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Porkkalanniemi

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Porkkalanniemi ( Swedish : Porkala udd ) is a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland , located at Kirkkonummi (Kyrkslätt) in Southern Finland .

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45-567: The peninsula had great strategic value, as coastal artillery based there would be able to shoot more than halfway across the Gulf of Finland . If the same power controlled the Estonian coast, on the opposite side of the gulf, it would then be able to block Saint Petersburg 's naval access to the Baltic Sea . The distance to Estonia at the closest point is only 36 km (22 mi). Porkkala

90-416: A protected harbor's defences. In the middle 19th century underwater minefields and later controlled mines were often used, or stored in peacetime to be available in wartime. With the rise of the submarine threat at the beginning of the 20th century, anti-submarine nets were used extensively, usually added to boom defences, with major warships often being equipped with them (to allow rapid deployment once

135-520: A string of reinforced concrete pillboxes and bunkers along the beaches, or sometimes slightly inland, to house machine guns , antitank guns , and artillery ranging in size up to the large 40.6 cm naval guns . The intent was to destroy Allied landing craft before they could unload. During the Normandy Landings in 1944, shore bombardment was given a high importance, using ships from battleships to destroyers and landing craft. For example,

180-642: Is furthermore located only 30 kilometers (19 mi) from Helsinki , the Finnish capital, and a foreign power based there would be able to exert significant pressure on the Finnish government . Nowadays, the coasts of the peninsula are popular birdwatching areas during the spring migrations of Arctic geese and other waterfowl . At the end of the Second World War , the Soviet Union secured

225-581: Is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications . In modern times, coastal artillery has generally been replaced with anti-ship missiles , such as the Ukrainian R-360 Neptune . From the Middle Ages until World War II , coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of cannons were highly important to military affairs and generally represented

270-530: The Endicott Board recommended an extensive program of new U.S. harbor defenses , featuring new rifled artillery and minefield defenses; most of the board's recommendations were implemented. Construction on these was initially slow, as new weapons and systems were developed from scratch, but was greatly hastened following the Spanish–American War of 1898. Shortly thereafter, in 1907, Congress split

315-666: The Siege of Port Arthur , Japanese forces had captured the vantage point on 203 Meter Hill overlooking Port Arthur harbor. After relocating heavy 11-inch (280 mm) howitzers with 500 pound (~220 kg) armor-piercing shells to the summit of the Hill, the Japanese bombarded the Russian fleet in the harbor, systematically sinking the Russian ships within range. The Japanese were attacking

360-829: The Yugoslav Navy in the Battle of the Dalmatian Channels . In practice, there is a distinction between artillery sited to bombard a coastal region and coastal artillery, which has naval-compatible targeting systems and communications that are integrated with the navy rather than the army. Naval base A naval base , navy base , or military port is a military base , where warships and naval ships are docked when they have no mission at sea or need to restock. Ships may also undergo repairs. Some naval bases are temporary homes to aircraft that usually stay on ships but are undergoing maintenance while

405-610: The rights of lease to a naval base at Porkkala , in accordance with the Moscow armistice agreement that ended the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviets on 19 September 1944. Porkkala thus replaced the peninsula of Hanko , which had been leased to the Soviets as a naval base in 1940–41. A large area centered on the peninsula, including land from the municipalities of Kirkkonummi , Siuntio and Ingå and almost

450-687: The Army (as in English-speaking countries ). In English-speaking countries, certain coastal artillery positions were sometimes referred to as 'Land Batteries', distinguishing this form of artillery battery from for example floating batteries . In the United Kingdom, in the later 19th and earlier 20th Centuries, the land batteries of the coastal artillery were the responsibility of the Royal Garrison Artillery . In

495-586: The Canadians at Juno beach had fire support many times greater than they had had for the Dieppe Raid in 1942. The old battleships HMS Ramillies and Warspite with the monitor HMS Roberts were used to suppress shore batteries east of the Orne ; cruisers targeted shore batteries at Ver-sur-Mer and Moulineaux ; while eleven destroyers provided local fire support. The (equally old) battleship Texas

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540-626: The German battery. Allied efforts to take the port of Toulon in August 1944 ran into "Big Willie", a battery consisting of two prewar French turrets, equipped with the guns taken from the French battleship Provence , each mounting a pair of 340 mm naval guns . The range and power of these guns was such that the Allies dedicated a battleship or heavy cruiser to shelling the fort every day, with

