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In case someone is interested in this... According to my grandfather's company's (31st Sapper Company) war diary they were used in following combat roles: 1) They participated in one counter attack (Koukunniemi, 6 December 1939). As the enemy hadn't advanced to their sector yet, they weren't in an actual combat. The data is pretty scarce but it seems that the company then withdrew before Soviets attacked the area. 2) They manned the frontline as common infantry on two days (10-11 December). The Red Army didn't attack against their positions on those days. (However, one of my great uncles disappeared (along with 9 other men of the company) when his sapper company (29th) was in a similar situation at Summa on 13 February 1940). 3) Parts of the company (20 - 60 men, depending on the day) manned AT defence foxholes behind the frontline on days of major Soviets attacks. They had demolition charges and Molotov coctails. Apparently no enemy tanks managed to advance as far as their defence positions, but that is not completely certain. 4) On one night (between 10 and 11 January) one platoon followed infantrymen when they raided an enemy attack trench. The sappers then mined the trench after the infantry had cleared it. The rest of their duties (digging trenches, building minefields and wire obstacles, and digging dugouts) was done out of direct combat (though the Soviets tried to harass by artillery and MG fire). - Tommi

Pak40 wrote: Charles MacDonald, in Company Commander, mentioned the maps that he received before moving into the line. This proves that officers had maps of their area, even down to the platoon leader if I remember correctly. The availability of maps was very variable in different areas. For example, in Finnish army all platoon leaders supposedly had maps. Supposedly. At least one attack that I know of was planned on and directed by a pencil-scetch on a cigarette box. ("There goes the road, there's a hill and there's two small lakes..."). In another case, an advancing artillery FO had to use a pencil drawn "peitepiirros" (lit. "covering picture", they were usually used for marking positions and such and were made by putting a really thin paper on top of map so that the map lines could be seen through it) and a hand-made square grid. It was a pretty common occurence that the maps were wrong. Good roads weren't. (This was a very serious problem for Germans in the Arctic area). Trails were in wrong positions. Etc. Probably the worst map situation was in the Red Army when it attacked Finland in 1939. There were several batallions without any maps at all. In forest terrain. With only one major road going through it. No surprise, that they didn't go further than 150 meters from the road. - Tommi

Polar wrote: For me, the descision was easy: Descent to Undermountain Now, sit down before reading rest of this post. Actually, if you want to keep your sanity, you better stop reading. I saw "Descent to Undermountain" on shelves of _two_ different game shops (entirely different companies) and both had _full_ price tag (~270 mk/~$45). This was two or three months ago. The shops were Dose in Helsinki and Stockman in Tapiola, for those who don't believe this without seeing and don't mind a trip to Finland. - Tommi

Slapdragon wrote: Also realize that according to US studies repeated by Dunnigan, a games theory expert for DOD, artillery caused 60-70 percent of battlefield casualties, and includes 60 mm or higher mortars, support fire by armour, direct and indrect fire from artillery peices, and any other use of large high explosives My paternal grandfather was severely wounded (lost an eye) when one of his squad-mates blew up an AT mine that he was arming. On his military records his wound was classified as being caused by an artillery shrapnell. Also, at least in some papers the guy who caused the explosion is listed as being killed by a shell landing nearby. So, that accident caused at least two misidentified casualties. (I don't know how the rest of the men of that squad were classified). In the end, the squad was pretty lucky since only two of them died (the other was my great uncle), and the rest survived wounded, even though the building collapsed on them. My grandfather's records have also another mistake. According to them, he was released from the hospital ~20 days before he was wounded. (The clerk mistakenly wrote 'February' instead of 'April') - Tommi

Forever Babra wrote: Regarding Soviet POW casualties, I've heard as few as 3% survived German camps. I haven't seen that figure repeated though. That cannot be an accurate figure. I just found that ~1.8 million Soviet POWs were repatriated at the end of the war. That 3% survival rate would mean that 60 million Soviets were captured by Germans. The population of Germany was ~50 million at the time... However, it is very possible that the 3% figure represents some specific case. For example, it may be that only 3% of POWs a particularly bad camp survived, or that only 3% taken in a particular battle saw the end of the war. - Tommi

Michael Dorosh wrote: Why do the Germans in SPR simply bail out and start running willy nilly towards the camera? Possibly because they are shocked senseless. People do very stupid things when they are in panic. One Finnish stug (no. 531-5) was knocked out by a T-34-85 at Vuosalmi. The loader jumped out of his hatch, and started running towards the enemy, even though his mates tried to warn him. He (or his body) was never seen again. - Tommi

