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Michael emrys wrote about defending on the enemy side of a river: But then, war is the province of the exceptional and it wouldn't take too long to come with an exception to this rule too. Is this quick enough? During the battles of Vuosalmi in late February - early March 1940 Finnish defence line was on enemy side of River Vuoksi, and it was the correct thing to do in that case. The reason was that at Äyräpää (now, there's a word that 99% of the participants of this forum would pronounce completely wrong) the river banks were much higher (~15 m, IIRC) than on the Vuosalmi side. If the Soviets could capture the Äyräpää ridge line, they could bring in lots of direct fire guns and blow away the defences on the North side of the river. The river was also frozen enough to support light tanks. The Red Army captured parts of the ridge line (namely, Äyräpää chucrh hill) and managed to capture two islands (Mustasaari and Vasikkasaari) but the peace came before they could form a proper beach head on the North side of the river. However, had the war continued for a week more, they would have almost certainly broken through. The final scenes of the movie Winter War are about this battle. - Tommi

For winter scenarios it would take about 10-15 turns for an MG posistion to dig-in (somewhat at least), is it worth it??? I don't know actually, could be. You forget that the ground may be frozen in winter. I would like to see a man who digs a MG position in ten minutes in a frozen ground. During Winter War, the Finnish experience was that it was wery difficult to do any field fortifications without using explosives to break the frozen ground. Simple pits in snow are easy to make but they provide only concealment and no cover. However, I admit that I don't have any idea on how deep the soil freezes in France. - Tommi

Intelwennie puts perfectly "Oh, and artillery fire is a great motivator for digging!" In the early days of the Continuation War Finnish troops had to advance long marches in hot (for Finland) Summer weather. As a result, many soldiers threw away a lot of things they didn't wan't to carry and thought they wouldn't need. For most soldiers, the first thing to go was the gas mask and the field shovel went next. However, after they had encountered Soviet artillery, they usually chose something else to throw away. - Tommi

I managed to go through my army time having to dig only one foxhole, but that was definitely enough: the ground was frozen 20 cm deep and I had really poor shovel that broke midway through the ice. Our squad broke three shovels that day and bended one crowbar while clearing the tent place from ice. There were five of us preparing the tent position and it took over hour to do it. Later we were shown how a mine could be used to make proper tent base in one second. In my next forest trip we didn't bother to clear the office tent from ice (however, we did clear the sleeping tents, we were not completely insane) and as a result we had to bail out over 100 liters of water that night and the stove almost fell over. About the time needed to do field fortifications. I was on a vacation last week going through pretty much every military museum in 100 km range and came upon a statistic that it took 30 men-days of work to prepare a field-fortified artillery forward observation position with with 80% of the time going to wooden supports. - Tommi

I always thought people who drink alone are either anti-social or alcoholics. Sitting home alone in front of the PC drinking beer seems a bit odd. Oh well, to each their own. It depends on whether you drink enough to get drunk or not. - Tommi

I agree with Andreas. In most cases captured vehicles were not taken immedietely in combat. Usually they would be recovered by special units looking for battlefield salvage, repaired and refitted before being allocated to some unit. There were exceptions, though. I can remember only three cases where captured enemy tanks were taken directly to new combat. However, in two cases the tanks were not used in the combat they were captured, but on the next day. The first happened in late July (IIRC) 1941 when Lauri Törni's company captured two or three T-28s intact and decided to use them. So, for a couple of days Törni's infantry company had an organic tank support platoon before the higher officers heard of it and decided that the tanks would be of more use in hands of experienced crews. As none of the company were tankers, the tanks were not too effective but at least they gave moral support. The second case happened in October '41 when a Soviet T-34 immobilized when its driver damaged the gearbox by driving on a treestump. Finnish tank-driver sergeant Lauri Heino managed to sneak to the tank, repair the gearbox, and drive away. When he was on his way back with his new tank Soviets tried to ambush the tank but they were beaten back. The final case was a JSU-152 that was captured at Portinhoikka 25.6.1944 (again by Heino) and sent to combat. It was lost two days later when three T-34-85s opened fire at it when it advanced as the point tank of a counter attack. - Tommi

