![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/IBJaakarhu_zps64fa8394.png~original)
As promised per my New AU thread, I plan to introduce the remakes of the real life ships I've been working on for that project. Here something that I've not yet posted in the thread, but decided that she deserves introduction here first.
Jääkarhu was designed by Finnish engineers and build in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1924-1926. She was the biggest and most powerfull icebreaker then operated by Finland, and the pride and flagship of our icebreaker fleet. She was only one capable of breaking drift wide enough for large ocean going merchantmen to pass. During the Wartime she served as part of the Navy and as all other modern ships, she was demanded as warreparations by Soviet Union and handed over in 1944, renamed Sibrajkov and served in Baltic until 1971. At that time it was painfull blow to our winter navigation needs, along with the other three powerfull ice breakers, that were confiscated, but in retroperspective the loss dictated us to build up an own icebreaker industry to supplement the losses, and that branch had remained the backbone of our shipbuilding to this date. The same hindsigth applies to the other war reparation production that Soviets imposed upon us. Jääkarhu thus symbolises in her own role the painfull transistion of our economical structure to the one we have managed to maintain up now.
I plan to draw the other major pre-war icebreakers as well, but since Finland lacks any meaningfull maritime tradition, all information and references are usually non-existant or sparsed out into myriads of small publications that no one is keeping in categorised collection. There simply isen't good linedrawings of those vessels (or any Finnish vessels in general) aviable on internet, and this one was something supplied to me by ALAVAMA, thanks to her beeing Dutch build. Many thanks to Alavama for that.
/rant
PS. The name "Jääkarhu" literally translates as Icebear, which is the term we call polar bears.
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