What are these two North Korean ships?

Link

The first photo is a strange modified barge that looks to have 4 large radoms as in nuclear missle naval platform or ??? Anyone have a clue? The cylndrical covered mid section looks strangely like two ICBM's. The other craft looks to be a wider specialty craft of some type. Alarming as these images may be 4 or 5 years old.
Any insight appreciated.

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[edit on 19-6-2006 by UK Wizard]

Well, you know what it looks like to me?

Looks like chow for our cruisers.

Shattered OUT...

Interesting stuff.

1. Barge: No reason to assume it is anything other than a regular barge. The blue looks to me like tarpalin. Can't see any radomes.

2. The larger craft in the picture is hard to say because again it has a tarpalin over it to protect against the weather. It clearly has a gun forward and a small superstructure amidships. It looks quite wide which opens up the possibility that it is a hovercraft or catamaran but doesn't seem to be a missile boat. North Korea has numerous patrol boats and about 140 hovercraft of various sorts.

BUT, in the top left of the second picture we have some interesting smaller boats. For the most part they are various types of torpeado boat. But the smaller more pointed ones with the superstructure at the extreme aft are possibly the claimed "submersible speed boats" that just might be N.Korea's special weapon:



[edit on 19-6-2006 by planeman]

Thanks planeman. I have more images in the link with more mini sub and other naval craft as well as a close up of the "barge" It may be a imaging trick but I think I see four circular structures on its rear. Also the amount of small attack craft on the NK coast is staggering. The Google images show all kinds of military build ups around their ports.




[edit on 19-6-2006 by VType]link

[edit on 19-6-2006 by VType]

I think Google Earth is pretty amazing. It allows you to scan all over the Earth and come up with some pretty outlandish views.

This an overhead view of the sprawling NK Nuclear R & D site of Wonsan. It is a massive Naval, Civil and Recreational facility, coupled with a Marine Ecological research facility.

For sure the large vessel in the bottom of the overhead, the duck egg blue-ish one, is one of the NK hovercraft patrol foils.

The large vessel with the tarp is an ocean-going barge, the type used in conjunction with dredgers to haul away silt, but in this case, it could probably be used to damp toxic nuclear waste.

As to the numerous smaller vessels dotted about the harbour, they indeed look very much like 2 man 'jet boat' or 'boghammers' of the type favoured by Iran.

Good spot, but you failled to locate the military airbase NNE/ENE of the facility. I counted 28 MiG 19/21 'lookalikes' and 13 unidentified 'bomber type' aircraft, at least 20 SAM sites, as well as numerous AA gun sites.

I have to say that the civvie housing development alongside the NK air force base looks pretty good by NK standards, but who the would want to live there?

Great stuff.

3. Agreed, mini-subs.
5, 6. Fishing nets
7. Great, a sub base. I think the conventional subs are Romeo class but they could be Whiskey class(?). There are 8 conventional attack subs, 6 mini-subs and what looks like two submersible boats (moored against a patrol boat on the right hand side of the harbor).
8. Agreed, mini-subs.

Following your lead, I browsed some ports. 39 53 39 N, 127 57 01 E has some larger patrol craft, possibly corvettes. Similar at 38 44 21 N 128 11 24 E.

I also found another patrol boat which looks a lot like the one in your second picture but without the tarpalin. See "A":

I am intrigued as to what that is. "B" looks like a mini-sub and "C" is a Frigate of some kind (?).