tss

Huh. I managed to use my whole break time just to read this thread. Well, I'll add my (short) opinion. I think that it would be a nice feature if a player had some sort of "call for help" command. The effect of calling help would be that the player's reinforcements might come to play earlier. For example, if the scenario designer had allocated some reserves to appear between the second and the third battle, then calling help might cause them to appear in the middle of second battle. -Tommi

The thing about stopping tanks with pistols brought to my mind one occurrence where a tank was stopped with rifle fire (and it also nicely crosses over with the "tank crew" thread). During December '39 at Taipale (Terenttilä section) there was a major blunder with Finnish command-and-control and a section of front between two batallions was left unmanned. When a Finnish rifle squad happened to walk through the area they noticed that from the other side of a field emerged a Soviet T-26 followed by a platoon of infantry. At that time Finns were quite worried since the heaviest weapons they had were some hand grenades and IIRC they didn't have even any automatic weapons. They started shooting anyhow, but couldn't inflict much damage to the attackers. They were just about to start withdrawing when the tank suddenly stopped, its turret hatch was thrown open, and the commander and the gunner bailed out, running to the cower of the forest. Without their tank support the Soviet infantrymen also retreated. At that point the Finns were quite puzzled, but when they went to investigate the tank they found out that one rifle round had went through a vision slot and killed the driver. The rest of the crew had panicked at that point and bailed out. The Finnish squad leader then said that he had thought that he saw a pair of eyes momentarily in the slot and then aimed at them. (The sergeant in question had been a member of "Protection Guard" for about 10 years and had won their regional sharpshooting contents a couple of times). I can't be completely sure whether the driver in question was buttoned up or not, since the original story that I read didn't specify it. However, I think that the driver's hatch was closed since in T-26 tanks the hatch was in the front armor (and the vision slot was in the middle of this hatch) and if it was open the whole head and shoulders of the driver were clearly exposed, so that everyone could immedietedly have seen what had happened. -Tommi

Thank's for the answer to my question. I agree that when a tank crew wants to get out of danger the most common reaction is to drive away, but bailing out seems to have been relatively common reaction when a tank was hit but the shot failed to penetrate armo r. Of course, this depended on a situation. No Tiger crew would abandon their tank when hit by a T-34/76 that was 500m off. Also, there were occasions when crews continued fighting in burning and immobilized tanks. In my earlier message I gave the example of a StuG crew who bailed when they thought they were hit. Another case happened a couple of days later when a T-34/85 fired at point-blank range at Finnish KV-IE that was advancing as the point tank of Finnish Heavy Tank Company along a narrow forest road. The shot hit the hull of the Klim, but failed to penetrate (the tank in question is now in Finnish Armor Museum and I've seen the dent with my own eyes). The stunned crew bailed out and run to the cower of forest. Yet another example from the same battle happened when a single Soviet T-34 was ambushed by a battery of German StuGs (The tank had passed Finnish AT-guns because the gunners mistook it for Finnish T-34, the rest tanks of the unit were not as lucky). The first shot hit but apparently failed to cause any significant damage. At that point the commander of the T-34 noticed that they were in deep trouble and bailed out. About ten seconds later two Stugs simultaneously hit the turret ring and hit the ammunition, disitegrating the tank. The tank commander was later shot when he tried to escape capture. If you have seen a picture where two Finnish Panzerfaustmen walk by a destroyed tank, you've seen what happened to the T-34 in question (I've seen that picture in three books this far, and in two of them the caption erroneously claims that the tank was destroyed by Panzerfausts). -Tommi

