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Allan Walfrid Staffans (13 February 1880 – 19 October 1946) was a Finnish technician, vuorineuvos and Shipbuilding.
Staffans began his career at Maskin- och Brobyggnad (Maskin o. Bro) shipyard in Helsinki in 1898. Later he worked in shipbuilding industry in Siberia until World War I, when he returned to Finland. In 1918 he led an operation for eliminating of in Sveaborg Fortress in Helsinki; the significance of the event has been later disputed by historians.
In 1920 Staffans was selected the manager of Vulcan shipyard in Turku. He organised a merger with its competitor Crichton creating Crichton-Vulcan shipyard, which grew under his leadership the most significant shipbuilding company of Finland. The yard built the most important vessels of the Finnish Navy, including and two large coastal defence ships.
After World War II Staffans participated in negotiations of war reparations to Soviet Union.
Staffans had two daughters with his wife Selma Elisabeth née Kjellin.
Allan Staffans went to the fortress with some twenty men to dismount the locks of the cannons. The work started from the outer and the main fortress followed after. The locks weighed hundreds of kilos were dismounted by use of winch hoists, packed into wooden caskets and stored in the warehouses of the batteries. The men moved on ice by feet and pulling the equipment on a sledge. The work was dangerous due to patrolling red guards, who reached over the cannons for their own use. The Russian soldiers were not always willing to accept the disarmament, but the good relationship Staffans had built with the Russian military during his work in Maskin o. Bro helped, although time to time the discussions were heated. The work was done by 15 March.
The White Guards got help from the German army which invaded in southern Finland in beginning of April. The Russian military handed Sveaborg over to the Finns on 14 April.
After the war the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet published an article, according which Staffans had duped the Russian military personnel by typing himself an attorney letter fooling the fortress organisation up to the highest command. The operation was described as a "historic deed". As a memory of the event, there is a bust of Staffans in the fortress.
However, the Russian commander of artillery in Sveaborg colonel Balzam wrote a reply to a Russian speaking newspaper in Helsinki, that the operation was done under order of the commandant of the fortress and the directive of the Russian navy headquarters to ensure that none of the fighting parties would use the artillery against the city, and Staffans and his men were paid for their work by the Russian military.
Russia and Germany had agreed in the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty that the Baltic Fleet and coast fortresses would not get involved in military operations in Finland. It also came out afterwards that the Russian soldiers were not very interested in the mutual skirmishes of Finns. More information about the disputed event has been recently found from a 26 March 1918 dated report written by Oskar Gros who was a member in Staffans's team. The report tells that the work was done under supervision of Staffans and also consent with the Russian officers, who wanted to avoid that operative cannons had ended up to the hands of the Red Guards or German troops.
It is speculated, that a possible motive for exaggeration of the action was the Finnish White Guards' crave to get a part of the glory Helsinki conquest, which was mainly done by Germans.
After the war ended Staffans stayed serving the Finnish army in the fortress during years 1918–1920 under commandant office as the technical manager of the dry dock.
In 1922 Staffans negotiated with the state about repairing of an old Russian submarine. As the company had no experience about submarines, Staffans searched for contacts which had the technology. Although the project turned out to be hopeless, Staffans managed to get to know the Netherlands company IvS, which was eager to start a submarine project with Vulcan. IvS was a Weimar Republic dummy company set up to maintain and develop the German submarine engineering expertise, when it was not allowed for Germany to build its own submarines.Knorring: Suomen laivaston uudisrakennukset. p. 97–104. During 1922–1923 Staffans attended in committees which were planning an updated naval defence strategy for Finland. Vulcan and IvS signed a secret contract about co-operation for submarine engineering in November 1923. According to the contract, IvS promised to give all the needed engineering support in case Vulcan wants to build submarines. In the following month Staffans negotiated about a merger with a competitor, Crichton yard, which was located next to Vulcan, at the other side of the river Aura.
Simultaneously with the submarine projects, the yard worked already on two 3 800 ton coastal defence ship projects. Crichton-Vulcan signed contracts for the ships in November 1928. Building of such large and demanding ships required investments in facilities and cranes; also the number of employees was increased. The first one of the ships, Väinämöinen, was launched in December 1930 and Ilmarinen followed in July 1931.
The investments required capital and finally Crichton-Vulcan was sold to Maskin o. Bro, which had taken over previously the Hietalahti yard in Helsinki. The acquisition improved the company's financial basis and during the 1930s Crichton-Vulcan had grown the strongest and most modern shipyard of Finland under Staffans's leadership. The most important investments were a crane with a capacity of 100 tonnes and a dry dock.Knorring: Suuri nousu. p. 107–113.
During the 1930s Crichton-Vulcan managed to sell ships to Soviet Union. Staffans's excellent Russian language skills proved helpful in the negotiations. Contracts for total 29 ships to Soviet Union were signed; the orders were vital in the middle of Great Depression.Knorring: Neuvostokauppa 1930-luvulla. p. 106–107.
Crichton-Vulcan got more demanding orders at the end of the 1930s; a big step was 2 000-dwt steam ship Rigel made for FÅA. This was followed by more modern and challenging projects; total 17 ships were ordered between January 1936 and September 1939.Knorring: 1924–1944. p. 158–162. Staffans's right hand was the company's chief engineer Gösta Rusko, who was also his son-in-law.
The biggest investments of the late 1930s were the new office building "White House", foundry and large machine workshops. The latter ones were built especially for diesel engine production. By using his old contacts from ivS, Staffans made a licence production agreement with Krupp Germaniawerft AG in summer 1938. The engine production could be started only in summer 1941, when all the needed machines were in place, and finally just two Krupp engines were built. These were the first diesel engines of Wärtsilä.
Staffans was not involved into the war reparation industry as he fell ill and died in 1946. During his period the number of personnel at Crichton-Vulcan yard had grown from 300 up to 3 000.
Staffans was a vice consul for Netherlands in the 1930s.
In 1942 Staffans wrote a book called Skeppsbyggare och resenär i Östasien about his experiences in Siberia in the early 20th century.
Staffans faced two major personal losses in 1943 when first his closest colleague and son-in-law Gösta Rusko became seriously ill and perished in April. The widow and Staffans's daughter Margit Rusko died only two months later. Staffans and his wife took care of their two children after.
The family moved permanently to Turku in the early 1920s, but they also had a summer villa in Kirkkonummi. The villa had to be given to Soviet Union after the Continual War as a part of Porkkala lease area. When Soviet Union returned the area back to Finland in 1956, the widow Selma Staffans moved in, and despite her age, she participated eagerly in rebuilding the area.
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