17th October 2007 was not a typical day for MNC NE personnel. First of all, figures in blue uniforms appeared in the Corps, moreover, our guest from the Polish Navy invited MNC NE members to visit their warships, which brought them to Szczecin a day before.
Three warships – ORP ‘Rolnik’, ORP ‘Metalowiec’ and ORP ‘Grom’ entered Szczecin harbour as part of training voyage that also enabled closer cooperation with the city of Szczecin as well as the Corps.
But before our MNC NE personnel learned about the warships, the visitors took part in the briefing on the Corps presenting its structure, tasks and perspectives of further development. Also Afghanistan, as the latest mission in which MNC NE staff took part in, was mentioned. The overall aim was to bring forward the idea of the Corps as part of NATO and at the same time an extraordinary structure in this region. After the briefing there was time for a sports confrontation between the home team and the guests.
Relieving fighting spirit
Before noon two teams representing MNC NE on one side, and the visitors on the other, met on the football pitch in order to prove their good physical shape, feel a rush of adrenaline and simply have a good fun. This friendly football match turned out to be very exciting – shouts cheered on the players and whistling announced fouls and balls out of play. After this fight full of sacrifice the final score was 4:2 for the visitors. Well, it seems that already famous hospitality of our Corps was also proved on the sports groundJ
Visiting warships
After a common lunch, the place of the meeting between MNC NE personnel and guest from the Navy was moved to the harbour where the warships were anchored. ORP ‘Metalowiec’ was the first warship visited by the MNC NE. With the length of 56.9 and the beam of 10.2 meters, the warship was really impressive. Four gas turbines and 32 000 HP allowed in the time of its greatness to travel at a speed of 43 knots, recently only up to 20 due to its age, as it was built in the Russian shipyard in 1986 already. 46 members of the crew, including one lady, showed us around, however, a huge rocket with the range of 80 km aroused the greatest interest.
ORP ‘Grom’ also welcomed the MNC NE personnel but more important was a cruise in the harbour during which everybody could feel the power of the machines…
These three warships constitute a major part of the missile division, which in turn is included in the 3rd Ships Flotilla, Gdynia-Oksywie naval base. All in all, there are five warships in that division: two missile corvettes of the Tarantul class (NATO Tarantul I) – ORP 'Metalowiec' and ORP 'Rolnik', and three small missile ships of the Orkan class (NATO Sassnitz) – ORP 'Orkan', ORP 'Piorun' and ORP 'Grom'.
As Capt. Paweł Tkaczyk – Deputy Commander of ORP 'Metalowiec' explained, typical tasks of such Fast Patrol Boats is getting right positions to conduct
missile attacks, protecting sea border, patrolling and convoying. When anchoring in the harbour, the major concern is to improve skills on a given post and
prepare for conducting tasks on the sea. In fact, among the tasks there is also anti-aircraft and anti-ship defence of own ships. During this training voyage, the priority was to exercise combat tasks (e.g. gun exercises) and navigation training when sailing through the canal to Szczecin.
Warships of this division take also part in multinational exercises e.g. Danex 07 conducted this year during which ORP ‘GROM’ spent 20 days on the sea. Among other exercises there were for example Strong Resolve 2002 or a series of Baltops exercises.
