FNS Pohjanmaa has a distinguished place in the modern naval history of Finland.
She was not only a minelayer but also a school for many Finnish sailors.
The vessel also served as the flagship for the navy for many years and waved the Blue
Cross Flag in overseas operations.
Now, we are investigating FNS Pohjanmaa, one of the most successful Finnish-built naval
ships.
Please don't forget to subscribe to our channel before we start, and give us a thumbs up if
you like our video.
To be notified of our new video, please click the bell button.
Also, you can now click the join button to support our channel.
And as always, we would greatly appreciate all the likes, comments, and shares.
FNS Pohjanmaa was a little-known naval ship.
But, she has great importance in the history of the Finnish Navy.
This vessel was a fine example of the minelayers, a fading term in modern naval literature.
To better understand FNS Pohjanmaa, we should briefly look at the minelayers and the impact
of the sea mine first.
After the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy gained unarguable supremacy against its
rivals for over a century.
But, the overwhelming British dominance on the seas also sparked new ideas.
One of them was the sea mines, whose early modern examples were developed by the Russian
in 1812.
They were efficient for blocking the passageways of warships in narrow straits and preventing
them from entering coastal waters.
The sea mines heavily damaged HMS Merlin on June 9, 1855, during the unsuccessful attempt
of the Anglo-French fleet to seize the Kronstadt fortress.
It was the first in modern naval history.
Since then, the low-cost sea mines have become a new hope for many countries under the threat
of the gunship policy of major Western powers.
They have repeatedly proved their both tactic and strategic value.
For example, the sea mines layered by the Ottoman minelayer Nusret turned the 1915 Dardanelles
campaign into a disaster and changed the course of the First World War.
During the Tanker War of 1984 to 1988 and the 1991 Gulf War, several US warships also
became their victims.
Even though modern navies are now using surface combatants, submarines, aircraft, and civil
ships, initially many countries had the designated minelayer to lay sea mines.
Finland, which declared its independence in 1917, took over a minelayer built for the
Imperial Russian Navy.
She was named Voin and became one of the first vessels of the Finnish Navy, founded in 1918.
This vessel, which was renamed FNS Louhi in 1936, conducted many critical minelaying operations
in the Winter War and the Continuation War.
Her success paved the way for the commissioning of two Ruotsinsalmi-class vessels by the Finnish
Navy in 1940 and 1941.
During the Second World War, the sea mines laid by these three ships were responsible
for the loss of many Soviet ships.
They also performed many other duties, such as escorting, minesweeping, submarine hunting,
and supplying submarines.
The USSR, which had seriously suffered from the Finnish minelayers, included a clause
in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that would prevent Finland from using sea mines.
Also, this country would have a naval force of no more than 10,000 tons and 4,500 men.
But later, the restrictions were eased, and Finland commissioned a 360-ton minelayer FNS
Keihässalmi in 1957.
This small-size ship was the heir of the Ruotsinsalmi-class.
Yet, the Finnish Navy, which had a deep-rooted and successful minelayer tradition, also desired
to have the inheritor of the legendary FNS Louhi.
FNS Pohjanmaa was created to make this desire come true.
The design works were completed in 1976.
She was laid down on May 4, 1978, launched on August 28, 1978, and commissioned on June
8, 1979.
FNS Pohjanmaa was a pretty big and very seaworthy ship by Finnish standards.
It was unusual to have such a vessel for Finland, which had optimized its navy to operate in
the archipelago, not in the blue sea.
Still, the cost-effective ships with multi-mission capability have also been a natural choice
for small-populated countries like Finland.
Besides creating a 150-mine minefield at a time, FNS Pohjanmaa could also perform the
escort and command duties.
Her hull-mounted Simrad active, high-frequency sonars, rails for depth charges and the RBU-1200
rocket launchers gave the ship a considerable anti-submarine warfare capability for its
time.
The minelayer's big cargo bay was suitable for transporting troops and supplies.
Besides, FNS Pohjanmaa was serving as a training ship.
She looked like an auxiliary vessel rather than a surface combatant.
So, she was an ideal naval platform for Finland not to provoke the Soviet Union.
FNS Pohjanmaa had a steel hull, which was Ice Class 1A ice-strengthened.
The vessel could break up to 40 millimetres of ice.
The ship, fitted with a bow thruster, had two controllable pitch propellers, which provided
excellent manoeuvrability.
There was a helicopter flight deck aft but no hangar, which made her the first vessel
with aviation capability in the Finnish Navy.
Still, the ship mostly operated the helicopter for re-supplying rather than other military
duties.
According to Jane's Fighting Ships, the complement of FNS Pohjanmaa was 90-person.
She had a length of 78.2 metres, a beam of 11.6 metres, and a draught of 3 metres.
The vessel's standard displacement was 1,000 tons, while her fully loaded displacement
was 1,100 tons.
The propulsion system of FNS Pohjanmaa consisted of two 3,150 horsepower Wärtsilä-Vasa 16V22
diesel engines, two controllable pitch propellers and a bow thruster.
Her maximum speed was 19 knots.
The ship had a range of nearly 6,500 kilometres, in other words, 3,500 nautical miles.
Initially, FNS Pohjanmaa had one 120mm L/46 TAK 120 mm, two 40mm SAK 40L/70-350, four
2x23mm twin-barrel ZU-23 Sako guns, two RBU-1200 five-barrel anti-submarine rocket launchers,
and two rails for depth charges.
