpedo.

The Mark 37s were replaced with USA Mark 48s. Each type cost about $1.5 million dollars each. Even though the Ojibwa could hold over 30 torpedos, she only usually carried 4-6 because of cost.

The Mark 48s are steerable, which meant they could lose the aft facing torpedo tubes and gain some space.

 

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They only allowed pictures in the bow torpedo room, as the rest of the ship may contain technology still in use today on active war vessels.

 

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Depending on whether you were an enlisted man or an officer depended on the amount of storage and amenities you had. The lowest guys had a very small locker big enough for his sleeping bag. No changes of clothes and very few personal items. One shower and change of clothes every two weeks.

Hot bunking with whatever bunk you could grab when it was your turn

Petty officers at least had their own bunk, and some space. The higher ups had the plushest quarters with carpet and a TV. The captain had his own room.

 

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There was two safes in the officers quarters. One held sensitive sonar documents the other held close to a million dollars in USD currency.

The reasoning for that was the sub needed to be self sufficient for up to two years if things went south. If you needed to purchase $50,000 worth of fuel at a foreign port, US money worked.

Also, it wouldn’t do to be in Norway or some other random port leaving that much Canadian currency around. It would make the sub easy to track. Better to point to the Americans and stay incognito.

Other things such as purchasing parts or paying for repairs, food, water, all required cash. It’s a little hard to think about, but, in the 1960s you couldn’t just swipe a Visa and pay for things easily.

 

[YYCHM]

Where is this located?

 

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The engine room had two twin 16 cylinder engines. Their only job was to charge the batteries. There was 480 batteries on board, if I remember right. Each weighing one ton.

The engine room was 145 decibels loud, and around 55 degrees Celsius. Apparently “stokers” or mechanics worked a 2 hour on shift, and then 22 hours off. They were given extra water, food, vitamins and salt to help recover.

They had access to a sink to wash up more frequently, but, still followed the same two week change of clothes/shower schedule

 

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Where is this located?

Port Burwell, Ontario. On Lake Erie

 

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There was a few bumper stickers and some sharpie writing with locations. Vancouver, Puerto Rico, Newfoundland and quite a few more.

Apparently this was considered defacing government property and was very frowned upon. Once the decision was made to decommission the ship, the stickers and sharpies were added.

There was an active Navy man taking the tour, he said it took roughly a month to get from the Great Lakes to the ocean. He said to make it to Vancouver might take two months.

 

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I can’t really convey how tight the hatches and rooms were. Nor can I convey how it must have felt to have served a tour of duty there. (Not that i would know, anyway)

I get the impression from any Canadian military personnel I’ve met that we do the best we can, with what we have, and still can be among the highest skilled in the world. Possibly a bit of perverse pride in doing more with less, as it were.

I think our military does the best it can, with what it has to work with.

It’s interesting to tour this stuff and see what our active duty members dealt with/deal with

 

[YYCHM]

Yup.... our military has been adept at adapt and improvise since it's inception. Out gunned and out numbered they have held their own with distinction.

 

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Yup.... our military has been adept at adapt and improvise since it's inception. Out gunned and out numbered they have held their own with distinction.

The Navy man that was there said he was a cook. Yet, he needed to study hydraulics, engines, steering/navigation, etc etc before earning his “dolphins”. This was his words. He needed to know how to run the whole ship before he was considered qualified. He said something about if the man next to him had his dolphins meant a lot instead of if he didn’t

It was a fantastic tour, and a small glimpse of what our Navy personnel suffer through

 

[YYCHM]

And then there was the Brit nuke sub purchase disaster. Leave the Mil decisions to those who know!

Thanks for posting this, I'm always interested in touring this kind of stuff.

The abandoned NUK missile silo at Rapid City is worth taking a look at, if your ever down that way.

What astounded me, is that there a hole in the roof that they used to optically align the guidance system with the moon!!! YIKES!

 

[Chicken lights]

Yup.... our military has been adept at adapt and improvise since it's inception. Out gunned and out numbered they have held their own with distinction.

The Navy man that was there said he was a cook. Yet, he needed to study hydraulics, engines, steering/navigation, etc etc before earning his “dolphins”. This was his words. He needed to know how to run the whole ship before he was considered qualified. He said something about if the man next to him had his dolphins meant a lot instead of if he didn’t

It was a fantastic tour, and a small glimpse of what our Navy personnel suffer through

And then there was the Brit nuke sub purchase disaster. Leave the Mil decisions to those who know!

Thanks for posting this, I'm always interested in touring this kind of stuff.

The abandoned NUK missile silo at Rapid City is worth taking a look at, if your ever down that way.

What astounded me, is that there a hole in the roof that they used to optically align the guidance system with the moon!!!

i think it’s neat, to see how our veterans did things.

Air shows, ship tours, I’m not sure what all is out there but I feel it’s important to connect with them somehow

 

[Tom Kitta]

"They only allowed pictures in the bow torpedo room, as the rest of the ship may contain technology still in use today on active war vessels."

God and I though Poland and her ancient subs was bad - Canada takes the cake. Besides Poland will get brand new subs in the next 10 years or less - current government has a psycho that was beat-up up by a Russian when they were a kid or something and constantly spends all the $$$ on weapons.

The design of the sub reminded me of Soviet Whiskey class from the 1950s/ 1960s which is directly based on the last German Nazi electro subs. Germans started to produce next generation of submarines in around mid 1943. Only two of these went on a combat patrol out of 4 ready and just *days* before the war was over. One of these did a practice run on British cruiser for fun like 24h after the war was over - went under it and was never detected. These new Nazi subs may not have turned the war around for Germany but would case lots and lots of allied casualties. Germany build 118 before war was done. We are lucky that at that time German industry was simply unable to quickly produce quality products. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_XXI_submarine

What made these subs next generation was that they were designed specifically for submerged combat while all previous versions were surface ships that could submerge. The difference was same as pre-dreadnought and post-dreadnought design - i.e. their introduction made all earlier subs obsolete overnight.

For example, they were twice as fast underwater as old subs.