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I just read a little news item that said that the new Finnish war movie "Rukajärven tie" will be shown on a movie festival in Los Angels on Wednesday. The English title of the movie is "Ambush". I don't know any other details, but I thought that the Californian residents might be interested in this. The movie is very loosely based on a real recon mission where a bicycle platoon was sent to go around a lake. -Tommi

The larger the unit having 20% casualties, the greater the reduction of fighting capacity of the unit because there are a lot of non-combat personnel in large units. A couple of weeks ago I found out that my grandfather served in Finnish JR58 (Infantry Regiment 58) which was a part of 10th Division. I guess most of you are not aware of it but during 9-10 June 1944 the division was in the front line when Soviets started their Summer Offensive on their section. The artillery preparation was truly horrible. In fact, it was probably the heaviest to the date if we calculate number of shells fired / the length of front. (I tried to search information on the Normandy naval bombardment, but I couldn't find any exact figures.) The Soviets had massed over 2000 artillery pieces and they fired 310000 shells against 8 km frontline in 24 hours. That's about 38 shells for each _meter_ of the front line (and 50 shells for each of 6000 defenders). This barrage combined with several hundred Sturmoviks and a massed attack of six divisions broke through Finnish lines in 26 hours and sent the 10th Division into hasty retreat. At the time there were only two regiments in the division, JR1 and JR58. Of these JR1 was hit worse and it suffered 25% casualties, while JR58 had "only" about 20%. JR1 was so badly shaken that it couldn't be used on front line for the rest of the war. JR58 participated in fighting withdrawal but it too had to be sent to refitting shortly afterwards. Even after refitting it was used only as a reserve at Viipuri Bay area. I'm not certain of what happened to my grandfather. He didn't tell anybody about his experiences. To tell the truth, I'm not surprised about that. After all, he was in worst spots in two wars and probably saw his younger brother to die in combat. I think he was wounded in leg during the barrage, since his "battle list" doesn't mention any battles fought during the withdrawal, but mentions him being present at Viipuri Bay a month later. By his military rank he was probably a platoon leader at the time. -Tommi

12 men can pin an MG42 quite well if they start firing first.. When I was in the army I was thought that the correct thing to do when you meet the enemy unexpectedly is to fire a quick snap-shot at their general direction, hit the ground (actual order depending whether the enemy has opened fire), and only after that start considering the situation. The motivation for the snap-shot is that any counter fire will give the enemy men at least some thoughts about their own safety and may ruin their aim in the critical moments when your troops are most vulnerable. - Tommi

A couple of months ago I run into and bought a CD-ROM that had over 30 old games from Infocom. As far as I know, the HHGTG was the only notable one that was missing. I haven't played all of them, yet, but based on what I've seen this far, the best (or at least funniest) is The Leather Goddesses of Phobos. (It is based on a B-grade pulp sci-fi plot). - Tommi

What about "Major Major" When one of my friends was in the Army a Lieutenant with surname "Majuri" (Major in Finnish) was positioned in his garrison. In Finnish army there is always an "Officer on Duty" (I don't know the exact English translation) who is responsible that everything goes well in the garrison. In addition, each unit has an "NCO on Duty" who is responsible for that unit. The "NCO on Duty" has two assistants who are usually privates. Well, one day when Lieutenant Majuri was the "Officer on Duty" he wanted to ask some question from the "NCO on Duty" of the company where my friend served. At the time a particularly clueless private was serving as an assistant. The resulting phone conversation was (translated in English): Private: XXX company, 2nd Assistant on Duty YYY. Lieutenant: This is Lieutenant Major ... P [interrupting]: There is no such thing! [hangs up] About five minutes a quite irate Lieutenant stormed in to explain that there really is such thing as "Lieutenant Major". -Tommi

In fact Hitler often bemoaned the defeat of the Muslim armies at Tours by Charlemagne (I may have the location wrong.. It’ been a while since I read any medieval history) Just nitpicking... It was Charlemagne's grandfather Charles Martell who won Muslims at Tours (Poitiers) in 732. - Tommi

