The Last Armadillos
Having achieved independence, the brainchild of Baron Carl Gustaf Mannerheim was well aware of its own vulnerability – the Finns had a huge border with the USSR, and while the north was saved by the wild impassability of roads, the south... In the south, everything was bad, since the coast of the country there was washed by the Gulf of Finland, and fleet The USSR had it much better than the beautiful Suomi, on whose gates the Red Army was always ready to knock (fortunately, the Finns themselves provided reasons - a train car and a small cart).
Mine cruiser "Voevoda", also known as the Finnish "Mati Kurki"
From the coast artillery Mannerheim and company were lucky: they got the batteries of the Russian naval fortress of Peter the Great: about thirty guns of 254 mm caliber and fifty six-inch guns. There was also a larger caliber: eight barrels of 305 mm caliber in four batteries.
But with the ships, everything was really sad! During the Ice Campaign, the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Aleksey Shchastny, managed to transfer the main part of the Baltic Fleet from Helsinki to Kronstadt: 6 battleships, 5 cruisers, 59 destroyers, 12 submarines and other small stuff – a total of 236 units.
The Finns were left with nothing but scrap metal, the most valuable of which were the minelayers Posadnik and Voevoda – ancient 450-ton pyroscaphes, in service since 1892, armed with 6x47-mm guns, 2x37-mm five-barrel guns (both from the Hotchkiss company), and a three-tube deck torpedo launcher, with a speed of 21–22 knots, which is ridiculous for a destroyer (which did not prevent them from serving the Finns until the 50s).
In general, the "independent" Finns had to build a fleet from scratch. Fortunately, there was something to build on: the Russian Empire left a fairly good shipbuilding industry as a legacy to the "fledglings of Mannerheim's nest", in particular, the Crichton-Vulcan shipyard used by the Imperial Navy was capable of building good ships. True, there was a lack of experience in designing them, but here the "Dutch" (in fact, German, registered in Holland to circumvent the Versailles restrictions) NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw helped.
In 1919, five naval construction programs were proposed for consideration, but all of them were rejected due to their complete inadequacy.
For example, the Navy Commission headed by Captain 1st Rank Gustav von Schultz proposed building 4 turbine destroyers, 8 torpedo boats, 4 medium submarines with a floating base, a training ship and several boats. And that was still modest! Because the commander of the Finnish fleet, Hjalmar von Bonsdorf, proposed building 4 monitors, 4 reconnaissance ships, 2 minelayers, 4 large submarines, 4 small gunboats, 9 large and 36 small torpedo boats, 6 patrol ships and 2 training ships!
Oscar Enkel. Still in Russian uniform...
Realizing that these sailors were planning something that would ruin the country's economy, local legislators created a new commission, headed by Army General Oskar Enckell. It reviewed one of the plans, which called for the construction of small artillery ships: 8 large and 4 small gunboats, 6 turbine destroyers, 6 small submarines with a floating base, a training ship, and two minelayers. The "large" gunboats were to have a displacement of 700 tons, 100 mm armor, and carry two large guns: one 234 mm caliber and one six-inch.
Subsequently, the enormity of the plans infected this commission as well – the gunboats’ displacement was increased to 1 tons, and the caliber of both guns was set to 200 mm. Now these were not gunboats, but coastal defense battleships!
True, this commission also got carried away! In 1922, a draft of the national shipbuilding program was formulated: 6 coastal defense battleships, 6 destroyers, 48 torpedo boats, 16 submarines...
In the end, when the project was presented to the parliamentary defense committee, it "cut the sturgeon." Over eight years, the fleet was planned to include three coastal defense battleships, two small destroyers, six submarines (four of which were small), 3 torpedo boats, two minelayers, and one floating base.
The performance characteristics of all ships were also cut. Except for battleships: now they had to have a displacement of 2 tons, carry 450x2-mm guns, 210x3-mm guns and 120x4-mm anti-aircraft guns.
In general, among all this diversity, the only thing that remained unchanged was the presence of armadillos.
It could be said that this was the influence of neighboring Sweden, in whose Navy these ships were present, but most likely it was the nature of the future theater of operations: in the Finnish skerries, the monitor is the most optimal combat ship. Small, with a shallow draft, but well armored and with powerful artillery: it will not have to go across the Atlantic, and the ability to pass through a narrow, shallow strait between the islands is worth a lot in war!
The consideration of alternative projects (and as many as seven were put forward!) dragged on until 1927. By that time, the next parliament had approved an even more truncated program, which included: two coastal defense battleships with a displacement of 3 tons, 800 million marks each, three medium and one small submarine (100 million and 30 million marks respectively), four torpedo boats at 8 million marks, and a training ship worth 2,5 million marks.
As a result, the battleships cost more than the entire remaining fleet combined!
The General Staff ended the disputes over the artillery armament of the battleships by issuing a directive establishing 254 mm Bofors guns as the main caliber, thereby unifying the caliber with the guns that were installed on the coastal batteries. However, the side armor of the ships had to be reduced from 100 mm to 55 mm.
In 1928, the project of the German-Dutch company NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw was finally approved, and the Finnish shipyard Creighton-Vulcan was chosen as the builder. Each battleship cost the Finnish budget 113,5 million marks.
It must be said that ordering ships abroad would have been somewhat cheaper, but the Finns chose to support their own manufacturer. Well, not really their own: they bought artillery from the Swedes and the British, diesel engines from the Germans, generators, electric motors and everything else from the Swiss.
