gaffertape Posted July 14, 2000 Share Posted July 14, 2000 Just to clear it up: "A Midnight Clear" starred Gary Sinise, Ethan Hawke, Frank Whaley, Kevin Dillon, Peter Berg and Arye Gross. A very haunting film, and a personal favorite. GAFF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tss Posted July 14, 2000 Share Posted July 14, 2000 Killmore wrorte: The Soviets also claimed that Finland started to build the MAJOR defense line with guns that could fire very far into Soviet Union (even as far as Leningrad/Petersburg). Yes, they certainly claimed that. And after the war they claimed to have broken through 7 heavily fortified defence lines. In reality, there were only three lines, and only the first (that was later dubbed "Mannerheim line") was any good. The middle line had about 10 obsolete concrete bunkers (~1 bunker / 10 km) and the final line was completely unfortified. During the war the strenght of the main defence line was vastly overestimated in foreign (and Finnish) media. Few journalists even claimed that it was stronger than the Maginot line. My sources are at home so I don't have exact figures, but I think that the Maginot line had about 10 times more fortifications per km than Mannerheim line. I can't remember who said it, but when one batallion commander was asked how deep his defence was, he answered: "160cm". (Thats the reason one of Soviet soldiers gave me when I asked him in 1982 - he fought in that war ) Soviet leaders were certainly worried that either Germany or Britain would mount an attack via Finland against Leningrad and wanted to prevent that by moving the border to West (preferably to the Gulf of Bothnia). The irony of the situation is that Winter War together with the Soviet political pressure in 1940-1 practically ensured that Finland would join Germany's attack. I believe that if Winter War hadn't happened, Finland wouldn't have voluntarily joined the war. Also, Finnish fortifications were purely defensive. Only the heaviest artillery could fire from the main defence line to the Soviet side of the border and I strongly suspect that no WWII gun could have reached Leningrad (I have to check this from a map when I get to home tonight). Had the fortifications been constructed for protecting the base areas of an attack, they would have had to be much nearer to the border, approximately where VT-line was built during the Continuation War. - Tommi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tss Posted July 15, 2000 Share Posted July 15, 2000 Aargh. I had written this reply almost completely and then I managed to destroy it. Well, repetitio est mater studiorum. Killmore wrote: The Soviets also claimed that Finland started to build the MAJOR defense line with guns that could fire very far into Soviet Union (even as far as Leningrad/Petersburg). I was wrong when I claimed that there were no WWII guns that could fire from the Finnish main line of defence to Leningrad. The distance from Taipaleenjoki to Northern suburbs of Leningrad is 50 km and some naval or railroad guns could fire to that range. However, the longest-ranged gun in Finnish service was the 12" Obuhov coastal artillery gun. It could fire 36 km with normal ammunition and 42 km with ballistics caps. It is just about possible that if the guns of Järisevä coastal artillery fort near Taipale been 12" instead of 120 mm and if they had fired during a really strong North wind, the shell might have landed inside Leningrad. The nearest Obuhovs were at the West side of the mouth of the Viipuri bay, far too far to fire even at Kronstadt. Throughout its history, the Finnish army has had 3 or 5 guns in positions where they could fire at Kronstadt but even they lacked the range to hit Leningrad proper. The first of these guns was a 12" Obuhov that was positioned in Ino fort. The fort was constructed by Russians themselves in 1910 to defend the approaches to Petersburg. The fort had 4 guns and when the Russians withdrew in 1918 they destroyed the locks of the guns. Finns later (1919, I think) brought in a lock from Örö fort and repaired one of the guns. The Ino fort was destroyed by the terms of Tartto peace 1920. The second occasion happened during Continuation war when someone got the really bright idea to put a 10" Durlacher battery (I'm not certain whether it had 2 or 4 guns) so that it could bombard Kronstadt. The problem was that the fort had to be so close to the front lines that in practice the guns couldn't be fired at all. The Durlacher guns had in theory enough punch to fire to Leningrad proper but the mounts were poor and the full range couldn't be utilized. The mounts were originally developed by Imperial Russian army at a time when they believed that 10 km range would be more than enough for coastal guns. Finns modified the mounts to allow ranges of 28 km but there was still much room of improvement left. Note that in December 1941 Finns captured one 12" railroad gun at Hanko that had over 50 km range. However, the gun was so badly damaged that it took over a year to repair it to the point that it could be test-fired. As there were no ballistic tables available for the gun and no time to prepare those, it was not taken in active service. - Tommi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Posted July 15, 2000 Share Posted July 15, 2000 Actually, whats a good ww2 movie on armored forces?? ----------------- Battle of the Bulge with Robert Shaw as the kickass German tank commander was not so bad, although some grognards thought it had too many unrealistic things like the shell from a tiger took 1/100th of a second too long to cover one kilometer... Henri Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted July 15, 2000 Share Posted July 15, 2000 Or the fact that ALL the tanks were wrong, the terrain was wrong, the tactics were wrong and.... ARGH..... I HATE that movie! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19 Echo Posted July 15, 2000 Share Posted July 15, 2000 Fionn, So how do you feel about "Patton?" I personally don't have a problem with the M-48's and -47's. At the time it was normal practice to use those models in WWII movies. Whinging about "wrong" tanks is such a grognardy thing to do. Anyone who wants to make an authentic WWII armor movie with big tank battles is going to have a problem with German tanks. There just aren't that many running. Of course, they could always do VISMODS on T-34's or something (but then the grogs will complain about the suspension being wrong ). Or there's CGI. But I like seeing real tanks. I love the Battle of El Guetar (sp?)in "Patton," when the American tanks hit the Germans' flank. Some good wide shots in that scene. Anyone know where they got all those tanks from? Couldn't have been cheap. "Battle of the Bulge" has huge flaws, but Telly Savalas is a hoot. And of course, there's the "Panzerlied." Stomp stomp. -- 19 Echo (Mike Zeares) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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