tss

Nationality modifiers is a can of worms. I'm one of those who believe that given two soldiers that have similar training, equipment, and leadership, they will perform in combat in a pretty similar way. Or to be more exact, I believe that differences between good and bad soldiers in one army are larger than between two good soldiers of two armies or two bad soldiers of two armies. However, soldiers in different countries had different training and different doctrines, so there was differences. But again, this is nearly impossible to quantify correctly, because variance within an army is quite big. I've been thinking about the Continuation War between Finland and Soviet Union. Right now I can identify only one quantifiable national difference between Finnish and Soviet soldiers: a Finn was much more afraid of being encircled than a Soviet. If a Finnish company was encircled or threatened with immediate encircelment, it tried to break out as soon as possible while an encircled Soviet company would fortify its position and break out only if it became apparent that help was not coming. The rest of differences are much harder to quantify. An average Finnish platoon showed more initiative than an average Soviet platoon, but how can we be sure that this was a national difference and not a case of Finns being better trained on average than Soviets? Also, good Soviet platoons showed more initiative than bad Finnish platoons. For the Winter War the reason for the difference is clear: Soviet forces were very poorly trained. Also, Finns had a system that allowed junior leaders to identify the most effective soldiers quite reliably (but not inerrantly) and they could give automatic weapons to them. I mean the members of "Suojeluskunta" (Civic Guard) organization. Most of them had had military training regularly since they were 15-16 years old and they were very patriotic. Additionally, they knew from Soviet propaganda that they would be in deep trouble if the Red Army conquered Finland (being dubbed as a "people's enemy" was not very healthy under Stalin's rule) so they had even more motivation to stop Soviet attacks than others. I think that the current CM systems would allow quite faithful modeling of Winter War, without any national modifiers. In the early part of the war most Finnish units would be regulars with a small dose of fanaticism while Soviets would be almost 100% conscripts. Later, Finns would be mostly veterans with fanaticism and Soviets would be about 90% conscripts and 10% mix of regular and veteran. The situation of the Continuation War is much more complex. - Tommi

nijis wrote: Actually,there's a truly excellent movie about Finnish bicycle troops in the Continuation War upon whose scenes I'd really like to base some scenarios. That movie is very loosely based on a real mission of two jääkäri platoons under command of Lt. Pentti Perttuli. In the real life the unit met Soviets three times during the mission and there was only one combat. 1) A small Soviet unit was guarding the burned bridge (that was really almost 300 meter long). This unit withdrew without combat because they weren't sure of how many Finns were coming. Perttuli's men noticed their foxholes when they reconned the area. 2) Another small unit had prepared an ambush on a small bridge over a brook. This unit hesistated opening fire and the first squad passed the defence line. At this point the Soviets became concerned that if they now opened fire, they would be encircled and they decided to let the unit pass. Perttuli found out about this ambush only about a week later when one of the would-be ambushers was captured and told the story. Note that the usual practice was to stop before a brook and send a half-platoon on foot to outflank the possible defences. So a probable ambush spot was not approached from front. However, this happened late in night after the unit had cycled for the whole day and Finns were getting careless. 3) The unit was ambushed on another bridge North of Koroli the next day. That bridge was just after a steep hill that had caused the bikes to get in a big clump. When the Soviets opened fire Perttuli was certain that the point platoon would be destroyed immediately. Luckily, the defenders were green and all of them had aimed at corporal Juho Kärkkäinen, the point man, so rest of the platoon had time to get in cover. Also, the road had a turn just before the bridge and its exact position was covered by thick bushes and that caused the Soviets to fire about a meter too high. Finns returned fire and a firefight raged for about 15 minutes before Finns retreated. Later it was found out by blood traces that at least two Soviets were wounded or killed. The only casualty on Finnish side was Kärkkäinen who was hit by 10-15 bullets. Quite amazingly, he survived and was able to crawl back to Koroli where the rest of the unit had retreated. I don't know whether he returned to front later or was he released from service, but at least his name is not in the database of Finnish KIAs so he survived the war. The climatic end battle didn't happen in the real life and the unit managed to get contact with own troops at Virta Straits. However, the Soviets did have positions in the area so the combat could have happened and the unit just got lucky by choosing an undefended route. I think the Finnish version translates as the "Road to Mustapekka" or something. "Road to Rukajärvi", to be exact. Rukajärvi was a village near a lake with the same name where Finnish advance was later stopped. However, the lake in the movie is Lieksajärvi that lies several dozens of kilometers West of Rukajärvi. - Tommi