If I had to choose between 4 King Tigers and 8 Jumbos my choice would heavily depend on the situation. If someone was arranging a single set-piece battle between the Tigers and Jumbos I'd go for felines any day. However, if I were a commander of a front line unit I'd choose Jumbos. The reason: reliability. A tank that is broken is as good as no tank at all when the enemy attacks. I don't have any hard data at hand right now, but I'd guess that the commander of the Shermans would have 7-8 tanks available at any time while his German counterpart could consider himself lucky if two of his tanks were running at the same time. A King Tiger with experienced crew could be terribly effective in combat, but the problem was to get it to the battlefield. Even then, it was not invulnerable. When the first King Tiger batallion (sPs.Abt 501) was sent to battle in July '44 the results were quite disasterous for Germans. The batallion lost 17 tanks (I'm not certain if all were Tigers, however) in a couple of days without destroying a single T-34. In the first encounter a T-34/85 single-handedly destroyed three King Tigers from an ambush and in the second encounter a Soviet company surprised a German tank unit when the tank crews were out of their vehicles, destroying or capturing 14 tanks. I have seen a detailed account of the first ambush on the net somewhere, but I couldn't find it again when I just tried to search for it. -Tommi

I just went through the other thread and nobody seemed to mention 'A Walk in the Sun', which is about the invasion of Sicily. It is, IHMO, one of the best American-made war films and it is surprisingly realistic, given that it was made in '45. This is the first time I try quoting on this forum, so the following may be mangled a bit. <it>Herr Jung wrote about 'Winter War': didn't know Finns used Nazi-style helmets;</it> Well, techically those helmets are not 'Nazi-style', since the Germans introduced them already in WWI, in 1915 or 1916, IIRC. Finnish army bought a couple of hundreds of thousands of helmets from Germany in early 20's and I believe more were manufactured on licence. And actually, Finnish army used just about every helmet type in existence at the time. I've seen a photo of a single infantry squad taken some time in '41. In the photo there are _four_ different helmet types (German, Russian, Italian, and one that I cannot remember). <it> dissappointing to not see ski troop action and daring hit-and-run tactics, </it> That's the price of historical accuracy. The ski troops were used North of Lake Ladoga, and the movie is situated in Karelian Isthmus. The warfare at the Isthmus was WWI style trench war. <it>though Russians were portrayed as being unbelievably dumb </it> The individual Russian soldiers were not dumb, but their commanders certainly were. During Stalin's purges military capability and initiative were not among the major survival traits of Sovier officers, but the 'Stalinist selection' favoured officers who just switched their brains off and shouted loyal slogans, instead. The incredibly dumb tactics were result of this process (disobeying orders of clueless comissars is also not a survival trait). <it>it was hard to understand how the Finns held out with their poor weaponry; where are the Maxim-type HMGs mowing down the Russian juggernaut?; </it> Yes, Maxims were very important for the defence. I'm not certain why they were left out, but possibly because in Finnish army the MMGs were assigned to specialized MG companies which were then detached where needed. As the characters of the movie serve in a rifle company, they wouldn't have any MGs of their own. (Actually some rifle units had unofficial MGs that were captured from Russians. In one occasion two Finnish corporals slipped into the Soviet trench in the cover of night and stole _three_ Maxims from straight under the nose of guards. BTW, a Maxim and its carriage weighs over 50kg...) -Tommi

I'd like to add three books to the list: 1) John Keegan's "Face of Battle". It is not about WWII but a study on how soldiers perceive the combat and how the dangers of battlefield have changed during centuries. It analyzes the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Somme. 2) "Unknown Soldier" by Väinö Linna which is THE novel about Finnish army. Linna served as a corporal in a machine gun company during the Continuation War of '41-'44 and the book reflects his experiences. 3) Urgh. I was about to add Peter Englund's "Poltava" to the list, but I couldn't find a reference of the English translation (I've seen it so it exists but none of the online bookstores seem to know about it. However, the name was _not_ "Poltava", but something about Peter I). Since the battle of Poltava was fought back in 1709 the book is even more removed from WWII than "Face of Battle", but it is nevertheless one of the best studies on battlefield that I have read. - Tommi

