|
|
The Navy
The third hall is dedicated to the Royal
Danish Navy. At the entrance is a photomontage of the catastrophe that overtook the
regular ship service to Copenhagen on 11th June 1948. On that day the liner S/S
KJØBENHAVN struck a magnetic mine, even though she followed a mine-swept channel. 48
passengers and crew members were killed. Magnetic mines detonate when influenced by the
magnetic field of a passing ship, thereby creating blast waves which ”break the
back” of the passing ship. During World War II Allied aircraft dropped large numbers
of mines into Danish waters by parachute. Below the photomontage you see such a magnetic
mine.
Next to the mine the periscope of a submarine is installed. Visitors are welcome to use it
to survey the area around the museum.
In the first part of the hall our decompression chambers and various diving gear are
placed. The large decompression chamber, among the first to be built in Europe, was
constructed in 1902 at the Royal Dock Yard in Copenhagen. It was used by the Navy until
1990, first at the Naval Diving School, Copenhagen until 1960 and later at the new Naval
Base in Frederikshavn. The chamber has been modified several times. In 1960 a so-called
”NATO lock” was welded to the chamber, making it possible to connect it to a
portable pressure tank. The smaller portable decompression chambers in the collection were
all privately owned and can not be connected to the larger chamber.
Decompression chambers are used in the treatment of decompression sickness (also known as
the bends), which is caused by the development of nitrogen bubbles in the blood of a diver
who surfaces too quickly. In the chamber, the pressure can be regulated to simulate the
depth from which the diver surfaced. During the treatment in the chamber, the diver is
given oxygen, which removes the nitrogen from his blood. A doctor will usually be present
in the chamber during the treatment. Next to the decompression chambers gear for
skin-diving as well as for deep sea diving are exhibited.
In the middle of the hall is a glass cabinet with uniforms and insignias from the Royal
Danish Navy.
In this room you see a number of models of past and present ships of the Danish Navy. In
the show-case along the wall you will see models of ships from the first half of the last
century, such as the coastal defence ship, NIELS JUEL, which was sunk by its crew in the
Isefiord on 29th August 1943 after being attacked by German aircraft. The NIELS JUEL was a
strange ship. On the armoured deck the guns were placed on a superstructure made of thin
sheets of steel, rendering her totally unfit as a warship.
From the present you will see a model of the corvette NIELS JUEL. Together with her two
sister ships, she took part in UN peacekeeping operations in the Persian Gulf and the
Adriatic. There are also models of torpedo boats of the WILLEMOES-class and of the new
STANDARD-FLEX-class. The latter were built at Danyard in Aalborg in a fibre glass
sandwich-construction. This class of ships is based on the fundamental concept that
operational flexibility can be achieved using rapidly exchangeable, modular systems
matching a variety of roles. This concept will in the future also be used when building
larger ships for the Navy.
In this hall you see some old guns as well as a ship-to-air missile, the SEA SPARROW,
hanging down from the ceiling. On the walls are photographs of ships of the Danish Navy
after World War II and Danish naval bases. Former sailors will probably recognise several
of the pictures. A showcase holds a collection of special Christmas ashtrays produced by
Royal Copenhagen for the Danish Navy.
At the end of the hall we have placed a ship's radio station side by side to a chart room
which contains among other things a chart table, Decca and satellite navigation equipment,
an anemometer and a weather chart machine.
Leaving the hall you see a beautiful model of the Danish training ship DANMARK as it
looked when it was launched in 1932. |
 |
|
|