The Ethiopian Navy was a branch of the Ethiopian National Defense Force that existed from 1955 until 1991. It was disestablished after the independence of Eritrea, which left Ethiopia landlocked.
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Ethiopia acquired a coastline and ports on the Red Sea in 1950 when the United Nations decided to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia. In 1955, the Imperial Ethiopian Navy was founded, with its primary base—the Haile Selassie I Naval Base -- at Massawa. By the early 1960s workshops and other facilities were under construction at Massawa to give it complete naval base capabilities.
In 1958, the navy became a fully independent service, organized as one of the three Ethiopian armed services under the overall command of the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Armed Forces. The navy's deputy commander had his naval headquarters in Addis Ababa. The navy was conceived and built as a coastal navy for patrolling Ethiopia's Red Sea coast.
The Imperial Ethiopian Navy's Naval College, where Ethiopian naval officers undertook a 52-month program of study, was founded at Asmera in 1956. In 1957, a Naval Non-Commissioned Officer School was established at Massawa as well. A Frogman/Diving School for the training of a special commando unit and a Ratings' Training Establishment for the training of naval enlisted men also were established at Massawa by the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Emperor Haile Selassie I appointed Royal Norwegian Navy officers to help in organizing Ethiopia's new navy, and they oversaw much of the training. Retired British Royal Navy officers also served as trainers and advisers during Haile Selassie's reign. Some Ethiopian Navy officers received naval education in Livorno, Italy.
The Imperial Ethiopian Navy operated a mix of patrol boats and torpedo boats transferred from the United States Navy and the navies of European countries. In 1962 the United States transferred the former seaplane tender USS Orca (AVP-49) to Ethiopia; renamed Ethiopia (A-01) and placed in service as a training ship, she was the Ethiopian Navy's largest ship for the remaining 29 years of the Navy's existence.
Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974, and during the Communist-run governments of the Provisional Military Administrative Council or Derg of 1974 to 1977 and of Mengistu Haile Mariam from 1977 to 1991 that followed, the Ethiopian Navy—no longer Imperial—was reoriented toward the Soviet Union. Officers continued to train in Ethiopia, but selected naval officers continued their studies in Leningrad at the Soviet naval academy. Enlisted men continued to train at Massawa and served a seven-year enlistment.
The turn to the Soviet Union meant that the navy became a largely Soviet-equipped force. Although Ethiopia continued in her role as a training ship and remained Ethiopia's largest naval vessel, the United States ceased arms sales to Ethiopia in 1977, and Soviet-built patrol boats and missile boats began to replace other ships. By 1991, the Ethiopian Navy had two frigates, eight missile craft, six torpedo craft, six patrol boats, two amphibious craft and two support and training craft, mostly of Soviet origin.
The Ethiopian Civil War and Eritrean War of Independence both ended in 1991, and Eritrea became independent, leaving Ethiopia landlocked. The ships of the Ethiopian Navy fled in May 1991, ten of them to Yemen and others to Saudi Arabia. The Ethiopian Navy never operated again and in effect was dissolved upon Eritrea's independence.
For a time it was thought that the Ethiopian Navy might survive, based in foreign ports—at Assab in Eritrea or at Djibouti -- or that Eritrea and Ethiopia might divide the ships, with ships manned by both countries operating from Eritrean ports as a kind of successor to the Ethiopian Navy. But Eritrea soon expressed a desire to organize an entirely separate Eritrean Navy.
Some of the Ethiopian ships in Yemen were scuttled, while others remained there awaiting disposition; most of the ships in Saudi Arabia returned to their former bases in Eritrea. The ships became unseaworthy during their years of inactivity, and some were sold for scrapping; among these was Ethiopia, which became a hulk at Yemen after her May 1991 arrival there and was sold there for scrapping in 1993. Finally, on 16 September 1996, all surviving former Ethiopian Navy ships were put up for sale at Djibouti. Eritrea expressed interest in 16 of them, but finally limited itself to purchasing only four of them—an OSA II class missile boat and three Switfship patrol craft—in order to avoid exacerbating an international crisis with Yemen. Most of the rest of the ships were scrapped.
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