EML Lembit is one of two Kalev-class mine-laying submarines built for the Republic of Estonia before World War II, and is now a museum ship in Tallinn.

Estonia is a maritime nation, and like every country with a long coastline to defend, it has to safeguard its territorial waters.

The collection organised by the Submarine Fleet Foundation in May 1933 developed into one of the most successful undertakings among similar fundraising events nationwide.

[1] Lembit was christened by Alice, the wife of August Schmidt, Estonia's ambassador to United Kingdom, saying: "I name you 'Lembit'.

The submarine carried out one training torpedo attack in her three years of service in the Estonian Navy, but was never used in the minelaying role.

Lembit was presented with the Order of The Red Banner on 6 March 1945 for her victories earlier in the German-Soviet war.

She was transferred to the Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard on 3 August 1957 and subsequently towed to Gorky (now Nizhni Novgorod).

[citation needed] On 28 August 1979 exactly 38 years after she had left Tallinn, Lembit returned – under tow.

After a lengthy overhaul, the submarine was opened to the public as a war memorial, (more precisely, as a branch of the Museum of the Soviet Baltic Fleet), on 5 May 1985.

There had been plans for displaying all three vessels out of the water, but a floating crane which was to have been used, (which had been moved from Kronstadt), lost its boom during the tow.

Lembit is one of two surviving pre-war Estonian warships; the other is the small gunboat Uku on Lake Peipsi, which is a wreck.

After a long and expensive restoration, the submarine was opened to the public, as a department of the Estonian Maritime Museum, with a collection of other naval weapons.

[9] Lembit was pulled out of the water on 21 May 2011, using another exhibit at the same museum - BTS-4 (an armoured recovery vehicle, based on the T-54 tank).