tero wrote: Actually, During Winter War Finnish troops did take out tanks by jamming their treads with logs and then a Molotov down the engine air intake. Seriously. Worked best against BT-series, useful against T-26 tanks. T-28s were generally too heavy to be stopped that way. The method was not foolproof though, I've read one account where a "bomber" (as the close-defence AT men were called) tried to immobilize a tank with a crowbar and the only result was that it (the crowbar, not the tank) flew five meters away. You are aware there were such troops as "cycle Jaegers" in the Finnish army and that they did occasionally ride their bikes into combat? Though usually not on purpose. At least I can't remember any occurence where the bicycle troops knowingly advanced closer than 200-300 meters to the own front line while mounted, and they would then act as regular infantry for the rest of the battle. Sometimes it could take several days before a bicycle unit could recover its bikes. (Or, as happened often in 1944, the Soviets would reach the bikes first). BTW, ambushing a bicycle column effectively is not very easy, since it is quite long and sparse and it won't take many seconds for the men to dismount and get cover. Also, if you advance on a forested road you can drive several dozens of meters into the forest before dismounting, giving a nice los cover. As for the horses: the Finnish (and the German) army relied heavily on horses and not to have them as an option for gun towing duty is a clear omission. But horses were not knowingly brought near the front line as a horse cannot take shelter from small arms fire. For example, at Kirvesmäki section of Taipale during the Winter War, horses were taken only up to "Karmankolo" bunker that was about 750 meters behind the front line. From there all stuff was transported by manpower, including AT guns when they were available. Speaking of Winter War, there was one case of Soviet cavalry use that gives a nice crossover to the "gamey recon" thread since if anyone tried to do something like that in CM, his opponent would cry out "gamey" real loud. In the first days of March 1940 Soviets advanced to Äyräpää area. They couldn't spot the exact position of Finnish line (what itself is not very surprising, since the line was basically only a series of holes in the snow). They then sent a small troop of cavalry galloping in front of the lines trying to get Finnish MGs to fire so that they could destroy the positions with artillery fire. I can't remember did the MGs open up or not. Note that in just about any other army the cavalrymen would have politely or not-so-politely refused the suicide mission. - Tommi

