Shipbucket

now, continuing with the Ex Tsarist warships that continued their career untill World War II:




Turunmaa and Karjala were part of small multipurpose ships that Russians build in large series in several shipyards and into several designs, that propably deserves lot more attention, had most of their actuall careers been so short. The first series of 340 ton ships build in Crichton Vulcan yards at Turku consisted four vessels, of which two served in Finnish navy, after been sized by the Whites during the civil war, and they never entered Russian navies. Two other ships ended up in Poland. They were universally descriped as poor seaboats with underpowered machinery and poor seakeeping. Still both served untill the Post war Minesweeping period was over and were laid up in 1951. During WWII, both took heavy punishment in various occasions, but were always repaired.



M.1, and later Louhi was Minelayer with also rather mediocore performance, and was more of Auxillary nature, and thus served most of its time as Depot and training ship. During the WWII, she was actively used as minelayer and She sunk in january 1945 after hitting mine outside Hanko.



Rautu and Vilppula were pair of Minesweepers of the Udarnik class, closely following the legendary Fugas class. They also were notorius of their poor engine output and bad seakeeping, but remained in Finnish service for the WWII, despite mostly used as depot ships or simply moothballed in reserve during the 20's and 30's. Vilppula was sunk in 1944 by Soviet Bomber in Porkkala and Rautu was decommisioned after the Post War minesweeping campaing in 1952, serving as depot and supply ships for smaller boats.



Pommi presents here group of small minelayers that Russians left in Finland in 1918. Pommi and Miina were of bigger subgroup and rest 3 were smaller (ill hope to return to them, once I find more source material). They mostly survived WWII and last were decommisioned in 1952



Last (for this round), but not least, the A-class, or as the series of small motorboats of Russian Imperial Fleet were called, after they had been gathered into service in Finnish navy. About 70 of such vessels were taken over in 1918, but after the 1920 Treaty, only 23 remained. Most of them made it to the WWII, serving as auxillary minesweepers and liason and dispatch boats, and two even served during the Minesweeping period, but only for the first 1944-1945 season.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Fantastic work! Lovely to see these, lovely colours and shading too.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Excellent drawings!

In 1922 Finnish Navy managed to sort of reclaim two large netlayers of the Russian Golub class, that were Building on Helsinki's Hietalahti yard during the Great War. After Finnish Civil War, the germans confiscated two these ships (either in Helsinki or In Tallin) where they had nominally joined the Bolshevik fleets, but each source seems to differ little bit of these details. In either 1922 or 1920 (again different sources says other) they were finaly given to Finland and named Hämeenmaa and Uusimaa. Two other ships that had completed in 1916 served in the Soviet navy and four other, that completed in 1919 eventually ended up into Chile via German Company who had sized these ships and to whoms actions the Finnish goverment was reclutant to intervene (despite aquiring four additional vessels of these type would have multiblied the fightin potential of Finnish navy several times.)



In Finnish navy they recieved new bridges and were the most powerfull vessels upon completition of the Armoured ships in the early 1930's. Even then, during the WWII, they proved the de facto fighting potential of the Finnish navy, as the armoured ships remained mostly as fleet-in-beeing.



By 1941 they had recieved two 40mm Bofors mounts and single 20mm Madsen in addition to the 102mm/60 Obuhonov guns and both were extensively camoflaged in rather arbitary patterns. [I have no idea of the actual colors, and in various attempts of other artist, the shades varies between grey and green. This is my best quess work]



After beeing damaged in the Battle of Someri Island in 1941, Hämeenmaa recieved new gunmounts of unspesified type for its main guns, as well as changed pattern of its camoflage. Sources for the actuall shape of the mounts is bit murky, no good detailed close-up havent yet surfaced, and no actuall mention of this exist in the literacy. After this Hämeenmaa appears in few other camoflage patterns in 1943 and 1944, but I have no good base to work on them yet.



By 1944 both Uusimaa and Hämeenmaa had recieved German 105mm Sk.32 mounts in place of the old obuhonovs. At what point did extra pair of 20mm Madsens appear on them, I dont know, Ive only seen this setting on post war fit, when the searchlight had been disposed and radio-mirror added. After the war, they still served in the minsweeping period, after wich they were almost completely worn out. During the war they recieved damage on multiple occasions, most severly in 1944 evacuation of Viipurilahti and around 1950 they were disarmed and scrapped in 1953.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Great work. Looking forward to see more.

Great stuff.

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Usefull Golly ?, included colorised view

Yea thats the usuall arrange of pictures.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Going on with rather chaotich chronology, here is Väinämöinen in her 1940 guise. This is older drawing recolored and retouched. At somepoint of their career, both CDS got bilge keels, but Ive yet to find out what exact date, so I presume that they are not yet installed. After ive researched more, Ill return with the other renditions of her and her sister ship Ilmarinen, and those bilge keels.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

That's a very nice repaint and edit. Shows how far things have evolved in SB scale.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft