Vyborg Coast Defense Ship (ex-Finnish Vainamoinen), 1947

Coast Defense Ship Vyborg, 1947
Vainamoinen was a Finnish coastal defence ship, the sister ship of the Finnish Navy"s flagship Ilmarinen and also the first ship of her class. She was built at the Crichton-Vulcan shipyard in Turku and was launched in 1932. Vainamoinen, as well as Ilmarinen were planned to be mobile coastal fortresses for the defence of the Finnish demilitarized islands at Aland in particular.
During the Winter War, the two coastal defence ships were transferred to the Aland islands to protect against invasion. When the ice cover started to become too thick in December, the ships were transferred to Turku, where their anti-aircraft artillery aided in the defence of the city.
The only time Vainamoinen and Ilmarinen fired their heavy artillery against an enemy was at the beginning of the Continuation War, during the Soviet Red Army evacuation of their base at the Hanko Peninsula. Vainamoinen also participated in the distraction manoeuvre Operation Nordwind on 13 September 1941, during the course of which her sister ship Ilmarinen was lost to mines.
In 1943 "Detachment Vainamoinen", which consisted of Vainamoinen, six VMV patrol boats and six motor mine sweepers, was moved east in to take positions along the coast between Helsinki and Kotka. She did not actively participate in many operations, since the heavier Soviet naval units never left Leningrad, where they were used to effect as floating batteries during the siege. As a result, Vainamoinens primary operational duties were to patrol the Gulf of Finland between the minefields "Seeigel" and "Nashorn", as well as protection of the German-Finnish anti-submarine net across the gulf.
After the end of the Continuation War it was decided to hand over the Vainamoinen as war reparations to the Soviet Union. The ship was handed over on May 29, 1947 to the Soviet Baltic Fleet, where it was renamed Vyborg. The ship served over 6 years in the Red Fleet at the Soviet base in Porkkala, Finland. The ship was called Vanya (a Russian short form of the name Ivan) by the sailors of the Baltic Fleet.
The Vyborg was modernized during the 1950s and served for a while as a residential ship in Tallinn. Preparations to scrap the ship were begun in 1958. During this time, there were talks to return the ship to Finland. The ship was, however, scrapped in 1966 at a Leningrad scrapyard. According to Soviet calculations, they received 2,700 tons of metal from the ship.
The Vyborg had the following paint job within the Soviet Fleet: above-water sides – dark grey; turrets, deckhouses, smoke-stack, mast, railing –light gray; upper deck – natural wood; superstructure and bridge covering – red-and-brown linoleum; compass tops and stern nameplate – bronze; waterline – red.