A lot of people have complained (not on this thread but on others) about that German MG team in the middle of nowhere. While no sensible commander puts a MG in such an isolated position, sometimes strange things happen in war. In particular, few months ago I stumbled upon a quote of a Finnish veteran who served as a MG gunner. On the second or third day of Soviet summer offensive (that is 10 or 11 June '44) his MG was positioned to cover flanks of the new defence line. The Soviets broke through the middle and the defenders withdrew. However, no-one remember that one MG team (actually, it wasn't even a full team but only two men) and they spent the whole day there, firing at Soviets when they saw them. They didn't suspect anything before 5-6 hours had gone. One of them tried to find contact with the neighbouring troops, but found the positions empty. They then quickly withdrew through a forest. - Tommi

My maternal grandfather was first a squad leader in a sapper company, then he was transferred to infantry where he served again as a squad leader and later as an assistant platoon leader. He never talked about his experiences. He received two medals, VM I and II ("Freedom's Medal"), but I don't know what for since the citations have been lost and even the official archive doesn't have them. The only thing that I know of those is that one of his war-mates once spoke, while drunken, to my grandmother explaining that "Jussi was always the point man". He certainly went through very difficult places, since during Winter War he was in Kirvesmäki sector of Taipaleenjoki, one of the worst spots. (Though, he was a sapper that time and he didn't have to fight infantry battles. According to the war diary of his company, they manned the frontline twice but Soviets didn't attack on those days). In the Continuation War he was at Rajajoki when Soviets started their major offensive there. The attack was preceded by an artillery barrage that was (in terms of shells fired but not in terms of HE/area) the second heaviest barrage to the day (the heaviest happened during the Kursk battle), and there weren't many heavier even after that. - Tommi

paullus wrote: The last resistance group in the Baltics was finally put down in the 1960's. I'm not certain but I think that the last of the "Brethren of the Forest" in Estonia drowned himself in a lake sometime in the 70s to avoid capture. The brethren were Estonian nationalists who had fought along Germans and hid in the forests when the Red Army came back. - Tommi

Bruno Weiss wrote: What, 180 to 200 thousand officers and men of the 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad. Of that, 2,000 survived, I believe is the figure, which was probably overall fairly representable of the war. A total of 95000 surrendered at Stalingrad. Of them ~5000 returned, so there was ~5% survival rate. This was definitely not a representable case. Soviets captured ~2.35 million Germans, of them 1.9 million surviver, so a little less than 500000 died in captivity, giving death rate of 20%. I'm certain the figures for Soviet prisoners were even less optimistic. Actually, they were much more optimistic than those that you presented, but they certainly were much worse than for Germans who were captured by Soviets. I don't have exact figures available, but I seem to remember that the casualty rate of Soviet POWs was ~60%. A large percentage of the survivors was then sent to Siberia. (Some sources claim that all survivors were sent, but this is a serious exaggeration. I don't know whether accurate data has ever been published or even compiled. One figure that I've seen was ~300000, and that would be ~16% of the survivors). - Tommi

jasoncawley@ameritech.net wrote: Mines inside of houses are called booby traps. When Soviets attacked Finland in December 1939, Finns destroyed or trapped pretty much all buildings of the frontier area. One sapper had to destroy his own home. He didn't want to burn it down so he booby-trapped it. However, he also wanted to leave a small possibility of returning after the war and finding the home intact (if it happened that the war would end quickly). So he booby-trapped the kitchen firewood storage box. He put 5-6 AT mines (25-30 kg explosives) in the bottom, constucted a false floor over them, and filled the box with wood. The trigger wire was attached to the piece of wood that would be the last one to be taken out. Soviets captured the village in the second or third day of the war. A large explosion was heard from the direction in mid-January. So, over a month after the building was first occupied and when all suspicions had died, the building exploded on the face of the inhabitants. It is not known what unit was there when it exploded. - Tommi

See http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/013842.html for some numerical data taken from 1930's military manuals. - Tommi

Olle Petersson wrote: So the rockets didn't explode, but buried themselves in the ground? The rocket payload is located at the front, and the fins at the end. Very often the explosion would leave the fins intact and only scatter them about. - Tommi

