The K 43 wore a simple two-tone green camouflage colour scheme with bare-metal undersides while in service with the Finnish Coast Guard.

Matching floatplane and shed - the remote seaplane base at Turku consisted of a small house-type building for admin and shelter, and a small corrugated-iron hangar in which to house Junkers K 43 OH-MVI, seen here, which had seen service with the Finnish Air Force as JU-127 before being withdrawn from military service and joining the Finnish Coast Guard in 1945

By the time of John Stroud’s visit to Turku in the late spring of 1949, only two of the three K 43s used by the Merivartiolaitos (Finnish Coast Guard) were still in service; OH-MVH (c/n 2703) at Helsinki and OH-MVI (c/n 2707) at Turku. Note the Coast Guard sub-serial “LK-9” just visible on the forward fuselage beneath the cockpit.

The primitive Coast Guard station at Turku as seen over the broad corrugated wing of OH-MVI. Turku is the oldest city in Finland’s history, its position on Finland’s south-west coast having made it an important strategic location.

A puff of smoke issues from ’MVI’s Hornet engine as it is started up for a sortie from Turku.

Although of indifferent quality, this rare photograph of one of the Finnish K 43s in flight shows the type’s broad-chord tapered square-tipped wings of all-metal construction with narrow unbalanced ailerons. The wing’s girder framework consisted of tubular spar booms braced partly with tubes and partly with sheet-metal pressings.