Finnish navy divers in the late 1950’s

The following pictures of Finnish conscripts doing their military service and diver training have been dated back to the late 1950’s. Vesa Eronen, who took the training in 1958, identified the gear and vessels to be from that time period. Navy diver training took place at Pansio naval base in city of Turku back then. The pictures were found in the private maritime museum(ish) run and owned by Patu Patanen in Hamina in south-eastern Finland. The Reserve Officer School of the Finnish army is located in Hamina, too. Patu Patanen also owns the lightship s/s Hyöky. There are no markings on the backside of the pictures. Hence, neither the people portrayed nor the photographer are known. The pictures resemble the work of professional photographers from that time. Hence, we guess and assume that these were taken for the navy. Nevertheless, the originals found their way to a private collector and enthusiast and lifetime seaman and were then discovered by Erkki Siirilä and digitised in 2015 or 2016. Both Vesa Eronen and Erkki Siirilä were pioneers of diving in the Jyväskylä region in the 1960’s. We have an long untranslated article in Finnish about their club “Sammakot”.

Source: the private maritime museum of Patu Patanen, the old customs house of Hamina town, Tervasaari peninsula, Hamina. Digitised by Erkki Siirilä (SukK 31) 2015—2016. Full size pictures (7zip-compressed).