Germanboy wrote: Ever seen a picture of horses handling guns in a frontline situation? I have not. I haven't either, but I have read accounts where horses were, indeed, used in front line to tow guns. However, as far as I can now remember, in all those accounts those who had horses in combat hadn't planned for it but an enemy attack surprised the artillery or AT gun units. Few examples: - During the Finnish counter attack at Kuuterselkä 14 June 1944 Lt. Olli Aulanko's Stug run over (literally) a Soviet 76 mm battery that was in tow (by horses). - I have vague recollections that precisely the same thing happened during attact to Karhumäki in November 1941 when the only Finnish T-34 run over a 76 mm battery that was being transported for direct fire to front. - When Soviets broke through Finnish lines at Valkeasaari 10 June 1944 their tanks drove to a Finnish artillery battery that was just being evacuated. Few guns were already in tow but the drivers cut the horse harnesses and left them behind. - On the same day on the same front a MG gunner of JR 1 was evacuating his platoon's MGs with a horse-drawn cart when he noticed that the road ahead was blocked by enemy tanks. He jumped out of the cart and let the horse continue alone while he escaped through forest. The tankers didn't shoot at the horse as they saw that there were no-one in the cart. Very surprisingly, the horse and cart got back to their usual quarters intact, with the MGs. - The next one is pretty unbelievable and actually it doesn't include a combat, but it is pretty interesting and a veteran claimed in an interview that he saw it with his own eyes. During the Finnish retreat from Karelian Isthmus he witnessed that one Finnish horse-drawn cart was advancing next to a KV tank (though the tank was probably a JS-II, tank identification was not an exact science those days). The driver kept his cart so close to the tank that it couldn't shoot its gun. The observer wondered why no tanker inside popped up to shoot the driver. Apparently the tank had got separated from its infantry cover and the crew didn't want to raise their heads. Finally the tank stopped and blocked the route of the cart. At that point the driver cut the horse loose and led it to forest, passing the front of the tank and going under the gun. The observer never found out who that horse driver was and what happened to him afterwards. In all above cases the horses got to battlefield by accident. Whether that kind of occurences were frequent (and interesting) enough to be warrant inclusion in CM is debatable. However, the same could be said of trucks. - Tommi [This message has been edited by tss (edited 11-21-2000).]

Marco Bergman wrote: The tractor is a Russian STZ-3 Komsomolets, probably captured in the initial Russian invasion. Yup, it is one of those junior communists. Though the Soviets used several different designations for the tractors and those that were captured by Finns in Winter War or in 1941 were designated as A-20. The bogged (or should I say seriously marshed or swamped) tank is a Pz-II according to the caption of the picture. - Tommi

M. Bates wrote: Unreal Tournament, Quake 1,2,3, and many other games have servers which don't require a monthly fee for use. But none of those games has a persistent world. There's a huge difference between games where you just log in a server for few quick games on a map or two and games where the server has to store status information of each and every player. That costs money. A lot of money, in fact. - Tommi

Sergei wrote: Does the vehicle towing the 75mm piece belong German or Finnish army? Finnish. The scan is not so good but I didn't want to get too big jpegs. In the original picture it is clear that the riders have Finnish uniforms (or at least not German uniforms) but the jpeg is a little fuzzy. Mind you, this information is now enough to identify the thing. Bruno; Lapland (or Lappland or Lapp) was the battlefield of Lapland's war in fall 1944-early 1945. Also, Germans (and Finns) tried to attack to Murmansk (Kirov) railroad in Fall 1941. Those attacks were stopped. Germans had two independent panzer batallions in the forests, one that had mostly Pz-I and Pz-II tanks with a few Pz-IIIs thrown in and the other had captured Hotchkiss and Somua tanks. One of the batallions, Panzer Abeteilung 40 z.b.V. (that with German equipment) was sent to Norway for refitting in 1943 and it became a part of 25th Panzer Division that was practically destroyed in Ukraine during Winter 1944. The fact that two of the above pictures (the tipped Hotchkiss and the Somua) were taken in September 1944 should be enough to convince anybody that it was a sideshow front. - Tommi

Here are few pictures of French tanks in German service in Lappland. Here's one Hotchkiss H-39 near Alakurtti, Salla. Note the tank-friendly terrain in the background. This is what happens when you leave your Hotchkiss overnight in the wrong part of Lappland. The tank-identification grogs can now start arguing what is the thing that tows the 75 mm AT gun. This little Somua S-35 went swimming. I lied in the thread title and the last two pictures are of German tanks in the same area: The crew of this Pz-III went for a little joyride. This picture shows that you shouldn't drink and drive. Again, tank-grogs can spend a nice day trying to identify this. - Tommi

I just couldn't let this thread die. So, I went and scanned a picture of this monster: Think how far this could throw a watermelon... - Tommi [This message has been edited by tss (edited 11-17-2000).]