The ship could lay 120 to 150 sea mines.
FNS Pohjanmaa had impressive gun firepower.
One of the reasons the ship had so many different anti-aircraft guns was that it would also
be used as a training ship.
The water-cooled TAK 120mm L/46 had a range of 18.5 kilometres range and it could fire
80 rounds per minute.
Its three-person crew consisted of one operator and two loaders.
The gun had two feed tables, each holding six rounds, located on the sides of the automatic
loader and beneath the ammunition compartments.
It could be fed from either magazine.
After the modernization between 1996 and 1998, the 57mm SAK Mk1 replaced the 120mm TAK 120mm
L/46.
The new gun had a rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute and a maximum range of 17,000 metres.
There were six racks for the 103mm illumination rockets on both gun turrets.
The Bofors 40mm SAK 40L/70-350 had a practical rate of fire of 300 rounds per minute.
Its maximum range was 12,500 metres against surface targets and 6,900 metres for air targets.
During the modernization, FNS Pohjanmaa's 40mm second aft gun was removed due to the
installation of a new hydraulic crane for a new rigid-hulled inflatable boat.
The ZU-23-Sako, a.k.a Sergei, was the Finnish-built naval variant of the ZU-23-2, and it had a
practical rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute for each barrel.
The range of these manually-operated anti-aircraft guns was 2 kilometres for surface targets
and 1.5 kilometres for air targets.
Later, the 12.7mm NSV machine guns replaced the forward 23mm guns.
The ZU-23-Sako guns could be replaced by the Mistral MANPADS launchers on demand.
The range of this infrared homing missile with Mach 2.6 speed was over 6 kilometres.
It had a 2.95-kilogram high explosive warhead with high-density tungsten balls.
Initially, FNS Pohjanmaa had two RBU-1200 five-barrel anti-submarine rocket systems.
Its full salvo took 12 seconds.
The RGB-12 rocket of the RBU-1200 could create a kill zone of ​​5 meters in diameter
at a depth of 300 meters.
It had a 34-kilogram warhead and a range of 1,200 meters.
These launchers were removed during the modernization.
Initially, FNS Pohjanmaa had been designed to lay the Stonefish sea mines with a 500-kilogram
warhead.
Later, she was modified for the Merimiina 2000s.
These stealthy sea mines were hard to be detected and could carry 80 to 650 kilograms of charges
or torpedoes.
Some Finnish sources claim that the minelaying system of FNS Pohjanmaa was one of the best
of its time, which enabled her to make a very accurate minelaying.
It was a critical capability.
In case of war, the Soviet warships could not have sailed from Leningrad without conducting
an extensive minesweeping operation in the Gulf of Finland.
It would have been a difficult task.
The Soviet warships would have to escort the mine warfare vessel.
But, they could not have easily manoeuvred near a minefield, which made them easy prey
for the Finnish fighters, coastal missile and gun batteries and missile boats.
Besides, FNS Pohjanmaa would have laid the sea mines in the entrance of the Gulf of Bothnia
to deny the Soviet naval operations in the region, which was vital to supply Finland
in a possible war.
Of course, she could not engage in open battles with Soviet warships in the Gulf of Finland.
But, this vessel had enough firepower to escort supply ships, especially in the Gulf of Bothnia.
FNS Pohjanmaa was also a school for many Finnish sailors.
During such missions, she typically carried additional up to 70 trainees.
Before her, Suomen Joutsen, a government-owned steel-hulled full-rigged ship with three square-rigged
masts, and FNS Matti Kurki, a converted British Bay-class frigate, had trained the cadets.
Like her predecessors, FNS Pohjanmaa performed training cruises far seas annually.
She went as far as Belém, Brazil.
Just like her predecessor Suomen Joutsen, FNS Pohjanmaa went on a trip around the world
on May 10, 1982.
FNS Pohjanmaa became the first Finnish naval vessel to participate in an oversea operation.
She served in Operation Atalanta in 2011.
On April 6 of that year, FNS Pohjanmaa's crew captured a pirate flagship and two boats and
arrested 18 Somalian pirates.
The Finnish conscripts gave her the nickname Puuhamaa, a well-known amusement park in Finland.
Until she was decommissioned in 2013, FNS Pohjanmaa had been the flagship of the Finnish
Navy.
Later, Estonia and Croatia intended to purchase this highly successful minelayer.
But, these attempts were never realized.
On December 18, 2015, it was announced that FNS Pohjanmaa would be sold for scrap.
But, one year later, the Finnish state-owned shipping company Meritaito decided to buy
her.
The armament of the ship has been removed.
She is now a survey vessel called Pohjanmeri.
If you happen to be in Finland, you might still see her.
FNS Pohjanmaa was like a swiss army knife.
Her combat capability was too low to make the Soviet Baltic Fleet anxious.
But, she was also sharp enough to hurt Finland's enemies.
The FNS Pohjanmaa was not only a minelayer but a versatile naval vessel that could meet
many other needs.
This ship was a true legend in its class.
Thanks for watching our video.
And please don't forget to subscribe to our channel and click the bell button to be notified
of our new videos.
Also, you can now click the join button to support our channel.
And as always, we would greatly appreciate all the likes, comments, and shares.