I have a question about tank crews bailing out. Is it possible that a tank crew panics and bails out from an undamaged tank? While most paniced crews would drive away, there are recorded instances when a crew abandons a tank that is in perfect fighting condition, either because they think that it is damaged or because they are green and forget that being inside a tank is usually a lot safer than being outside one. I have can remember two examples off my head. At counterattack of Kuuterselkä on Summe '44 at Karelian Isthmus a Finnish Stu-40 assault gun was lost when a 152mm shell landed in front of it and the crew thought they had received a direct hit and bailed out. When it was realised that the Sturm was not damaged it was no longer possible to recover it because of Soviet counter-counterattack. As another ecample I remember reading about a study that was conducted by Western Allies where they examined destroyed German tanks. If I remember correctly, they found that about 60% of German tank losses were tanks that were abandoned by their crews. Most of those tanks had run out of gas, but surprisingly high percentage had full fuel tanks. In most of those cases they found traces of aerial attacks (rocket craters and like) at the same region. Their hypothesis was that the tank units had come under aerial attack and the crews had panicked and abandoned their vehicles. The same study also found that only about 1% of the tank losses could be directly attributed to fighter-bombers (rocket and bomb hits), so in effect the crews would probably have been much safer in their vehicles than outside them. Of course, many of the abandoned tanks were left behind because figher-bombers had destroyed the fuel trucks. - Tommi

Doug, yes, I'm a Finn. Los already gave quite good account on Finland during war, but I'd like to elaborate a little. It is not possible to be completely sure of what were Stalin's reasons of starting Winter War, since the original documents are either destroyed or in some unexplored corner of Kreml archives. However, after reading quite a lot on subject matter I think that the reasons were: 1) Stalin was worried that some Western country (Germany, France, or England) would land an army to Southern Finland (with or without permission of Finns) and attack Leningrad via Karelian Isthmus. 2) Stalin didn't expect that Finns would give any resistance, and if they gave they would be completely overwhelmed. One important reason for this belief was promises of Finnish communists who had fled to Russia after losing Civil War in Finland 1918. They were certain that working class would start a new revolution when Red Army begins its attack. 3) Finland had been a part of Russia for 108 years and Stalin wanted to get restore the old borders. There were probably also other reasons, but I think those are the most important. And to Los, Finland was not allied to Soviet Union during cold war. I'd prefer: "neutral, but with strong determination not to annoy Soviets". However, in just about all army exercises the enemy "just happened" to attack from East, and the situation is the same today. Often when the students of Reserve Officer School are preparing defensive positions for the first time some one of them asks: "What is the enemy's expected axis of advance?". The canonical answer for this is: "The enemy comes from East, unless its on a flanking manouver". The students generally don't have to ask two times. - Tommi

Simon Fox asked about the accuracy of movie Winter War. It is historically quite accurate, but in some places the director used some "artistic licence". For example, there is a scene where Russian bombers (or artillery, its been such a long time since I saw it the last time I can't remember for sure) blow up the tower of Äyräpää church. Actually, that tower was demolished earlier by Finns because it was too good landmark for Russian planes. The Russians then managed to blow up the rest of the church when they hit it with a 152mm shell and about 20 anti-tank mines that were stored inside exploded. The basic picture of the Winter War is quite correct, except that there was no way how they could have potrayed the Soviet artillery barrages accurately. For example, when Soviets were preparing for their major assault on February at Taipale sector (where the movie is situated) they fired more shells in one day than whole Finnish army during the whole war. It was estimated that more than 50000 shells were fired at the 3km Kirvesmäki section, alone. Many of the events of the movie happened in real life. I don't want to give too much spoilers, but for example the "charge of the light brigade" near the end of the movie is based on real event. Of the almost 200 men of 1st Light Detachment that counterattacked at Äyräpää Church hill only about 20 were not wounded or killed in the attack. I once looked at a book where every Finn that was killed during Winter War is listed (I checked it to see if two brothers of my other grandfather were listed there. They were), and about half of the casualties of the "town" (not actually a town, but I don't have a dictionary at hand to search for correct translation) of Nurmo died during that attack. I have a personal interest in that movie because my grandfather and his brother served in the same regiment and probably even in the same batallion as the men that are portrayed in the movie. At the time Finnish army units were formed on regional basis. The men in the movie are from Kauhava and Kauhava is adjacent to Härmä, where my family is from. - Tommi