Sorry to hear that. - Tommi

Seahawk-vfa201 wrote: I just got the news that the newly approved C99 standard defines a new header file called < inttypes.h >, which defines sets of typedefs of integer types. Hmm. It will be interesting to see what happens to the header name when it gets passed through the post formatter. Anyway, integer arithmetic is exact and by its very nature it doesn't have any rounding problems. The number of bits available in a word is not really important, if the lower bound (= 32 bit) of the supported systems has enough. But the problem was with floating point numbers, which have much much much different behavior than integer have. My copy of C99 draft is in some unknown location so I can't check whether it would give any help in this case but I seriously doubt that. First, it is probable that the floating point numbers will be IEEE floats with all the problems that have been mentioned in this thread. Second, there are _no_ C99 compilers in existence right now. So, even if it would help, it will take at least a year before first usable C99 compilers are out. - Tommi

Sergei wrote: M3 Lee. One was destroyed by Finns as late as 1944, either with a Schreck or a Faust. Immobilized by a faust (I'm almost certain, my reference is at home), finished with a Molotov coctail. - Tommi

Bruno Weiss wrote: Nah, now I'm sure someone is gonna jump up and point out that in some far flung corner of the Ostfront, a Finnish unit of some sort or other did just that, and therefore CM2 should be all about that... No, I was going to jump out and point that it was so rare that even Finnish army did it, for my knowledge, only twice. I use word 'even' because throughout the war most tanks in Finnish service were captured from Soviets so Finnish tankers would have, on the average, much better knowledge on Soviet equipment than German tankers. The first occasion happened in Fall 1941 when one infantry division (ok, all Finnish divisions were infantry divisions at the time) captured 2 T-28 tanks intact with full fuel tanks and ammo racks. I don't know the details of this capture so I don't have any idea why Soviets didn't drive them away, or at least into the nearest swamp (swamps being the just about only natural resource that is abundant in both Finland and Karelia). There were few men who had driven bulldozers before the war who tried to get the tanks moving and to their surprise they succeeded in it. The tanks were then allocated to the Jääkäri company of the division that was commanded by Lauri Törni (who later served in U.S. rangers under the name of Larry Thorne and was killed in Vietnam) who filled the rest of the crew positions with men who had never even seen a tank from inside. The tanks rolled along the Finnish advance until they run out of fuel. At that point they were abandoned to be later recovered by real tankers. The crews of the tanks were so inexperienced that they had severe difficulties to even stay on road (T-28 was a beast to steer because it was so long) and they wouldn't have been able to do anything even remotely effective in a combat, had they been used in one. The other occurrence was on June 26 1944 at Portinhoikka. One Soviet ISU-152 had been immobilized on a small hillock. Sergeant Lauri Heino, a tank-driver and Mannerheim's Cross winner, organized a small band and they smoked the crew out with smoke grenades. Heino then managed to repair the assault gun and drive it away. It was used in combat the next day but it was lost almost immediately. I don't remember what destroyed it. Heino was a pretty interesting character. He also captured the first Finnish T-34, the first KV-I, and a host of lighter tanks, pretty much all in the same way. The story of the T-34 is quite amusing: in October 1941 the Soviets received their first T-34s at the River Svir front. Convinced that they were now invulnerable a group of tankers decided to go on joyriding through Finnish lines near the Svir power plan. They drove through Finnish lines, and they were, indeed, invulnerable. One Finnish 37 mm AT gun got some 10-20 hits on them and all bounced off. The Soviets didn't even bother to fire at the gun. However, when they were returning to their own lines one driver managed to get his tank stuck on a large tree-stump. At that point they were few dozens of meters away from Finnish positions so the tank crew exited in quite a hurry and run to their own lines. At that point Finnish Panssaripataljoona (armored batallion, the only Finnish tank unit at the time) was stationed nearby and Heino heard of the occurrence. He then immediately went to see the tank and he noticed that the stump had forced the tank to be in such an angle that the gear box didn't work correctly. He then blew the stump off with explosives, managed to fix the gear box and drove away. The tank was used for the first time during the Karhumäki operation almost a month later. That particular T-34 was later twice under water, first at Poventsa when Soviets blew up locks of Stalin's Canal and later in June 1944 when it fell into Saimaa Canal at Juustila when a bridge broke under it. Last Summer I met an old sapper who was one of the men who fished the tank up the second time. It too was an interesting story, since during the work Soviets were only few kilometers away. I don't know what happened to the original Soviet crew of the tank but I think that their superiors were not amused. But, to return to the topic: the general rule was that captured tanks would be sent to back to be repaired, refitted, and most importantly, painted with correct markings. I for sure wouldn't like to drive around in a tank with enemy's markings. - Tommi