I agree with Bullethead in that the FOs should be able to specify the number of rounds to be fired. I'm not an expert on German or American artillery practices but in Finland each fire command included the shell expenditure. The most common amount seems to have been "10 groups", meaning that each gun should fire ten times (giving a total of 40-120 rounds, depending on how many batteries were firing). Usually that kind of a barrage would last for one minute. Also, Finns tried to shoot without spotting rounds whenever possible. Given enough time, the forward observer team would register every probable target in sight so that the FFE could be started immedietely. Mortars were often left aimed at "barrage targets" that were situated in probable Soviet attack lines. Thus, when Soviets attacked at least one mortar could immedietely start firing barrage while others were aimed. I recently read the memoirs of Lars Holmström who directed over 50000 rounds during the Continuation War. It seems that the usage of different shell patterns was much more common than what I had believed before. He mentions many times having "designed a pattern" that would maximize the damage of the shells. Unfortunately, he doesn't mention how long did it take but it seems that at least when firing at pre-registered targets it could be done relatively quickly. The memoirs also mention one interesting example on the devastating effect of correctly timed barrages: during the battle of Ihantala (summer '44) a batallion strenght reinforcement troop was sent to strenghten the Soviet attack. During its march to front lines it was hit three times by Finnish barrages that all started without spotting rounds. All three barrages caused approximately 200 casualties so that only about 200 men of the 800 men batallion reached front lines and they were so demoralised that they were useless in battle. This account was told by a Soviet captain who was captured a couple days later during a Finnish counter-attack at Pyöräkangas. In another case Holmström fired a minute-long barrage at a Red Army assembly point with 84 guns at the same moment when the Soviets leaved their foxholes. (Finnish radists had intercepted the attack time earlier so it was known). The barrage was so effective that Soviets couldn't attack at all that day while they usually attacked 3-7 times a day at the area -Tommi

Last minute 'rushes' did not happen using scraped together crews from destroyed weapons...just because the game/war was almost over. Agreed. It would have been very convenient for real life company and batallion commanders to have access to a turn counter that would have told how many minutes there were still left in the combat. - Tommi

...sure they were... At least that is what the government told their families. They were probably put in the poured concrete of some bridges after deserting their posts. A couple of years ago a researcher claimed that there was a special Finnish military court that executed almost 1000 men during Summer '44 in complete secrecy. (I can't remember the official figure, but it is somewhere near 50). This claim caused a quite big controversy and the current consensus seems to be that it is false. There is only anecdotal evidence on the existence of the secret court. Namely, someone reported seeing his acquaintance being escorted by guards in Lappeenranta while he was officially MIA in Karelian Isthmus. The evidence was poor at start and after a couple of supposedly executed men turned out to be still alive the argument was more or less dismissed. BTW, Finns had also a good batallion that was made of ex-convicts, namely, Erillinen Pataljoona 21 (21st Independent batallion). The batallion performed very poorly in its first few battles with 1/3 of its strenght defecting to Soviets but those stayed fought well afterwards. For example, at Karhumäki the batallion destroyed two reinforced Soviet batallions causing 410 KIA to them. The batallion was commanded by Major Nikke Pärmi who was one of the most colorful officers in Finnish army. His name was originally Nikolai but he changed it to Nikke by forcing the priest of his home town to change the official records by threatening him with a gun. He had a very peculiar accent and purposedly misused a lot of foreign words. That was his way of distinguish himself of other officers. When he was first checking his batallion he asked every soldier why he had been convicted. When one answered that he had killed a man, the Major responded: "Well, well, id's good do have some professionals here." When the batallion crystallized in its first combat he called to the commander of the reserve company and said. "Well, well, id seems dhad some of my men may come dhrough your posidions soon. You could dry do sdop dhem." A couple of minutes later he called again: "Well, well, dhere may be some Russkies coming doo. You could dry do sdop them, also." On a serious note, Tommi, are you a history student, or teacher or professor of some sort? I enjoy the stories youtell about a part of the war students in the US hear little about. I'm a PhD student on theoretical computer science. After high school I had two choices: either I'd go study history or computer science. My admission test score for the history department was 1/2 point too low so I ended up in computer science department. I have read a lot of history books and I remember quite well the things I read. Yesterday I found out that the volume of my collection of history and cs books is now almost a cubic meter. I noticed it the hard way when I moved and had to carry the whole pile first one floor down and then two floors up. - Tommi