MikeT wrote: Tommi?, "majority returned alive"?? Sir I seriously have to disagree with this statement. You may disagree if you want. The Soviets took ~2.5 million German POWs and ~2 million returned alive. I don't have the actual figures at hand by now, but the ratio was about that. It made the comment that of 100,000 prisones only 5,000 ever saw Germany again. Those 100000 men taken at Stalingrad formed ~4% of the total number of German POWs, but they suffered ~20% of total German POW deaths. They were in exceptionally poor condition when surrendering and the Soviets were not prepared to having such a large number of POWs at one time, so their living conditions were abysmal that winter. However, that doesn't change the fact that most of German POWs returned alive. No offence here but I cannot agree with you comment. No problem. - Tommi

jasoncawley@ameritech.net wrote: Actually, 1/10th of a second intervals are standard on timed fuses today, in the U.S. field artillery (where I did my time). I have one schematic drawing of a WWII timed fuze. However, the explanations are quite lacking. Finnish army used four types of timed fuzes, with two different parameters. These were: A) The fuze type: - "burning fuze" that had a powder trail that burned with specific speed. The fuze was set by turning a dial that lenghtened or shortened the trail. - "clock fuze" that had a mechanical clock system that exploded it when the set time had elapsed. Range setting - distance -- this was used with guns with integated propellant charges - time -- for guns with separate shot and propellant. The drawing is of a "burning fuze", but I don't know whether the settings are for range or time. If it is a range fuze, the granularity is ~50 meters (one distance tick per 100 m). If it is a time fuze, the granularity is ~0.5 seconds. I think that the range explanation is more probable, since the scale then goes upto '130'. Flight times of 130 seconds were impossible with Finnish guns of the time, so it probably means 13 km. The first tick is at '9', which would then correspond to 900 meters. Note that both "burning" and "clock" fuzes were ignited by firing them. This is in contrast with 88 mm flak shells that were automatically ignited the second that they were taken from the automatic timer-setting device. The timer-setter of a flak gun was calibrated for a particular loader. The loader practiced until he could achieve a near-constant loading speed. However, I would be very surprised if he could achieve better than 1/10 s accuracy in his loading. Also, after the shell was taken out of the time-setter, it would blow up after the set time, no matter what had happened. So, I would feel very uneasy shooting targets closer than 500 meters, because if the loader fumbled around for a second, the shell would go off before firing. I would guess that Germans had also traditional timed fuzes, but I don't know whether AA crews would have them or not. In flat trajectory fire, if they had 1/20th of a second fineness they could have hit a target to 40 meter discrimination, and if they only had 1/10th of a second, to 80 meter discrimination. The Finnish artillery regulations state that for a 76K02, the maximum effect is achieved with air bursts of 15 m or lower, and adequate effect at 25 m or lower. The shrapnel effect extends to 45 m to the sides. According to Enqvist's "Itsenäisen Suomen rannikkotykit", a 88mm flak HE shell weighted 9.0 kg. The 76K02 HE shell weighted 6.35 kg, and so 88mm gun probably had a little better shrapnell effect, maybe ~50-55 meters. (A 12 kg 107mm round had an effect at 65 m). Note that hitting with a 76K02 was easier since its muzzle velocity was 460 m/s with a half-charge and 605 m/s with the full charge. With the half charge, a 50 m granularity would correspond to 0.1 second fuze accuracy and with a full charge to a 0.08 s accuracy. However, the round slowed down pretty quickly and at its impact velocity was 200-250 m/s, depending on the charge and range. With those speeds, a 1/5-1/4 s accuracy would be enough. Of course, the actual average speed would be somewhere between those extremes. I think that the largest problem on using air bursts with the 88 flak is its high muzzle velocity. As even a small mistake in estimates will cause the round to miss airbursts can be attempted only against targets whose ranges are known exactly, i.e., registered targets. Also, if (and that's a big IF) the guns used the AA fuzes, the problem of loader's consistency becames very relevant. Few people can achieve 1/10 s consistency in their actions and that 1/10 would be enough to cause the round to miss. Again, the AA fuzes would probably be used only against targets with flight time of several seconds (1.5-3km) or so, since otherwise the error marginal would be uncomfortably small. - Tommi