585-498: The Japanese had for the coastal artillery at Singapore. However, the lack of HE shells rendered Singapore vulnerable to a land based attack from Malaya via the Johore straits. In December 1941, during the Battle of Wake Island , US Marine defense battalions fired at the Japanese invasion fleet with six 5-inch (127 mm) guns , sinking the Japanese destroyer Hayate by scoring direct hits on her magazines, and scoring eleven hits on

630-986: The Soviet tenure had been erased. Currently, the Porkkala area houses one of the main bases of the Finnish Navy , located in Upinniemi , near Porkkala proper. The Soviet lease of Porkkala and the return of the area to former inhabitants are key events in the Finnish Noir mystery, Below the Surface by Leena Lehtolainen . The naval base also forms part of the plot line of the TV series Shadow Lines  [ fi ] ( Nyrkki ). 59°59′N 24°26′E  /  59.983°N 24.433°E  / 59.983; 24.433 Coastal artillery Coastal artillery

675-596: The United States, coastal artillery was established in 1794 as a branch of the Army and a series of construction programs of coastal defenses began: the "First System" in 1794, the "Second System" in 1804, and the "Third System" or "Permanent System" in 1816. Masonry forts were determined to be obsolete following the American Civil War, and a postwar program of earthwork defenses was poorly funded. In 1885

720-624: The area until 1994. No Soviet civilian administration was set up; the Soviet Union simply administered it through the military commander of Porkkala, a post held until 26 January 1956 by Sergey Kabanov (1901–1973), the former Commander of Hanko naval base. At the height of the naval base operations, 30 000 Soviet troops were stationed in the area along with 10 000 Soviet officials and civilians such as members of officers' families. While under Soviet control, Finnish passenger trains running between Helsinki and Turku were in 1947 allowed to use

765-578: The area, the Finns found that the Soviets had destroyed about 50% of civilian housing and 80% of commercial properties which had been handed over in 1944. New constructions included a deep port in Båtvik and an airfield in Friggesby. The airfield was immediately demolished and returned to farmland and the majority of the evacuated population returned to their former homes. By the end of the 1960s, most traces of

810-404: The areas of highest technology and capital cost among materiel . The advent of 20th-century technologies, especially military aviation , naval aviation , jet aircraft , and guided missiles , reduced the primacy of cannons, battleships, and coastal artillery. It was long held as a rule of thumb that one shore-based gun equaled three naval guns of the same caliber, due to the steadiness of

855-418: The battleship Nevada eventually silencing the guns on August 23, 1944. After World War II the advent of jet aircraft and guided missiles reduced the role of coastal artillery in defending a country against air and sea attacks while also rendering fixed artillery emplacements vulnerable to enemy strikes. The Scandinavian countries, with their long coastlines and relatively weak navies, continued in

900-512: The city and the Russian ships were trapped in the harbor due to mines, making this one of the few cases of coastal guns being employed in an offensive action. On December 5, 1904, the battleship Poltava was destroyed, followed by the battleship Retvizan on December 7, 1904, the battleships Pobeda and Peresvet and the cruisers Pallada and Bayan on December 9, 1904. The battleship Sevastopol , although hit 5 times by 11-inch (280 mm) shells, managed to move out of range of

945-400: The coastal gun which allowed for significantly higher accuracy than their sea-mounted counterparts. Land-based guns also benefited in most cases from the additional protection of walls or earth mounds. The range of gunpowder -based coastal artillery also has a derivative role in international law and diplomacy, wherein a country's three-mile limit of "coastal waters" is recognized as under

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990-514: The cruiser Takasago to a mine outside the harbor. During the Battle of Drøbak Sound in April 1940, the German navy lost the new heavy cruiser Blücher , one of their most modern ships, to a combination of fire from various coastal artillery emplacements, including two obsolete German-made Krupp 280 mm (11 in) guns and equally obsolete Whitehead torpedoes . The Blücher had entered

1035-596: The development and installation of modern coastal artillery systems, usually hidden in well-camouflaged armored turrets (for example Swedish 12 cm automatic turret gun ). In these countries the coastal artillery was part of the naval forces and used naval targeting systems. Both mobile and stationary (e.g. 100 56 TK ) systems were used. In countries where coastal artillery has not been disbanded, these forces have acquired amphibious or anti-ship missile capabilities. In constricted waters, mobile coastal artillery armed with surface-to-surface missiles still can be used to deny