Scott wrote: In reality this did not happen. I think it would be more accurate to say: "In reality, this happened only rarely." Lots of freaky stuff happened in the war. One concrete example: in June 1944 a Finnish company manning the strongpoint "Leijona" ("Lion") deserted its position. The strongpoint was then held by an artillery forward observer team (5 men, IIRC) who kept the Soviets at bay with small arms fire until reinforcements arrived. (They may have manned the Maxims of the strongpoint, I'm not sure). The men of the deserted company were ex-convicts who were released from the jail on the condition that they volunteered to front-line duty. Later the company (and the whole batallion) was dispanded and the men were transferred to construction units. Generally, tank and gun crews were used as infantry only in most desperate times. - Tommi

Then in the Battle of Britain, if the German bomber group didn't accidently drop their bombs on London, the Germans would have probably beaten the British. No. Operation Sealion didn't have any real changes to succeed. The Kriegsmarine was way too weak to prevent the British from destroying the shipping. A single destroyer getting through the German escorts would be enough to destroy the transports of a whole division. Also, Luftwaffe didn't have any real anti-ship aircraft available at the time and the pilots were not trained on anti-shipping role. - Tommi

MantaRay wrote: But I will take an Army of Tiger 2's over anything. They were the Kings that would never be crowned. Well, then you have to hope that you are not ordered to attack with your army. It could be said that the best defence against King Tigers would be to first withdraw 30 km and then counterattack and destroy the King Tigers one by one when they lie broken down blocking the roads. Sure, King Tiger was a very good in tank-to-tank combat, but the difficulty was to get it to battlefield in working condition. - Tommi

Steve wrote: A wooden bunker was realistically not meant to withstand direct HE fire. Since this is what the Americans have at their disposal in VoT, expect to loose them. One difficulty in assessing what a wooden bunker can withstand and what not is that there wasn't any "standard" wooden bunkers at all. A 76mm top hit could destroy a bunker with roof only one or two layers thick and that had about one foot of earth on top of it. On the other end of the scale, a bunker with 3-4 layers of logs and 1.5 meters frozen earth on top of it could withstand a direct hit from 152 mm guns (later hits would probably destroy it if the crew didn't have time to repair it). The figures above are for indirect fire. Direct fire is slightly different matter. A wooden bunker could be reinforced with rocks and earth from front side also, but not as efficiently as from top. A 152 mm gun would certainly be enough to crack open such bunker and 45 mm gun would be too light, barring vision slit hits. I don't know where the cutoff point would be but I'd guess that somewhere around 100mm. (As the Shermans in VoT have 105mm guns, that would make them heavy enough to destroy wooden bunkers without having to hit in particularly weak spots). Off my memory I can remember details on three occasions where bunkers and concrete pillboxes were destroyed with direct fire: 1) On January '40 at Summa Soviets brought 152 mm and 203 mm guns to fire direct fire against two Finnish concrete pillboxes. The smaller 'Poppius' was seriously damaged by a direct frontal hit. Its walls cracked and parts of it cave in. Most of the crew members inside was killed by shock wave. The larger 'Miljoona' was better built (it was constructed for flanking fire and had no openings towards Soviet lines) and it withstood multiple direct hits without severe damage. However, Soviets managed to destroy the two steel vision cupolas of the bunker. 2) In September (or maybe little later) 1941 Finns destroyed multiple Soviet bunkers with old 150 mm guns firing direct fire in Uhtua section. 3) During Summer '43 Finns field-tested the BT-42 assault gun by conducting direct fire against Soviet bunkers. The 114 mm howitzers of the assault gun destroyed 5-6 bunkers. The main worry that I have on CM bunkers is that they seem to be too easy to spot. Given enough time, a bunker could be camouflaged pretty well. Also, the vision slits may be a little too easy to hit. However, I haven't played the full version and I've played VoT only three times thus far so I don't know whether this is a problem or not. Kevin Peltz wrote: One segment on fortifications notes that the Germans tried to stay within the bunkers/pillboxes on defense, even though they may have been surrounded or bypassed. Same thing for Soviets and Finns. In fact, the last 19 defenders of 'Miljoona' are still in there. (The Soviets sealed the entrances with demolition charges when the defenders refused to surrender). That's why I don't think that the restriction on removing heavy weapons from bunkers is important. A commander who would evacuate a bunker if it was not absolutely necessary would likely be court-martialled. Having wrote all that I think I'll conclude this post by saying that I would like to see a wide variety of bunker types in CM, like concrete bunkers with "wings" to protect openings, and so on. - Tommi