Gen. Sosaboski wrote: However, I have been without a gunner's position in a bomber since Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe-anyone remember that? Hey, the manual is still on my bookshelf. I think my record was downing 12 B-17s and 6 Mustangs in a single battle flying a Gotha. (With limited ammo). - Tommi

Jarmo wrote: I've won a few defenses. There are a few ways this can happen. 1. Attacker runs out of time, on a large map or/and with less time this can happen easily. 2. The weather is bad. Rain ar snow will be a big problem for the attacker. 3. Attacker has sub-100% force. 4. Attacker does something stupid. That makes it 3 out of 4. Or 4 out of 4 if you count 2996 points out of 3000 sub-100%. BTW. Your mail is bouncing. - Tommi

43ordcoy wrote: just curious as to how many people here have or are serving with military forces.and what units,countries? Did my mandatory service in Finnish armed forces in 1995, was a coastal artillery weatherman for 285 days. Except that all my infantry friends claim that I wasn't really in the army at all... - Tommi

McDrum wrote: 1) a pair of coordinate numbers, just to know where in the map you are about to paint. I do this by first marking a 1 km x 1 km square grid with water. Then I use it to position some clear landmarks to the map (roads, villages, lonely hills). After that it is reasonably easy to position the rest details in place. Though, I've been working with 1:20000 maps that have the nice property that one mm in the map corresponds to exactly one CM terrain tile. With 1:25000 maps the mapping is not as straightforward. - Tommi

Olle Petersson wrote: Panzerwefer: In reality a MRL similar to the Nebelwerfer, but with HEAT rockets, if I'm not misstaken. Actually, that particular weapon "15 cm Panzerwerfer Madsen [and whatever a self-propelled gun mount is in German]" was a 10-barrel 150mm Nebelwerfer mounted on an armored car that was built on top of Madsen truck chassis. Unless I managed to forget the details in two days. - Tommi

Bruno Weiss wrote: In the discussion, it became apparent that it wouldn't be much of a game without a contestant for the Finns, so the Cossacks were added. Hey, the Cossacks are not enough. You also have to have Kalmuks (or however their name should be translittered English), Tatars, and Mongols. And throw in Novgorodians with Alexander Nevski for good sport. BTW, I just read a Russian joke from the '40s or so that can be also used as a one-question "Finnish-front grog" test. If you find it funny, you can call yourself a Finnish-front grog: "Two men were having a conversation in a camp in Siberia. The first one asks: - Why did they send you here? - Because of my passport. - How's that possible? - Well, when I went in to register for a passport they asked for my nationality. I said that I don't really know, since my father was a Byelorussian and my mother was Finnish. So the official decided to register me as a Byelofinn." - Tommi

Speaking of interesting designations, I just came upon (once again as I had forgotten the designation) a thing called "Panzerwerfer", with range of 6.9 km Now think about it. You could throw your King Tigger over the enemy's nasty AT gun and bazooka defence zone and start some heavy duty harrassing of the communication lines. Also, any enemy soldier and most fortifications will be completely flattened when a King Tiger drops on top of it from the height of approximately 1.2 km. - Tommi