Los wrote: BTW I don't know if this has been mentioned but there was a good book that came out a few years back (Sorry can't remember the name!) that details hundreds of thousands of German POW deaths that occured in "Western ALlied" POW camps in 1945-48 primarily due to disease, exposure ad malnutrition. I haven't read the book (and to tell the truth, I can't remember its name), but I've read some discussion about it. The general opinion was that the author had done a sloppy research and gone after shock value. A large number of POWs were released without going through all official paperwork and the author counted all those cases as deaths. However, it is true that conditions in Western Allied POW camps in Europe were quite horrible in 1945-47. I think that the generally accepted death count is about 50000 starved. Last spring I happened to see a five minute snippet of a documentary (I had to run for a bus so I couldn't see more). In it, I saw pictures of skeletonlike prisoners. My first reaction was: "Oh, there is again some documentary about the Holocaust". I was quite surprised when the narrator next said that the men in the pictures were German POWs held by Americans. The pictures were taken by a Red Cross official who was inspecting the camps. - Tommi

Lee wrote: I know very little about the Finnish civil war, but I take it from your description that the "Reds" were communist revolutionaries trying to take over Finland from within. In which case, I would like The situation was not that simple. At the time Finland had just gained her independence from Russia. As result the government structures were more or less in chaos. Both sides claimed that they were the legitimate government, Whites because they controlled what was left of the Senate which was officially the highest authority at the time, and Reds because they controlled Helsinki (the capital) and in their opinion the Senate had been disbanded. The White claim was stronger, and in private Red leaders speaked of "Revolution", but in their public statements they always claimed to be legitimate. Also, I intentionally refrained from using term "communist" when describing Reds, because the term has means different things to different people, and in any case the modern meanings can't be straightforwardly applied to situation in 1918. The Red leaders were definitely revolutionaries and some of them were even bolshevists but many were not. Most of the Red soldiers were common workers and farm hands who had joined socialist party because it was their only way of having any influence in society. Many joined Red Guards because they were unemployed (there was a _severe_ recession in Finland at the time) and in danger of starving (there was also a food shortage), and the Red Guard provided food and money. What made the war especially hairy was that both sides fought "different" wars. The Reds were rallied to pacify the country and to "protect the rights of common people against oppressors". The Whites, however, were originally rallied to disarm the 40000 Russian soldiers that were still in Finland. In reality, only about 2000 Russians took part in the war, the rest only wanted to go home as quickly as possible. So, the Reds thought that they were fighting a "class war" against the bourgeoisie, while the Whites thought that they were fighting a "liberation war" against Russians and a few Finnish "criminals" that had joined them. As both sides were (in their opinion) clearly fighting for a "just cause" they had to be the "good guys", so the enemy were "bad guys", and as we all know from Hollywood movies, bad guys are evil and you are allowed to do anything to stop them. Of course, the commanders on both sides knew what really was happening, but the common soldiers knew only what they were told. crimes. In fact, if communists (or others of their vile ilk) should ever try to take over a country, they should all be killed by the government/citizens as quickly as possible. Communists should never, You know, most communists have some reason why they become communists. The communist ideal is very desirable: equality, everybody gets what they need, and everybody works for common good as well as they can. The problem is, that the ideal works only if each and every person unselfishly agrees to it, and that doesn't happen in this world. The history of last 80 years shows what happens in reality. The communism breeds out of poverty and hunger. If you want to get rid of communism the effective way is not to kill all communists, but to remove poverty. It worked in Finland. I find it quite ironic that in 40 years following the White victory, _all_ of the reforms that Reds demanded prior to war were made, but if the Reds had won, Finland would probably have been annexed to Soviet Union in late 20's or early 30's. - Tommi

It is often said that winner writes the history. Obviously this is not completely true, you only have to look at the number of memoirs written by German generals to prove it. But winners have one advantage: they get to define war criminals. When a British destroyer fired at survivors of a sunken ship in Norway it was a "tactical neccessity" and when an U-boat did the same in West Africa it was a "heinous war crime", and the captain and three other officers were hanged. In any case, executing prisoners is one of the the most stupid things to do. If the enemy knows that he will be probably shot after surrendering he will fight much harder. As an example I might give Finnish civil war in 1918. The war was a nasty affair with both sides committing a lot of atrocities. It would take too much space to explain the reasons for the atrocities, so I'll just give a one-sentence description of the situation: nationalist "Whites" (or "government troops") fought against socialist "Reds" (or "rebels"). Research has shown that about 50% of Red casualties were actually prisoners that were shot within minutes or in some cases hours after their capture. The result was that after first few occasions Reds didn't want to surrender if they had any other option. While the war was fought on rural area Whites got many very easy victories, because Reds would flee if the threat grew too big. But when the largest battle of the war was fought at Tampere the number of White casualties skyrocketed. The Reds had nowhere to run and they fought fanatically. As more than one Red put it: "They'll shoot us anyway, so at least we can fight". The Red side was not clean, either. One of Red high commanders, Eino Rahja, allegedly said once: "Why the hell are you dragging those prisoners here? I'm going to kill them in any case so you could save some time and shoot them yourself." It is impossible to prove whether Rahja actually said that or not, but it would definetely have fitted in his character. (Rahja was an old-guard bolshevik who had been the bodyguard of Lenin for quite many years). - Tommi