1080-454: The development of land fortifications; sometimes separate land defence forts were built to protect coastal forts. Through the middle 19th century, coastal forts could be bastion forts , star forts , polygonal forts , or sea forts , the first three types often with detached gun batteries called "water batteries". Coastal defence weapons throughout history were heavy naval guns or weapons based on them, often supplemented by lighter weapons. In

1125-523: The entire area of Degerby , was leased to the USSR from 29 September 1944, ten days after the armistice. At the time of the Soviet take-over of the area, there were about 7200 Finnish inhabitants and all were evacuated during ten days in September 1944. Beyond its military use, the naval base served to apply political pressure on the Finnish governments and also to help build a Soviet espionage network. It

1170-647: The field artillery and coast artillery into separate branches, creating a separate Coast Artillery Corps (CAC) The CAC was disbanded as a separate branch in 1950. In the first decade of the 20th century, the United States Marine Corps established the Advanced Base Force . The force was used for setting up and defending advanced overseas bases, and its close ties to the Navy allowed it to man coast artillery around these bases. During

1215-529: The fires reached her magazines and doomed her. As a result, the remainder of the invasion fleet reversed, the Norwegian royal family, parliament and cabinet escaped, and the Norwegian gold reserves were safely removed from the city before it fell. Singapore was defended by its famous large-caliber coastal guns, which included one battery of three 15-inch (381 mm) guns and one with two 15-inch (381 mm) guns. Prime Minister Winston Churchill nicknamed

1260-621: The garrison as "The Gibraltar of the East" and the "Lion of the Sea". This perhaps compelled the Japanese to launch their invasion of Singapore from the north, via Malaya , in December 1941. It is a commonly repeated misconception that Singapore's large-calibre coastal guns were ineffective against the Japanese because they were designed to face south to defend the harbour against naval attack and could not be turned round to face north. In fact, most of

1305-462: The guns could be turned, and were indeed fired at the invaders. However, the guns were supplied mostly with armour-piercing (AP) shells and few high explosive (HE) shells. AP shells were designed to penetrate the hulls of heavily armoured warships and were mostly ineffective against infantry targets. Military analysts later estimated that if the guns had been well supplied with HE shells the Japanese attackers would have suffered heavy casualties, but

1350-735: The guns. Stung by the fact that the Russian Pacific Fleet had been sunk by the army and not by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and with a direct order from Tokyo that the Sevastopol was not to be allowed to escape, Admiral Togo sent in wave after wave of destroyers in six separate attacks on the sole remaining Russian battleship. After 3 weeks, the Sevastopol was still afloat, having survived 124 torpedoes fired at her while sinking two Japanese destroyers and damaging six other vessels. The Japanese had meanwhile lost

1395-550: The inability to use Manila as a port), the forts allowed interception of radio traffic later decisive at Midway. The Japanese defended the island of Betio in the Tarawa atoll with numerous 203 mm (8-inch) coastal guns. In 1943, these were knocked out early in the battle with a combined USN naval and aerial bombardment. Nazi Germany fortified its conquered territories with the Atlantic Wall . Organization Todt built

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1440-409: The invasion would not have been prevented by this means alone. The guns of Singapore achieved their purpose in deterring a Japanese naval attack as the possibility of an expensive capital ship being sunk made it inadvisable for the Japanese to attack Singapore via the sea. The very fact that the Japanese chose to advance down from Thailand through Malaya to take Singapore was a testament for the respect

1485-401: The late 19th century separate batteries of coastal artillery replaced forts in some countries; in some areas, these became widely separated geographically through the mid-20th century as weapon ranges increased. The amount of landward defence provided began to vary by country from the late 19th century; by 1900 new US forts almost totally neglected these defences. Booms were also usually part of

1530-404: The light cruiser Yubari , forcing her to withdraw, and temporarily repulsing Japanese efforts to take the island. The Harbor Defenses of Manila and Subic Bays denied Manila harbor to the invading Japanese until Corregidor fell to amphibious assault on 6 May 1942, nearly a month after the fall of Bataan . Beyond tying up besieging Japanese forces (who suffered severe supply shortages due to