Didnt England declare war on the Finns? I believe they did but never did anything about it. Yes, but it was only a political gesture. However, there was one aerial attack by British against Finnish territory, but the target was German shipping in Petsamo harbour. The mission was a failure. BTW, the Petsamo area had one of the highest AA-gun/square kilometer ratio of the whole war. The nickel mines there were very important for German military production (they amounted for 33% of total German nickel production) and they were _really_ close to Soviet territories (about 20 km in peace time and Germans didn't advance far, there) so Germans brought in an amazing number of 88mm AA guns. I don't remember the actual figure but there were more heavy AA guns at Petsamo than in the whole rest Finland combined. - Tommi

aka kingtiger wrote: WINTER War. It was loaded up with T34's They were T-26s, to be exact. Courtesy of Soviet army 1939. Nearly all material in the movie were authentic with the notable exception of Soviet I-16 fighters that were meter-long models. The I-16 model is now in Finnish Air Museum. Owen wrote: A german film called Stalingrad (two guesses what it's about) if I remember rightly used real T-34s. Yes. However, they were T-34/85s that were not yet in service at Stalingrad. (BTW: one of the three T-34s was sold to a Finn who now makes money by selling "experience trips".) - Tommi

Does anyone know of any good (or bad) war movies that used REAL (or close to real) German hardware? Well, the original "Unknown Soldier" had a Panzer IVJ in it. Too bad it was supposed to be a KV-I. (I still wonder why they didn't use one of the real KVs that Finnish army had in storage). Note that "Unknown Soldier" is a good movie. It is in black and white so the director could use original newsreel material in many places (in particular the shots on speeding T-34s are pretty good). In addition, it has the best musical score that I've heard in a war movie. In the early parts of the movie the score consists of old Finnish military music and in the end Russian marches are played. Also, Sibelius's 'Finlandia' is used very well to create athmosphere in the late parts of the movie. - Tommi

I also think that there's no single turning point of the war. However, I would like to add one date to the list of important dates: March 12, 1940. Before that day there was a possibility that England and France would declare war on Soviet Union. If that had happened, the rest of the war would have been a lot different. Also, there's another interesting 'what-if'. What if Soviet high command had had any sense at all in early 1941? I personally think that if Soviets had adopted Tukhachevsky's `red packet' strategy, Germans wouldn't have advanced past Smolensk. The main idea of the strategy was that the main defence line was fortified and relatively far from the borders. There was to be strong armored counterattack forces stationed in 'packets' behind the main line so that they were positioned to strike the flanks of the enemy after they had broken through the fortified line. Just imagine what would have happened if 300 T-34s and KV-Is (with trained crews) had attacked at the flanks of a Panzer Army in 1941. Jager 7 wrote: After all, no one has invaded Mother Russia and gotten away with it. Well, Poles did pretty well in the first decade of 17th century (was Sigismund Wasa still alive or was it one of his sons?). Swede's were also quick to seize spoils at the same time. Also, don't forget Batu Khan, who conquered the whole country except Novgorod. - Tommi

What if Trinidad declared war on Finnland. Think about it. I don't know, but Nigaragua _did_ declare war on Finland (unless I've been hit by a particularly persistent urban legend). Not that there were any combat encounters. What if Japan would have attacked russia like Germany expected when they declared war on the US when the US declared war on Japan? It wouldn't have mattered. The Japanese were _far_ from any important areas and in any case Soviets left strong forces facing Japanese for the whole war. In addition, Japan had attacked twice before (Lake Hasan 1938 and Khalkhin Gol 1939) and got trashed both times (though Soviet casualties were also severe, almost 1/3 in Khalkhin Gol). They were not going to try again. - Tommi

As a related practice, Finns experimented with using wire in anti-tank ambushes: Three or four medium-sized trees (preferably spruces) located on moth sides of a rowad would be sawed half through and connected to a wire that was strung over the road. If a tank drove to the wire, the trees would fell over it, stopping the tank and blinding the crew. Then, a AT-man would dart from a nearby foxhole and throw a satchell charge or a Molotoc coctail on the stuck tank. In proper conditions (tanks advancing in the point), this could be quite effective. However, it is not a tactic that you can rely on during pitched battles. - Tommi

Yesterday I played a game of VOT as German against AI with +50% balance for the Amis. I noticed that the AI troops were clumped in a small forest near the turn of the road. My 75mm AT gun forced the initial squads back while the rest of the troops advanced, resulting in terrilbe traffic jam in the scattered woods. My company commander was positioned so that it could see in the forest and direct the fire of the two mortars. The result: after two turns of firing there were five "eliminated" markers in 20x20 meter area. After four turns of shooting, nine markers. At this point there were still targets in the area but the mortars run out of ammo. In the end I lost with a minor defeat because one Sherman destroyed the Panther with one shot with a front upper hull hit. - Tommi

