The Finnish Navy is one of the branches of the Finnish Defence Forces. The navy employs 2,300 people and about 4,300 conscripts are trained each year. Finnish Navy vessels are given the ship prefix "FNS", short for "Finnish Navy ship", but this is not used in Finnish language contexts. The Finnish Navy also includes coastal forces and coastal artillery.
A midget submarine is any submarine under 150 tons, typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to 6 or 9, with little or no on-board living accommodation. They normally work with mother ships, from which they are launched and recovered and which provide living accommodation for the crew and support staff.
The Mark 48 and its improved Advanced Capability (ADCAP) variant are American heavyweight submarine-launched torpedoes. They were designed to sink deep-diving nuclear-powered submarines and high-performance surface ships.
Minelaying is the act of deploying explosive mines. Historically this has been carried out by ships, submarines and aircraft. Additionally, since World War I the term minelayer refers specifically to a naval ship used for deploying naval mines. "Mine planting" was the term for installing controlled mines at predetermined positions in connection with coastal fortifications or harbor approaches that would be detonated by shore control when a ship was fixed as being within the mine's effective range.
Libyan Navy is the maritime force of Libya, established in November 1962. It is a fairly typical small navy with a few missile frigates, corvettes and patrol boats to defend the coastline, but with a very limited self-defence capability. The Navy has always been the smallest of Libya's services and has always been dependent on foreign sources for equipment, spare parts, and training.
The Mark 45 anti-submarine torpedo, a.k.a. ASTOR, was a submarine-launched wire-guided nuclear torpedo designed by the United States Navy for use against high-speed, deep-diving, enemy submarines. The 19-inch (480 mm)-diameter torpedo was fitted with a W34 nuclear warhead. The need to maintain direct control over the warhead meant that a wire connection had to be maintained between the torpedo and submarine until detonation. Wire guidance systems were piggybacked onto this cable, and the torpedo had no homing capability. The design was completed in 1960, and 600 torpedoes were built between 1963 and 1976, when ASTOR was replaced by the Mark 48 torpedo.
The Mark 37 torpedo is a torpedo with electrical propulsion, developed for the US Navy after World War II. It entered service with the US Navy in the early 1950s, with over 3,300 produced. It was phased out of service with the US Navy during the 1970s, and the stockpiles were sold to foreign navies.
Vetehinen was a 500-tonne Vetehinen-class submarine that was constructed in the early 1930s, which served in the Finnish Navy during the Second World War. The submarine was the first ship of its class of three submarines. The name vetehinen means "merman".
HMAS Otway was an Oberon-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). One of the first four Oberon-class boats ordered for the RAN, Otway was built in Scotland during the mid-1960s, and commissioned into naval service in 1968. The submarine was decommissioned in 1994. The submarine's upper casing, fin, and stern are preserved at Holbrook, New South Wales.
The Whitehead torpedo was the first self-propelled or "locomotive" torpedo ever developed. It was perfected in 1866 by Robert Whitehead from a design conceived by Giovanni Luppis of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. It was driven by a three-cylinder compressed air engine invented, designed, and made by Peter Brotherhood. Many naval services procured the Whitehead torpedo during the 1870s, including the US Navy. This early torpedo proved itself in combat during the Russo-Turkish War when, on January 16, 1878, the Turkish ship Intibah was sunk by Russian torpedo boats carrying Whiteheads, though this story has been disputed in one book.
EML Lembit is one of two Kalev-class mine-laying submarines built for the Republic of Estonia before World War II, and is now a museum ship in Tallinn. She was launched in 1936 at Vickers and Armstrongs Ltd., Barrow-in-Furness in England, and served in the Estonian Navy and the Soviet Navy. Until she was hauled out on 21 May 2011, Lembit was the oldest submarine still afloat in the world. Her sister ship, Kalev, was sunk in October 1941.
The Mark 27 torpedo was the first of the United States Navy 19-inch (48-cm) submarine-launched torpedoes. This electrically-propelled torpedo was 125 inches long and weighed 1174 pounds (534 kg). The torpedo employed a passive acoustic guidance system and was intended for both submarine and surface targets. Nicknamed "Cutie" by submarine crews, the Mark 27 entered service in 1943. The torpedo was classified as obsolete in the 1960s.
Щ-213 was a Soviet Navy Shchuka-class submarine, Type X. She was built at the Sudostroytelnyi zavod imeny 61 kommunara in Mykolaiv, Ukrainian SSR, and entered service in October 1938 with the Soviet Black Sea fleet.
United States Navy operations during World War I began on April 6, 1917, after the formal declaration of war on the German Empire. The American navy focused on countering enemy U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, while convoying men and supplies to France and Italy. Because of United States' late entry into the war, her capital ships never engaged the German fleet, and few decisive submarine actions occurred.
The O 19 class was a class of two submarines, built for the Royal Netherlands Navy by Fijenoord, Rotterdam. The ships were designed as submarine minelayer for operations in both European and colonies waters. The class comprised O 19 and O 20 and were the first submarines in the world to be equipped with a submarine snorkel that allowed the submarine to run its diesel engines while submerged. The submarines diving depth was 100 metres (330 ft). These units were very similar to earlier Polish Orzeł class, with a reduced torpedo battery and 10 vertical mine tubes fitted on each beam.
Louhi was a Finnish Navy minelayer. The ship was originally constructed for the Imperial Russian Navy but was taken over by the Finns during the Russian Civil War. She had originally been named Voin, but was renamed as M1 in Finnish service. In 1936 she was given the more personal name Louhi, following the procedure of all other major ships in the Finnish navy.
O 24, laid down K XXIV was an O 21-class submarine of the Royal Netherlands Navy that saw service during World War II. The most famous occupant of O-24 was Piet de Jong, who was the commanding officer from 1944 until 1946 and who later became Minister of Defence in 1963 and served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1967 until 1971.
HNLMS Onverschrokken (A856), also known as HNLMS Mercuur (A856), was an ocean minesweeper of the Royal Netherlands Navy. Between 1954 and 1965 she was mainly used to clean up a huge amount of explosives and mines that had ended up in the sea during the Second World War. Later, in 1973 she was renamed as HNLMS Mercuur (A856) and used as submarine support ship till her decommissioning in 1987. Nowadays, she is a museum ship that can be visited in Vlissingen.