:USERNAME:: wrote: Thanks for the data and congrats for staying on topic. Oh dear, someone commends me on staying on topic. What will this do to my reputation of ardent tangentist (whether or not it is a valid English word). Is this finnish and/or captured russian arty? Considering that all Finnish arty at the time of writing _was_ captured from Russians in 1918, I'd say both. At the time the most important gun types in Finnish service were originally Russian: - 76K02 - 107K13 - 122H?? - 152H?? (The designations are calibere : gun type (K - "kanuuna", cannon and H - "haupitsi", howitzer) : year of the design. I forgot the age of the howitzers but one was 08/09). Even though the artillery regulations encouraged ricochet using in certain situations (for example, against uncovered trenched when timed fuzes are not available), I haven't encounter even one description of deliberately using them in battle, and I've read quite many books by former artillerymen. The closest thing happened in 19 February when the sole remaining 120 mm Armstrong gun of "Järisevä" coastal front repulsed a Soviet attack with direct fire. The first shot fell short, but it ricocheted from ice and exploded in the middle of enemy column. This was a lucky shot and the gun crew corrected the aim and tried to get direct hits on enemy tanks, finally hitting one with sixth or seventh round (the description is ambiguous). What makes this feat very remarkable was that the optics had been destroyed and the firing mechanism didn't work so a sergeant-major fired the round by hitting the firing pin with a hammer. - Tommi

Germanboy wrote: Point in game terms is that regardless of what kind of calibre/gun, would there be a historic reason to give the Germans limited VT-like arty support (e.g. restricted to TRPs). Yup, timed fuzes were certainly used by all countries. According to the above-mentioned regulations book they didn't need much more spotting rounds than impact fuzes. Their main weakness was that at long ranges the height dispersion was too large for them. - Tommi

Also, about ricochets. The Finnish 1936 field artillery regulations state that a round may ricochet if the impact angle is 15-25 degrees (depending on terrain), and it will ricochet if the angle is less than 15 degrees. It also states that quick fuzes (that probably correspond to the American "superquicks" above) don't work reliably if the angle of impact is too small (less than 1/2 of the angle of the shell cone). The book is at home right now [so the following figures may be slightly incorrect], but it stated that with a "quick-delayed" fuze (that is, one that ignites like a quick fuze but has a 1/20 s delay before exploding), a 76K02 shell that comes on angle of 15 degrees will explode after a 13 m ricochet and it is 4 meters high at that point. This figure was for "medium ranges" (~4 km). - Tommi

PeterNZer wrote: Germyboy, i'm reading a personal account now which mentions the airbust of an 88'. The author (from 'Guns of Normandy') seems to have been frequently warned and worried about 88s using an airburst over him/his vehicles. Of course, another interesting question is, were the guns actually 88s or were they, for example, 105 mm howitzers that were misidentified. (If the fire was indirect). In any case, 105 mm airburst is pretty much more effective than a 88 mm airburst. Also, I would be surprised if Germans fired 88s indirectly very often, because they were didn't belong to field artillery (at least, AFAIK) so they didn't have forward observation teams that are necessery for accurate indirect fire. However, I have come upon one account of German 88mm indirect use so it happened at least sometimes. One Finnish artillery officer mentions in his memoirs that he once witnessed Germans firing their flak guns indirectly. It was either in "Vienan tykit" (Tamminen) or "Jatkosodan päiviä ja öitä" (Holmström) - Tommi

Joseph Porta wrote: I would DEFINITELY recommend Sven Hassel (aka Hazel). Yes, Hassel is sometimes quite entertaining to read, but you have to remember that all connections between his books and reality are purely coincidental. In fact, I think that Baron Hieronymus von Münchausen's memoirs are more accurate than Hassel's. In particular, Hassel's practice of ripping entire scenes almost word-to-word from other authors and then claiming that they happened to him personally disgusts me. - Tommi

MikeT wrote: They suffered the same fate as German captives (or for that matter Italian, Rumanian, Finnish) that fought against the regime. They were kept as "logs" in POW camps until they died. I don't know about Japanese, Rumanian, and Italian POWs, but of Germans and Finns majority returned alive. They were generally in bad condition, that is true, and one estimate that I've seen says that their expected lifetime went down ~10-15 years because of the hardships. The death rate in Soviet captivity seems to be roughly 30%. Also, Finns were not held for years (though there were few isolated exceptions). I don't have my books at hand right now, but the first POWs returned as early as November 1944, two months after armistice. I think that the last POW transtport was in April or May 1944, but I'm not certain of that. The reason why Finns were returned much quicker than the other nationalities was that Finland never surrendered. The war ended in an armistice, and one of the conditions was that POW exchange would be speedily arranged. - Tommi

