Everything about Finnish Coastal Defence Ship Ilmarinen totally explained
Ilmarinen was a
Finnish Navy Panssarilaiva ("Armored ship"), a
coastal defence ship by
British classification.
Ilmarinen was the flagship of the Navy. It was built at the
Crichton-Vulcan shipyard in
Turku,
Finland, and named after the
mythological hero
Ilmarinen from the
Kalevala.
Väinämöinen and
Ilmarinen were two of the most concentrated
naval artillery units ever built. They were designed by the Dutch company
NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw, and were optimized for operations in the archipelago areas of the
Baltic Sea. Their shallow draft and super-compact design however gave the ships poor performance in open sea.
Coastal defence ships were particularly popular in the
Nordic countries. These vessels had typically heavy
armament, rather good
armor protection, but generally slow speed. The story of this type of ships began in
Denmark,
Sweden and
Norway at the beginning of the 20th century. Their size was around 4,000 tons, main armament 210 or 240 mm, armor corresponding to that of
armoured cruisers and speed about 15 to 18 knots. A coastal defence ship was something between a cruiser and a
monitor: slower than a cruiser but better armed, faster than a monitor, but with smaller guns. The coastal defence ships had different types, some of them were close to cruisers and others, such as the Finnish ones, were closer to monitors.
The
Finnish Navy Act of 1927 allowed construction of two vessels. They were 3,900 ton ships with maximum length of 93 metres and draught of 4.50 metres. The main armament was four 254 mm guns and secondary armament eight 105 mm guns. Their maximum speed was only 14.5 knots. The vessels looked clumsy, a high mast and large turrets for main and secondary artillery. It is claimed that in
Spithead 1937 someone said: "
Finland is a mighty naval power. Even their
lightships have 10 inch guns". The sea-keeping qualities of coast defence ships were not too good, and they rolled too much. The rolling was slow and wide. Because of the large beam and shallow draft the ships were unpleasant, but not unsafe.
The purpose of coast defence ships was to prevent landing operations. Finland had a rather good chain of
coastal artillery batteries along its southern coast and mine fields would be laid when necessary. The purpose of Navy was to buy time for ground forces to deploy. In the confined archipelago coast defence ships with 254 mm main artillery would have been a tough opponent for any ship excluding battleships.
Operational history
Ilmarinen and her sister ship
Väinämöinen took part in the
Winter War. At the beginning of war, the ships protected
Åland Islands against possible invasion. During the winter the ships were anchored at
Turku harbour where they provided anti-aircraft support for the city.
During the
Continuation War the two ships shelled the Soviet base at
Hanko Peninsula on five occasions in July-November 1941.
They took part in
Operation Nordwind on
September 13 1941 in which German forces were to take the
Estonian islands of
Saaremaa and
Hiiumaa. A group of ships were to be used to deceive the Soviets. When returning from the mission,
Ilmarinen was hit by mines. Two sea mines had got entangled on the
paravane cable; when the ship turned, the mines hit the ship and were set off. The ship sunk in seven minutes. Only 132 men of the crew survived and 271 were lost. The survivors were later known as
Ilmarisen uimaseura (Ilmarinen Swimming Team). Amongst them was Lieutenant
Viljo Revell, later a famous architect.
The loss of
Ilmarinen is the greatest single loss of the Finnish Navy to date.
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Finnish Coastal Defence Ship Ilmarinen'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://finnish_coastal_defence_ship_ilmarinen.totallyexplained.com">Finnish coastal defence ship Ilmarinen Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