I wrote: Losing night vision is not so big issue, since in the long run muzzle flashes of guns cause same effect. Moon wrote: Not quite true. Short flashes of light, even bright light, have no real effect on human night vision, only for a few seconds at most. OK. I sit corrected. And: And they were only effective as long as the other side didn't have any night vision equipment available. That IR beam could be seen for miles with a night vision scope and the tank using it would be an easy target. Soviet T-54 or was it T-55 series had similar system. There were couple of them in Finnish army (and they are still used for training purposes) and a friend of mine who served in tanks told me once the doctrine on their use: Only one tank in a platoon would turn its IR-light on. It would then try to illuminate as many targets as possible as the other tanks begin shooting at them. Then, about ten seconds later the illuminating tank will blow up and the next tank turns its light on. Not too comforting combat job... - Tommi

As far as I know generally only defenders in fixed positions used flares in combat. If there was an abundant supply of flares a guard on duty would shoot a flare now and then and look that nothing moved in the no-man's-land. However, most of time the guard shoot a flare only when he suspected something. If he saw an attacker he would then sound alarm and continue firing flares to illuminate the ground to provide good targets for fire. I've read about a couple of ambushes when an enemy patrol was advancing over open ground and defenders let them close before suddenly firing 3-4 flares leaving the attackers clearly illuminated and blinded. Losing night vision is not so big issue, since in the long run muzzle flashes of guns cause same effect. - Tommi

Once again making an excursion to military history... If CM was to model Napoleonic warfare, then abandoning and reoccupying guns would be neccessary. At the time the guns were positioned some 10-15 meters in front of infantry line (or square or whatever formation they were using). When the enemy cavalry tried to attack the infantry positions, the gunners would have time to fire one or two shots, and then they would retreat to the cover of infantry. The cavalrymen would then huff and puff for a moment (if the infantry formation didn't break, there was nothing that cavalry could do to hurt them) and retreat. Then the artillerists would man their guns and continue firing. (Yes, spiking guns would have been sensible thing to do for the cavalry, but generally they didn't do it.) - Tommi

Pixman wrote: Dead men don't fight!! Agreed. However, early in the war in Eastern Front it was relatively common for a Russian soldier to start playing dead when the situation seemed to be too bad. Sometimes they would then start shooting or throwing hand grenades at Germans when they got near, trying to get officers if possible. And no, I'm not trying to get this feature into CM. - Tommi

(If this message has strange formatting it is because I'm writing this with Lynx) That cartoon brought me some memories from my army time. As I wrote on the "army experience" thread I served my time as a weatherman and we had _really_ easy time most of the time. One of my friends who was in the army at the same time and he would often curse his stupidity because he had joined Jägers (the basic infantry grunts who are trained to do all the fun stuff like counterattacking enemy tank columns and like). Well, that friend of mine spent more nights in forest than in barracks during his army time and he often told "horror" stories of those exercise camps. When there was only a couple of weeks left from my army time I had to go to an coastal artillery firing camp that lasted for about a week. When I came back from there I could tell my friend I too had now had my share of "bad time" in army and he was noticeably delighted to hear it. At least, until I told my story: "Man it was hard. We had to sleep in barracks. To make it worse, it was the room of the squad leaders, and their television had only Cartoon Network and Viva (German music channel). We couldn't even do our job because we had to oversee some reservists who were called in for some extra training, and after showing them how a weather sounding is done we hadn't anything to do so we had to spend our time in the canteen playing pool. We didn't even get to do our guard duties because the reservists did it, too." Yes, I know, it was turning a knife and rubbing some salt at the same time... -Tommi