I went through tank-kill records of my favorite example battle, Kuuterselkä. As I have posted before, the commander of the Soviet forces there reported losing 40 AFVs in that day. However, Finnish sources have explanations only for 27 of them. The distribution is: * 21 by Stug-IIGs. * 1 by a Panzerfaust * 5 by a Panzerschreck (they all were destroyed by Heimo Vinni, who was killed in the battle). This leaves 13 unaccounted losses (~33%). There are four possible causes for them: 1) Mechanical failures. 2) Artillery hits. 3) Aircraft bombing. 4) Unrecorded faust or schreck kills. As for 1), I don't know whether Soviets included breakdown figures in their casualty reports. Probably few of the kills should be attributed to the cause 4). The battle was very heavy and the infantry units had severe losses. It is very possible that kills of some AT teams went unrecorded because of casualties. I can't estimate what effect did the artillery have on tanks in that battle. The air support consisted of a single bombing run by a squadron (9 planes) of JU-88s. The bombers reported hitting a deploying area of Soviet tanks. This probably caused at least several tank losses, but again, the exact statistics is not know. Finnish counter attack didn't advance to the bombed area before it was stopped. So, making a wild guess that breakdowns were not included in the casualty report, and that 3-5 infantry tank kills were unreported, it would leave 8-10 kills by artillery and JU-88s. Continuing this speculation, I would guess that maybe 2/3 of these were by bombs (after all, they hit the deployment area), which would be 5-7 tanks (~20-30% of Stug kills). However, as I said before, the exact distribution of the unclaimed kills is not known. If all of them were by bombers, the kill ratio (bombers : Stugs) would be 13:21, or ~60%. - Tommi

Big Time Software: If anybody has documentation on standard "impact" HE fuzes (i.e. not proximity fuzes or the like) please post it to this BBS for further discussion. I went through my collection of artillery manuals (quite small, this far, only 2.5). The only relevant reference was in "Tykkimiehen opas" ("Artillerist's Guide"), 1932. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> The main parts of an impact fuze are 1. case that holds the fuze together. This is screwed on top of the shell 2. working parts. The most important are detonator, striking pin, and intermediate charge. 3. safety parts that prevent the shell from exploding during handling and and firing so that the shell doesn't explode inside the barrel or immediately after leaving it. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There's also a shematic picture that has a part called "varmistusjousi" ("safety spring") but its working mechanism is not explained. Apparently it holds the striking pin in position until firing. I would guess that the shell acceleration will release the spring and allow striking pin to move. In that case, the spring wouldn't actually prevent nearby detonations. In any case, Finnish artillery units suffered barrel detonations and sometimes rounds exploded just after leaving the barrel, so in any case the safety spring was not completely reliable. - Tommi

Francesco wrote: What do you think about adding Finnish armour to CM2 That's pretty easy to do. All but three tank models in Finnish service were also used by either Soviets of Germans, or both. The three exceptions are: - Renault FT-17. These were so obsolete that they were used only in Winter War as dug-in MG and gun (37 mm) turrets. Their use was so limited, that there's no need to model them. - Landsverk-anti. A open-topped self-propelled 40 mm Bofors AA gun. Pretty nifty AA vehicle, but there were only 6 of them and exactly one was used exactly once in the front line, and that was not during a battle. (It was a field test against Soviet fortifications in Summer '43). The Landsverks downed few dozens of Soviet aircraft in Summer '44, though. Again, no special need to model it. - BT-42. The only Finnish-made tank (though it was designated as an assault gun) of the whole war. It had a 114 mm howitzer attached to a BT-7 chassis. Pretty good as self-propelled artillery, completely obsolete in front-line tank battles, from start. However, in 20 June '44 they were used against Soviet tanks, with poor results. As for other tanks, Finns did some modifications, like replacing stugs' MG34s with captured DTs, but nothing big. - Tommi

Mattias wrote: Now, seeing this got me wondering if this was an idea produced by some HQ or rear echelon supply officer that never really was implemented by the front line troops. Anyone else know more? I don't know more but since the shaped-charge round had significantly worse penetration than the AP round and relatively few AT guns survived long enough for the barrel wear to really matter, I would guess that most gun crews would happily ignore that policy and continue firing AP. - Tommi