On 4 May 2026, in a hall at the Finnish Air Force Museum at Tikkakoski, a small team rented an electric forklift, slid a wooden wing under a fuselage and eased four bolts into place. By late morning the job was done, and that afternoon the aircraft was lowered onto its landing gear. VL Myrsky MY-14 was standing on its own wheels again.

The Myrsky (“Storm”) is the only fighter ever designed and built in Finland to reach series production. It was born out of hard lessons, built from whatever materials a country at war could find, and taming it cost the lives of test pilots. Its story is less about victories than about a small nation trying to arm itself.

A fighter nobody would sell

The idea came before the Winter War. Finland had learned that in an arms race, a small country struggles to buy top-quality fighters without paying a heavy political price. In early 1939 the Finnish Air Force asked the State Aircraft Factory, Valtion lentokonetehdas (VL), for proposals for a home-grown fighter, and in June 1939 the Ministry of Defence ordered one.

The preliminary design came from a trio of engineers: Arvo Ylinen, Martti Vainio on aerodynamics and Torsti Verkkola on structures. Edward Wegelius later took over the design department. Their fighter was a compact low-wing monoplane with a wide undercarriage and a 14-cylinder radial engine.

Nothing about it was easy to source. Duralumin was scarce, so the wings were made of plywood, and the metal-framed fuselage was skinned with fabric and plywood. The planned Bristol Taurus engine was unavailable because of the war, so VL chose the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp — and Finland had to buy those engines from German stocks of war booty.

Tamed at a terrible price

The prototype first flew on 23 December 1941. It worked, but it was too heavy. Three pre-production aircraft followed, and the high-speed tests went badly wrong. All three were destroyed in testing, two of them to aeroelastic flutter, a phenomenon engineers barely understood at the time. Two test pilots were killed and a third was seriously injured.

Ed Nash’s Military Matters tells the story of the VL Myrsky, Finland’s home-built fighter.

It took almost a year to cure the flutter. Series production of the Myrsky II began in autumn 1942. In the end, 51 were built: one prototype, three pre-production Myrsky Is and 47 Myrsky IIs. A Myrsky III was ordered in 1943, but none was completed.

By the time the Myrsky was ready for service, Finland was also flying the Messerschmitt Bf 109G, delivered from Germany from 1943. The Myrsky went instead to reconnaissance squadrons, where it took over from ageing Fokker D.XXIs.

Brief war, long winter

Reconnaissance Squadron 12 received its first Myrskys in summer 1944, and 30 had reached Squadrons 12 and 16 by the end of the Continuation War in September. Fifteen of them flew 68 missions. In two fights they damaged two Soviet fighters; in another encounter with Yak-7s, nobody was hit. On 3 September 1944, six Myrskys flew a bombing mission.

Pilots liked it. It had a well-designed cockpit, good handling in the air and on the ground, and it was the Finnish Air Force’s second-fastest aircraft after the Bf 109G, fast and agile enough to dogfight contemporary Soviet fighters.

But during the Lapland War of 1944–45, flying reconnaissance in the far north, its wooden construction met the Arctic winter. The wartime substitute glue used on the wooden parts could not cope with rain, frost and damp, and glued seams came apart, sometimes with disastrous results.

Grounded and scrapped

Ten Myrskys were lost in accidents between 1943 and 1947, and four pilots died. Operations ended in May 1947 after a fatal crash, and the last Myrsky flight took place in February 1948. The design was not wasted: its aerodynamics were reused in the VL Pyörremyrsky fighter prototype and the Valmet Vihuri trainer.

The fighters themselves were scrapped. Only three fuselages and some parts survived. In 2013, the Aviation Museum Society Finland, the Finnish Air Force Museum and the Finnish Aviation Museum began rebuilding one of them, MY-14, into a complete museum aircraft, with Patria and Sinituote as main supporters.

A detailed look at the VL Myrsky restoration workshop in June 2018.

A storm returns

Volunteers of the Aviation Museum Society’s Tuesday Club rebuilt wings, flaps and cowlings by hand at Vantaa, while museum conservators at Tikkakoski rebuilt the fuselage. The pandemic slowed them down, and the completion date slipped more than once.

On 4 May 2026, the wing and fuselage were finally joined and MY-14 was set on its landing gear in roughly the place where it will be displayed. The museum said the final restoration tasks could now begin, along with planning for the unveiling.

The Myrsky never changed the course of a war. But when it goes on display, Finland will again be able to see the one fighter it built entirely for itself, and the price it paid to do so.

Sources: Wikipedia (VL Myrsky), Finnish Aviation Museums blog, Patria Magazine, Key Aero