I personally think that flamethrowers are _very_ overrated in CC series. In CC3 pretty much everyhing explodes or dies the moment flame touches the unit, and I don't think that is realistic. Psychologically a flamethrower is very effective weapon since just about everybody is afraid of getting burned. But in practice you had to get very near the enemy and it is not too easy to hit individual soldiers with the flame jet. Also, heavy winter clothing could protect soldiers quite well when worn. (*) Of course, a flamethrower was effective if it could be aimed at bunker openings or some other nonmoving target. During Winter War and early Continuation War Finnish army captured about 30 Russian flamethrower tanks (T-26 based, 3 different models). In 42-43 _all_ were converted to have 45mm guns. The reason: it was found out that flamethrower tanks were pretty useless in real battles. The visibility from T-26 was poor and the tank had to advance way too close to enemy infantry to be comfortable. When the tank was near enough to use its flamethrower the enemy infantry was close enough to throw Molotov coctails. Of course, other flamethrower tanks were better designed than T-26 (notably Crocodile), but they had the same weakness that they had to get quite close to the enemy. (*)When I was in army we had an exercise where we put out napalm fires with old winter overcoats and blankets. We would pour napalm over a dummy, set it on fire, and then every one would put the fire out on his turn. We also covered one of our sergeants (a volunteer wearing winter clothing) with the stuff and torched him. He only lost his eyebrows. That was definitely the most interesting excercise that I participated during my army term. - Tommi

Coastal artillery weatherman in Finnish army for 285 days. I don't consider myself as a trained soldier, since I spent most of the time in an isolated weather station doing weather reports. In fact, after the basic infantry training I didn't fire a single shot with my assault rifle. (Not even the "absolutely required" marksmanship tests, as nobody remembered to schedule us for them...) -Tommi

Steve wrote: Yes, pretty much a CM battle is something where all units would be on FULL alert. Is it possible to design scenarios where troops of one side of the battle are not alert? Of course, this is not so relevant to the West Front warfare, but I think it would be quite difficult to model partisan warfare of East Front without this possibility. I vision a scenario where the defender has to set his forces up in a village or in a couple of adjacent villages. He would could then set a given number of half-squads to guard duty. Some of the guards would have to stay in place but of them units might be guard patrols. In the beginning of the scenario the defender could move only the guard patrols until an alarm is given (firefight, patrol spots enemy and rises alarm somehow, etc.) The attacker then would try to advance as close as possible without alerting the guards. Also, it would be neat if there were two completely disconnected maps in the scenario or campaign and the attacker had objective to destroy, for example, a given percentage of buildings of the two maps and he could allocate his troops as he saw fit. The defender would also have to split his forces between the maps without knowing where the main attack is coming. - Tommi

"The army doesn't give free bus rides" - unknown Finn The moral: if they give you a ride in a truck that is only because they need you quickly in some unpleasant place (like to participate in a counterattack against Red Army armored spearhead). Held for just about every army with the possible exception of the U.S. -Tommi

I also second (or should I say "third" or "fourth") the notion that soldiers were generally not too concerned about the correct identification of enemy tanks. For infantry there was only two really important attributes for vehicles: 1) Is it on our side? 2) Can it hurt me? For example (once again from Finnish army). During Winter War at Karelian front Finnish infantry soldiers generally classified enemy tanks into four categories: "small" (probably T-37s), "medium" (T-26, BT-5,7), "large" (T-28), and "very large" (T-100, SMK, and probably KV-I). The higher command would then try to guess what tanks the reports talked about. Even tank crews couldn't be trusted to give accurate information about enemy tanks. During Summer '44 Finnish tankers categorized Soviet AFVs as: "light" (T-60 and like), "Sotka" (nickname for any model of T-34), "Klimi" (KV, JS, and sometimes even Cromwell tanks), and "ugly" (an assault gun, mostly applied to ISU-122/152). -Tommi

I'd like to add one more example of tanks being used for indirect fire (and no, I don't think that the thing was common enough to be featured in CM). In 1942 someone in Finnish army decided to convert a number of captured BT-7 tanks into assault guns. The Finns then designed a new turret with a 114mm Brithsh howitzer mounted for the tank. The resulting monster was called BT-42. Classifying BT-42 is quite difficult, since it had turret like a tank, but it was intended to function like an assault gun. During Summer '43 a battery of BT-42s was used to shell Soviet fortifications at Karelian Isthmus, with both direct and indirect fire. This was a part of field tests for the new vehicle. The results were quite good as they destroyed a number of Soviet pillboxes. One of the BT-42s was damaged by an AT-gun. Later, during the battles of Summer '44 some idiot decided against using BT-42s as self-propelled artillery and sent them to front lines instead. The armor of BT tanks had been too weak back in '39 and the HEAT round of the 114mm howitzer could penetrate only the side and rear armor of lightest Red Army tanks. As a result the losses were horrible and their impact to the outcome of the battle was minimal. -Tommi

