Finnish Air Force 2024

Описание: Before Finland became an independent state, military aviation in Finnish territory was conducted by the Imperial Russian Air Service.

Development of Finnish military aviation was sparked by the commencement of hostilities between the Finnish Red Guards and the Whites commanded by General C.G.E. Mannerheim in January 1918, after the Russian revolution.

Late in the winter of 1918, the Whites received aircraft as donations from Sweden, and it is the air troops equipped with these planes that constituted the foundation for the Finnish Air Force. The first of these aircraft to reach Finland, arriving in late February that year, was a NAB Type 9 Albatros, a reconnaissance and training plane; however, its ferry flight to Vaasa was cut short at Pietarsaari by engine failure.

Thus, it is the Thulin typ D reconnaissance plane that is generally credited as the first aircraft of the Finnish Air Force. It arrived at Vaasa on 6 March 1918.

The date has since been celebrated as the founding date of the Finnish Air Force. The aircraft came as a donation from the Swedish Count Eric von Rosen, with the Count's personal good luck symbol – a right-facing blue swastika – painted on its wings. This swastika variant was then adopted as the national insignia for all FINAF aircraft until the year 1945.

In the very early days, the aircraft inventory of the Service comprised a miscellany of donated or procured aeroplanes along with Russian military aircraft often obtained as a by-product of pilot defections.

In addition to getting aircraft from abroad, the new Service also recruited foreign personnel: among the first FINAF pilots and commanding ranks, there were officers from Sweden and Germany, for example.

During the war of 1918, the Air Force's operations were still rather small in scale, featuring reconnaissance patrols, bombing sorties and leaflet drops made with miscellaneous aircraft operating out of temporary facilities set up on ice-covered lakes and open fields.

The FINAF force structure in 1918 consisted of two flight detachments, one based at Kolho in North Pirkanmaa and the other at Antrea in the Viipuri Province. The early post-war period saw the commencement of Air Force reorganisation into an air station structure, where the flying units operated from a land air station at Utti in North Kymenlaakso as well as water air stations at Sortavala and Koivisto in Karelia and the island of Santahamina in Helsinki where, in the area that today is home of the Guard Jaeger Regiment, there were both a harbour for floatplanes and a runway on land.

Already at the outset, the Finnish Air Force was formed into a separate organisation with an independent Service status, as opposed to being developed as part of the Army or Navy as in many other countries.