Coastal defense battleship Vainamöinen
The first ship, Vainamöinen, was laid down on 15 October 1929 and entered service on Christmas Day, 31 December 1932. Its sister ship, Ilmarinen, was laid down on 1 September 1929, but took longer to build and was accepted into the Finnish Navy on 3 September 1933.
The ships turned out to be frankly successful! Finnish shipbuilders used an original scheme for the main power plant for surface ships: diesel-electric. Two diesel generators with a capacity of 3 horsepower each fed two large electric motors. This ensured quick switching between forward and reverse speeds – an important quality in the skerries. When switching from “full speed ahead” to “full speed astern,” the ships traveled only 000 meters.
10 inches? That's impressive!
The ships' artillery consisted of 4x254-mm main caliber guns, firing 30,3 km at a rate of 3 rounds per minute with 225-kg shells. The ammunition load was 65 rounds per gun, the ammunition included armor-piercing, high-explosive, high-explosive fragmentation and practice shells.
Auxiliary caliber...
The auxiliary artillery was represented by eight 105-mm Bofors guns in four twin mounts, covered by 12-mm armor shields.
Initially, the main task of these installations was to fire at torpedo boats and destroyers, but during the modernization in 1938, the gun elevation angle was increased to 85 degrees and fire control devices were installed, which made the installations universal. They could fire at a rate of 12 rounds per minute at a distance of up to 102 cables and at a height of up to 11 meters. However, the gun drives were exclusively manual, so the guidance speed left much to be desired, and this made it difficult to track high-speed air targets.
However, the battleships also had specialized anti-aircraft guns: 4x40-mm anti-aircraft guns from the Vickers company and 2x20-mm guns from the Madsen company. But the Vickers proved unreliable, and in 1940 they were replaced by 40-mm Bofors guns: two single-barreled and one twin-barreled. The rate of fire of these guns was low: 120 rounds per minute (the Vickers had 200), the firing range was 6 meters, and the altitude reach was 000 meters. The 4-mm anti-aircraft gun from the Madsen company had a maximum firing range of 000 meters and an altitude reach of 20 meters. By 3, the number of these guns reached eight. aviation developed rapidly, and Defense couldn't keep up with her.
The fire control devices were developed by the Dutch company Hatzemeir. They were located in five posts: the conning tower, the sighting section of the fore-topsail, the central artillery post and the aggregate post. The artillery officer had at his disposal a central aiming sight and a 6-meter rangefinder from Zeiss, which measured distances from 2 to 500 meters. Exactly the same rangefinder was located on the fore-topsail, at a height of 50 meters. Such a high location of the rangefinder ensured firing at a distance of more than 000 cables.
Dream mast!
A characteristic feature of the battleships was the massive mast, which allowed the ships to fire from a closed position, hidden behind low islands, of which there are a great many in the Finnish skerries.
The battleships also had some semblance of computers: calculating machines that generated data for firing at a distance of up to 167 cables at targets moving at speeds of up to 40 knots.
In the main caliber turret
The ships turned out to be well-balanced and quite powerful for their displacement. Their main caliber artillery was inferior in power only to the Soviet battleships, significantly surpassing the Project 26 cruisers in terms of projectile weight - 225 kg versus 97 kg (though significantly inferior to the MK-3-180 in firing range and rate of fire).
But the participation of these ships in wars was... controversial.
During the Finnish War, the battleships stood in Turku, disguised with white camouflage as two large snowdrifts. They were bombed constantly, but they were never hit, losing eight aircraft to air defense fire - the 16x105-mm universal guns showed themselves very well in repelling air raids.
"Vainemäinen" fires its main caliber
In 1941, Finnish coastal defense battleships repeatedly fired at the Hanko naval base. They acted with impunity, since there were no bombers at the base, and the torpedo boats had left for Kronstadt.
But already on September 13, the battleships, under the protection of torpedo boats, set out to shell Soviet positions on the island of Dago. On the return, the Ilmarinen caught a Soviet mine with its stern, capsized and sank within 8 minutes. 13 officers, 11 midshipmen, 65 petty officers and 182 sailors died on the ship, 132 people were saved, including the fleet commander and the ship's commander, Captain 2nd Rank Ragnar Göranson.
The Sinking of the Ilmarinen as Depicted by Soviet Artists
The Vainemäinen, left alone under the command of Captain 3rd Rank Olavi Koivisto, did not take part in combat until 1944 – the Baltic Fleet was locked in the Gulf of Finland. And in 1947, the Paris Peace Treaty was signed, according to which Finland was prohibited from having coastal defense battleships, submarines and torpedo boats in its fleet.
In general, the ship was bought from the Finns by the Soviet Union, and as part of the Baltic Fleet, Vainemäinen served under the name Vyborg until 1966, when it was dismantled for scrap metal.
"Ilmarinen" on a visit to Denmark 1933
One often reads about the invulnerability of the Vainamöinen, which the Soviet Air Force tried to bomb until the very end of the war (sinking the air defense cruiser Niobe instead). Well, its invulnerability is explained simply: after the loss of the Ilmarinen, the Finns avoided operations involving the remaining battleship – they did not want to lose a second flagship in the war. If the Vainamöinen had shown any activity, its fate would not have been so favorable.
Nevertheless, both the ship design and the class should be recognized as quite successful. The fact is that the very fact of its existence forced the Soviet command to divert the forces of the Baltic Fleet (mainly aviation, but reconnaissance should not be forgotten) to solve the problem of its destruction. A classic case of fleet in being!
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