 |
| Jotvingis, minelayer and command vessel of the Lithuanian Navy |
This is the third photo gallery
(see previous posts) from my visit to Kiel, on the first weekend of the 136th Kiel Week. The Kiel Week (German: Kieler
Woche) or Kiel Regatta is an annual sailing event in Kiel, the capital
of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is the largest sailing event in the
world, and also one of the largest Volksfeste in Germany, attracting
millions of people every year from all over Germany and neighboring
countries. The first weekend of the Kiel Week, the famous Naval Base of
Kiel, opens its gates for just four hours per day, for thousands of
tourists who are eager to visit the German Navy warships and dozens of
foreign warships which visit the city of Kiel, to honor the Kiel Week.
Note that the majority of the visiting warships had returned from the
NATO BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) Exercise, an annual joint,
multinational maritime-focused exercise. It is designed
to improve training value for participants enhance flexibility and
interoperability, and demonstrate resolve among allied and partner
forces in defending the Baltic Sea region. The Lithuanian Navy was represented by the N42 Jotvingis, former HNoMS Vidar (N52), a Royal Norwegian Navy Vidar class minelayer, built in Bergen in 1977, and sold to Lithuania in 2006 where she was later modernized. The ship has a displacement of 1,700t at full load and has a length of 65 meters. It can carry up to 400 mines (depending on the type) and it is armed with two 40mm guns and two M2HB 12.7mm heavy machine guns. Enjoy photos from my visit aboard this very interesting warship!
This
is the sixth article about various countries' navies today. In these
articles, I briefly describe a country's naval fleet
by reporting the ships in each type/category of warships and by
providing a
nice image where all the types of warships are illustrated and the
units of its class are reported. I include the vessels that will enter
in service this year and I have excluded those that are about to be
decommissioned. I deliberately excluded many classes of
auxiliary ships; those that they have "0" defence capacity and those
that have secondary roles such as hydrographic survey ships, tugs,
depollution vessels and training ships.