I can imagine what the criticisms are since the translator has a written two pages on thedialects he has used for the Swedish version. Apparently the translator did relatively good job but the publisher decided that some parts of the book should be rewritten and modified the text without the author's permission. This happened to the first print, I don't know whether the problems have been corrected with later reprints. The character Rokka for instance, his lines I sometimes need to read three or four times just to get a general idea of what he is saying. I imagine that the original Finnish is similar in complexity. Well, yes and no. Finnish has a lot of dialects (two main "branches" that both divide into lots of small dialects). One of the Linna's strenghts was that he mastered different dialects well enough that he could put each character to talk the correct dialect of his place of origin. The dialects are close enough so a Finn can easily understand them (except for some special words) but far enough that they can be distinguished (almost) as easily. And if you want to know about complex dialects, you could try to understand Swedish that is talked near Borgå. I don't understand a word of it but those who do say that it is quite close to 15th century Danish... So, in most places Linna didn't have to explicitly tell who was speaking, as the dialect gave it right away. Hietanen spoke Turku, Rokka spoke Karelia, Mäkilä spoke Pohjanmaa, etc. It is very difficult to translate this kind of dialect to other languages. BTW. The scene where Rokka destroys a Soviet column by himself happened also in reality. During the Spring battles of Perkjärvi (April '42) a Finnish corporal Viljam Pylkäs (who served in the same platoon as Linna) killed 82 Soviets in ten minutes with his Suomi-SMG, stopping a company-strenght flanking maneuver singlehandedly. He would probably have received a Mannerheim's Cross for this if he had had any respect to military discipline. It's interesting that the number of kills was downplayed in the book, to 64 IIRC. - Tommi

Britain also experimented with biological warfare. The plan was to use anthrax to kill german Cattle but it was found to be too dangerous to humans as well. The Germans had similar plans during WWI. They sent one agent to Northern Norway who was supposed to kill all Russina reindeer herds with anthrax. The plan was cancelled when it became evindent that there wasn't any sense in the whole operation. A couple of years ago someone found few sugar cubes that were infected with anthrax from Norway, remnants of this plan. - Tommi

Just a question. I was wondering if anyone had some good web site software they would recommend. GNU Emacs. The most powerful editor in existence and totally free. Not for the weak hearted, though. Disclaimer: I'm a graduate student on computer science and I don't mind having to write the HTML tags by hand. - Tommi

Siilasvou turned up zilch. Last time when I visited the local bookstore it was on the shelves. I can go and check the name and isbn of the book today. And is there any way to get hold of the original b/w version of Okänd Soldat (Tuntematon Sotilas?) that you know of? Book or movie? Well, movie apparently. Actually, it's nowadays more difficult to get hold of the new version of the film. The original version is sold in nearly all shops that have videos, but I haven't noticed the new version anywhere in last five years. I don't know if it is available on DVD. The book has also been translated to English ("The Unknown Soldier") but I've heard that the translation is TERRIBLE. The translator took his name out of the book after the American publisher had "improved" it somewhat. The legend says that the changes were made by two drunken Hollywood screenwriters. I think that says all about its quality... As for the JAS-joke, no skin off my back, I can take it, I'm a Viggen fan anyway and Swedens Defense policy is well, you know, not what it has been. Well, then just one last more (this is really the last, I promise): http://www.e.kth.se/esekt/org/bsong/songs/ovrigt/vem_kan_flyga.html . - Tommi

Is this excerpt from a book he wrote? Do you know if it has been translated into Swedish? I am uncertain as to how much literature gets published in Swedish in Finland, any tips? No, he wrote a report for the Finnish high command. Mauno Jokipii found the report when he researched the subject for his book. My Swedish is terribly rusty so I don't actively follow what is published in it. However, some months again I stumbled on General Siilasvuo's biography that was in Swedish. I can't remember its name, though. And oh yeah, I think I got the Lars Radeström joke. He's a JAS Gripen-pilot isn't he? Yup, or more precisely he quit flying with it after the second crash. I know that I shouldn't be joking on serious matters but there is something inherently amusing when same pilot crashes two planes two separate aerial shows. And yes, I know that the problem was in controlling software and not in pilot. - Tommi