Dar wrote: Aaron had mentioned earlier in this thread that "skipping" cannonballs had been de rigeur at one time. Does anyone know when explosive shot and shell became used widely Once again I'm writing without my sources at hand, so take this with a large grain of salt. There has been explosive shells for quite a long time, probably as long as there have been cannons. The earliest shells were hollow iron balls with a hole drilled in the surface. The shell was then filled with powder and a fuse was put through the hole. I'm not certain if the hole was otherwise sealed. The shell was then loaded to the cannon barrel with the fuse being upwards. When the shell was fired, either the fuse was light before firing or it was counted on that the blast would set it on fire. Those shells were _very_ unreliable, since you had to calculate the correct lenght for fuse, the impact might douse the fuse, or the whole thing could just blow up when fired. The shells were mostly used in siege warfare, because it was not accurate enough for combat fields. With some luck the shells could be effective. There is one account that dates from the 30 year war (siege of Magdeburg, I think) where artillerists hit a trench with a shell killing lots of Catholics. First incendiary rounds also date from the 30 year war. During sieges it became practice to put iron cannonballs into campfires and fire them red hot. The gunners tried to aim at thatch roofs and other inflammable structures. Sometimes the results were good but usually the defender could put out the fires without problems. Also, stuffing a red hot ball of iron on top of a gunpowder charge is not something that is fun to do... IIRC, the first "modern" guns were designed by Krupp in 1870's. Once again, my sources are at home. - Tommi

Well, I remember reading an anecdote about different air forces (I can't remember to whom it was attributed, maybe to some German POW taken in Italy): 'When RAF attacks, Germans jump for cower. When Luftwaffe attacks, Allies jump for cower. When USAF attacks, everybody takes jumps for cower.' -Tommi

Herr Jung wrotee: "I very much doubt reliability was any factor in fitting tanks to be sent to Finland with Russian MGs" I find it strange too, but reliability was given as a reason for the change. Yesterday I found text of a note that the Finnish major who was responsible for the field tests wrote to his commander (of course I forgot to take the text with me when I left home today, but it was short and I'll try to reproduce it from memory): "All gun records are missing. The 7.92 KK/34 is of wrong calibere and it is inferior to 7.62 DT. The Germans have also had reliability problems with it. I suggest that the machine guns will be replaced with 7.62 DTs." The "gun record" part refers to Finnish practice of issuing two different service records to each gun, including tank guns. "7.92KK/34" was Finnish designation for MG34 (KK comes from "konekivääri"), and 7.62 DT was the Russian MG. My source (Käkelä: "Rynnäkkötykkipataljoona") doesn't elaborate the reasons more, and it is the most comprehensive history of StuGs in Finnish use that has been released, so I don't know what were the exact factors that lead to the decision. The major in question (I forgot his name, also) was an experienced front-line commander, but he had served in the infantry for most of the war. When the Assault Gun Batallion was formed someone noticed that he had served in the first Finnish tank unit in 1934-5 and so he was transferred. It may or may not be of relevance, but the earliest tanks in Finnish use (Renault FT-17s) had a lot of problems with unreliable Hotchkiss machine guns. -Tommi

When Finnish army received its first Stu-40s their MG34s were taken out and replaced with captured Soviet Degtyarev LMGs (that's the weapon with "phonograph record magazine" on top of it). The persons in charge of the project gave two rationalizations for this decision: 1) MG34's caliber was 7.92mm, and there were no other weapons in Finnish use with the same caliber and it would have been necessary to buy all the ammo from Germany. On the other hand, Finland had _lots_ of captured Soviet weapons and ammunition for them. 2) They found out that MG34 was not as reliable as Degtyarev. While the first reason was quite clear I'm having some trouble with the second one. Does anyone know about any study that compares reliabilities of different MGs in battlefield conditions? It is possible that MG34 was too over-engineered for front line duty, but it is also possible that the testers were very experienced in using Soviet MG and knew how to operate it correctly but didn't know how to operate MG34. It would be interesting to know which one of the above hypothesises is closer to truth. - Tommi

I'd like to add a new angle to the talk about campaign reinforcements. Most posts have centered on giving reinforcements to the side that is losing battles, but in some occasions it would be realistic to add them also to the winning side. For example, if the attacker manages to decisively crush a defence line the high command could then allocate a tank batallion or two from reserves to exploit the breakthrough. At least Russians practiced a lot of "violent recons" (I don't know the correct English term, this is a direct translation from Finnish "väkivaltainen tiedustelu") where a lot of company or batallion sized attacks were directed against German lines to probe weaknesses. In few cases the recon probes actually resulted in breakthroughs and then Soviets were usually quite quick in sending all available T-34s through the resulting gap. -Tommi