What's life like on a submarine?

The Toti group included small sized vessels that were fit for the Mediterranean and characterized by advanced technical systems (phylo-guided torpedos with automathic serch heads).

For a hunting submarine like the Toti, “eyes” were crucial. Tthanks to a device capable of emitting and receiving ultrasonic waves (a hydrophonic –echogoniometric system) the Toti submarines could locate underwater objects.

In this guided tour, we explore the inside of the submarine. We start from the bow and move towards the engine room and the stern.

S-506 Enrico Toti Submarine is exhibited in the outdoor spaces of the Museum and can be seen externally by all visitors.

Torpedo room

You can tell that this is the only space where the crew could - strictly in turn - rest and eat, have fun and store the few personal items that each member could take on board.

However, this room had also a highly technical function: as you can guess from its name it hosted the torpedoes and the 4 launch tubes.

At the far end of the torpedo room you can see 4 round watertight doors.

The full armament of the submarine consisted of 8 torpedoes: 4 placed inside the launch tubes and 4 arranged on the two sides of the ship under the camp beds, resting on specific trolleys called "torpedo saddles".

To move the torpedoes inside the submarine the staff would slide the saddles along special rails and use a dedicated winch.

In the torpedo room, there are six camp beds on the right and six on the left, one above the other in pairs.

Ten fold into the wall and were assigned to non-commissioned officers and ordinary seamen.

Officers were assigned the two fixed ones.

These twelve bunks served twenty-four men who rested in turns.

No wonder this system is known as "hot racking".

Below the beds on the right hand side there are fold-in tables, while below the left ones you find fold-in and extractable stools.

Between a camp bed and the other you may notice some lockers. Some were personal (each crew member had one) while the others housed working equipment.

The kitchen

A small space where the cook could prepare the meals for the crew using three hot plates.

The control room

The control room is the heart of the submarine.

It is divided into two spaces: a corridor where we find some private facilities (restrooms, radio room, sonar room) and a larger space with numerous stations and instruments: the tactical table to plot courses, the helmsmen' bench, the periscope-technician station, the torpedo-launcher control pad.

The periscope

The periscope can be considered the submarine's symbol-tool.

Like all devices that protrude from the submarine's sail, it is used above water during navigation at periscope or snorkel depth, and - as everything else - it needs to be drawn back inside the submarine.

Since it is an almost 9-meter-long tube, it can not fit completely inside the sail and it must be housed in a "well" positioned just below.

By looking inside the Toti’s periscope one can see the bell-tower of the Basilica San Vittore al Corpo.

The Christmas tree

The Christmas tree is a control panel with a number of red and blue warning lights: if red lights are on it means that some external hatch doors are still open and that is dangerous to dive.

The helmsmen

The helmsmen find their position on the bench located right next to the periscope.

The helmsman who sat on the left was in charge of direction.

He used a vertical lever in front of him and followed the instructions of the navigator, as he couldn't see directly where he was going.

Next to him sat the helmsman in charge of depth navigation, who used two gauges.

The pulpit bench

The pulpit bench is used to control the amount of electrical current going to the engine.

It was very important to control the number of revolutions per minute of the electric engine.

Using a specific speed, the noise of the propeller could be decreased to a minimum, reducing the traceability of the ship.

The sonar room

The sonar room is probably the most representative room in a submarine.

Submarines have a special apparatus that allows them to understand who is around them while remaining hidden under water: this tool is the sonar, and in particular the passive sonar, the one that uses hydrophones to capture the noise normally produced by a running engine or by a propeller in motion.

The sonar operator working in the sonar room would interpret the sounds picked up by the instruments and give them an identity.

Engine room

When the diesel engines were switched on, this space became extreamly hot and noisy.

Diesel engines were activated only when navigating on the surface, to recharge the batteries feeding the electric engine and all instruments on board, and to provide the energy needed for lighting.

The electric engine

At the far end of the room you can also see the electric engine, the onboard system that powered the propeller and moved the submarine.

Written on the muzzles of the diesel generators you can see the words "Turiddu" and "Ianuzzu".

They are the nick names of the two 1040HP FIAT MB 820 generators.

They are Sicilian diminutives, assigned to the two engines to pay homage to the Sicily region that housed the submarine.

They were also used to playfully identify the right and left side of the ship.