Vesikko
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The Vesikko is a submarine of the Finnish Navy from the Second World War , which today serves as the museum ship of the Finnish War Museum . It was a prototype of the German submarine class II and was ordered on October 9, 1930 by the Dutch office IvS in The Hague. The construction took place according to a German design in the Crichton Vulcan shipyard in Turku , construction supervision was carried out by IvS. After being launched on May 10, 1933, the Reichsmarine took test drives , and on April 30, 1934 it was put into service by the Finnish Navy.
Origin of name
The Vesikko was one of five submarines that served in the Finnish Navy. The other four were the three larger boats Vetehinen, Vesihiisi and Iku-Turso (named after Finnish mythological characters from the Kalevala ) of the "Vetehinen class" and the small Saukko (Finnish for otter). The word vesikko is the Finnish name for the European mink .
prehistory
As early as 1922, the "Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw", an engineering office for shipbuilding under German control, was opened in The Hague in the Netherlands in order to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Treaty :
- Article 190:
- " Germany is forbidden to build or acquire any warships, except to replace the units in service in accordance with Article 181 of the present treaty ... "
- Article 181:
- " After a period of two months from the entry into force of the present contract, the German naval forces in service may not exceed: 6 battleships of the Germany or Lorraine class, 6 small cruisers, 12 destroyers, 12 torpedo boats or an equal number of Ships built to replace them, as provided for in Article 190. Submarines may not be included. All other warships must be decommissioned or used for commercial purposes unless the present treaty provides otherwise. "
Orders from Spain, Finland and Turkey enabled the German specialists to further develop their knowledge. In addition, the client did not have submarine drivers, which made it possible to carry out the test drives with German personnel.
The boat served as a direct prototype (CV-707) for the German class IIA . In 1933 and 1934, the German Reichsmarine carried out experiments in the archipelago of the Turku archipelago. In 1934 the Finnish Navy bought the boat and named it Vesikko .
War effort
From 1936 to 1939 the Vesikko carried out patrols and maneuvers in the Gulf of Finland in conjunction with other submarines . In July 1941, after the start of the German-Soviet war and the Finnish-Soviet continuation war, the Soviet freighter Vyborg (4,100 GRT) was torpedoed and sunk in the eastern Gulf of Finland.
In 1942 and 1943 the Vesikko again patrolled the Gulf of Finland and the northern Baltic Sea, but no longer hit targets with torpedoes. The Soviet Baltic Fleet was stuck in Leningrad at this time due to network barriers and minefields.
After the start of the Soviet offensive in 1944, the Vesikko was called to the seas off Leningrad to shield Finnish merchant ships. On September 19, 1944, the boat was moved back to the naval base and was last used as a warship in December.
After the war
According to the provisions of the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 , the submarine was decommissioned and demilitarized. Finland was banned from owning submarines and the country had to surrender all of its submarines to Belgium as reparations, except for the Vesikko .
The wreck lay in the harbor for years and was finally offered for sale to everyone on October 21, 1959. War veterans and the Naval Museum then campaigned for the boat to be preserved as a museum. It was dismantled, transported to the fortress island of Suomenlinna off Helsinki and reassembled there in 1962. The boat can be visited as a museum ship since July 9, 1973.
Web links
Coordinates: 60 ° 8 ′ 33.1 ″ N , 24 ° 59 ′ 22.5 ″ E