1575-516: The narrow waters of the Oslofjord , carrying 1,000 soldiers and leading a German invasion fleet. The first salvo from the Norwegian defenders, fired from Oscarsborg Fortress about 950 meters distance, disabled the center propeller turbine and set her afire. Fire from the smaller guns (57 mm to 150 mm) swept her decks and disabled her steering, and she received two torpedo hits before

1620-624: The nation or state's laws. One of the first recorded uses of coastal artillery was in 1381—during the war between Ferdinand I of Portugal and Henry II of Castile —when the troops of the King of Portugal used cannons to defend Lisbon against an attack from the Castilian naval fleet. The use of coastal artillery expanded during the Age of Discoveries , in the 16th century; when a colonial power took over an overseas territory, one of their first tasks

1665-581: The railway through the area under payment of fees. However, all train windows had to be closed with shutters, and photography was prohibited during the 40 km (25 mile) transition. During the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, the Soviet Olympic team was housed on the base, rather than in the Olympic village . Although the Soviet lease for Porkkala had been conceded for 50 years, an agreement

1710-591: The run-in to the beach. Similar arrangements existed at other beaches. On June 25, 1944, the American battleship Texas engaged German shore batteries on the Cotentin Peninsula around Cherbourg. Battery Hamburg straddled the ship with a salvo of 240 mm shells, eventually hitting Texas twice; one shell damaging the conning tower and navigation bridge, with the other penetrating below decks but failing to explode. Return fire from Texas knocked out

1755-677: The ship is in port. In the United States , the United States Department of the Navy 's General Order No. 135 issued in 1911 as a formal guide to naval terminology described a naval station as "any establishment for building, manufacturing, docking, repair, supply, or training under control of the Navy. It may also include several establishments". A naval base, by contrast, was "a point from which naval operations may be conducted". In most countries, naval bases are expressly named and identified as such. One peculiarity of

1800-489: The ship was anchored or moored) through early World War I. In World War I railway artillery emerged and soon became part of coastal artillery in some countries; with railway artillery in coast defence some type of revolving mount had to be provided to allow tracking of fast-moving targets. Coastal artillery could be part of the Navy (as in Scandinavian countries, war-time Germany , and the Soviet Union ), or part of

1845-585: The use of sea lanes. The Type 88 surface-to-ship missile is an example of modern mobile coastal artillery. Poland also retains a coastal missile division armed with the Naval Strike Missile . During the Croatian War of Independence in 1991, coastal artillery operated by Croatian forces played an important role in defending Croatian Adriatic coast from Yugoslav naval and air strikes, especially around Zadar, Šibenik and Split, defeating

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1890-534: Was immediately placed under a military commander, Neon Antonov (1907–1948), who remained in office until June 1945, when he was transferred to command the Amur River flotilla, in preparation for the war against Japan . According to the armistice of 1944, the area was leased to the Soviet Union for 50 years. On 10 February 1947, the Paris Peace Treaty reaffirmed the Soviet Union's right to occupy

1935-499: Was reached to return it earlier. The agreement was signed on 19 September 1955, exactly 11 years after the armistice, and control of the area reverted to Finland on 26 January 1956. This may be attributed to the process of Finlandization and to technological progress making coastal artillery obsolete. The renunciation of Stalinism by the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev and Finland 's neutrality and remaining out of NATO were also important contributing factors. Upon re-entering

1980-417: Was to build a coastal fortress, both to deter rival naval powers and to subjugate the natives. The Martello tower is an excellent example of a widely used coastal fort that mounted defensive artillery, in this case, muzzle-loading cannon. During the 19th century China also built hundreds of coastal fortresses in an attempt to counter Western naval threats. Coastal artillery fortifications generally followed

2025-614: Was used to suppress the battery at Pointe du Hoc , but the guns there had been moved to an inland position, unbeknownst to the Allies. In addition, there were modified landing craft : eight "Landing Craft Gun", each with two 4.7-inch guns; four "Landing Craft Support" with automatic cannon; eight Landing Craft Tank (Rocket) , each with a single salvo of 1,100 5-inch rockets; eight Landing Craft Assault (Hedgerow), each with twenty-four bombs intended to detonate beach mines prematurely. Twenty-four Landing Craft Tank carried Priest self-propelled 105mm howitzers which also fired while they were on

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