Mark IV wrote: rune, I think you've got a winner there. Seconded. - Tommi

Stefan Fredriksson wrote: Do you know if the biography is/will be translated into other languages. It isn't and probably will not be. It is by a small publisher that even rented the press from a larger one. I seriously doubt that they have resources to translate it by themselves and I fear that there's not enough foreign interest to get it translated. What was his nick-name? The Fox? The Wolf? Wolf-paw? "Wolf-paw" was the nickname of Rokka's friend in the movie, from his surname "Susi" ("Wolf"). That character is also based on a real man, Toivo Ruuna. (A literal translation for his surname to English is "gelded horse"). Actually, pretty much every character of the movie is based on a real person, with the possible exception of the hated Lt. Lammio, though apparently the company commander Lt. Karitie had few Lammio-like qualities. - Tommi - Tommi

Olle Petersson wrote: Still, the smaller scale used for potatoes doesn't "throw" Granaten, so it should be a Kartoffelwerfer. Well, you could always get a "Granatapfelwerfer", instead. - Tommi

109 Gustav wrote: BTS, could we please have potato mortars included as a weapon in CM2? I'll be happy to include the ballistics. Popping into yet another thread with a digressing story. Last week corporal Viljam Pylkäs's biography was published here in Finland. For those who haven't heard about him, he was the model of Antti Rokka of the movie (and book) "Unknown soldier". He is most famous for singlehandedly stopping a Soviet attack in April 1942 when he killed at least 80 men with a SMG. But this story happened during the attack period of 1941. One night Pylkäs's MG platoon came under a harrassing fire by a Soviet 50 mm mortar or "Naku", as they were called, for the sound it made. (see, the story had a mortar, so it fits the thread topic). The fire was inaccurate but it disturbed their sleep. So Pylkäs stood up, took a SMG and slipped in the night to search the mortar. As mortars are pretty difficult to keep hidden in darkness and it had only a short range, he quickly spotted its place. He then sneaked towards it until he was about 15 meters from it. There were two Russians operating the mortar. Pylkäs could have shot them with his SMG but then he thought otherwise. He grabbed three pine cones from the ground and threw them one by one to a bush that was a short distance away from the mortar. The Russians heard the noise and went carefully to investigate. As soon as they had left, Pylkäs run quietly to the mortar, grabbed it and returned to cover. He didn't like the idea that he would have to carry the mortar back so he stayed and waited. After a few minutes the mortar crew came back. When they noticed that it was gone they got pretty worried. I don't fault them. They were in middle of a forest, in dark, alone, surrounded by strange noises, and they knew that the enemy was near. So when Pylkäs quietly said "ruki vehr", they instantly obeyed. He then ordered them to carry the mortar and escorted his prisoners back to Finnish positions. The platoon slept rest of the night peacefully. - Tommi

Germanboy wrote: A meeting engagement is a highly unlikely occurence and could therefore be called 'gamey' anyway. Agreed. it is an unexpected collision of advancing forces. Sometimes it was unexpected by only one side. An example would be a counter attack against an enemy spearhead by reserves that were unknown to them. Yes, most counter attacks were aimed at the flanks of the attacker but sometimes there was no other possibility than to go from front. One example is the Kuuterselkä counter attack on June 14 when Finnish armored counter attack smashed into the Soviet spearhead. As a side note, sometimes attacking flanks of an enemy breakthrough was just the wrong thing to do. Soviets in particular had a nasty habit of staging fake breakthroughs with the explicit purpose of getting the defender to attack the base of the breach. They would carry an astonishing amount of AT guns and MGs to the breach and mass an overwhelming artillery concentration to shoot at the expected route of counter attack. Sure, this tactics was very costly in terms of manpower (getting that fake breakthrough will cost lots of men) but it would tie up and attrite the enemy reserves so that when the real breakthrough attemp was started the next day it would meet much less resistance. - Tommi