The Winter War with Finland

Discussions on the Winter War and Continuation War, the wars between Finland and the USSR.
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Brian Von Stauffenberg
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The Winter War with Finland

#1

Post by Brian Von Stauffenberg » 03 Apr 2002, 18:05

What Tanks did the Fins use in the winter war of 1939/40, i know the Russians were using T-28s with the 76mm gun but did the Fins have effective tanks to use against these?

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Antti V
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#2

Post by Antti V » 03 Apr 2002, 18:45

Renaults from 20s were main "weapon". Actually Finland hadn´t even enought tanks for to create enought effective group and those few tanks were then used to support infrantry in their battles in Front, with poor results. Most effective weapons against Soviet tanks were Molotov´s Coctails and sisu :wink:
But in 1941 Finland had entire division, created from Soviet made war booty tanks.


JariL
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Armoured division was founded first in 1943

#3

Post by JariL » 04 Apr 2002, 08:36

Hi Antti,

Armoured division was founded first in 1943. Before that I believe Finnish army had one tank battalion. When the Stug III's arrived it was possible to form an other battalion. At the same time Jägerbattalions 2,3,4 and 5 were attached to the unit that was named Panssaridivisioona (armoured division).

During Winter War the only active engagement of Finnish armour was near Viipuri where an independent tank company was used to support a conter attack. The attempt failed badly and 7 (?) Vickers tanks were lost without much damage caused to the Russian armour.

Regards,

Jari

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JTV
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Finnish tanks of Winter War

#4

Post by JTV » 04 Apr 2002, 08:58

Antti V wrote:Renaults from 20s were main "weapon". Actually Finland hadn´t even enought tanks for to create enought effective group and those few tanks were then used to support infrantry in their battles in Front, with poor results. Most effective weapons against Soviet tanks were Molotov´s Coctails and sisu :wink:
But in 1941 Finland had entire division, created from Soviet made war booty tanks.
Most (32 out of total of 34) Renault FT-17 had been bought at 1919. By 1939 standards FT-17 tanks very unreliable and slow. 19 of the FT-17 were "female" (armed with single 7,62-mm machinegun) and 15 were "male" (armed with short WW1 era 37-mm Puteaux gun). In tests done before Winter War Finnish military found out that 37-mm Puteaux gun was unable to penetrate even 10 mm steel plate - after this it was clear that using FT-17 as tanks would have been suicidal. So they were used as improvised pillboxes instead (they were basically dug into hull-down positions to some parts of Manneheim line and used as improvised fortifications).

Finland had also bought 32 Vickers-Armstrong 6 ton type E tanks at 1938 - 1939. Unfortenately to save money they had been bought without weapons, radios and even drivers seats. When Winter War started all of these tanks were still unarmed (some had been temporarily armed with old 37-mm puteaux guns for wargames of summer 1939, but that installation allowed only shooting blanks). During Winter War Finns hurriedly tried to arm these tanks, but getting the guns needed was slow and getting the sights proved impossible (sights designed to be used were German and as Germany was against selling any armaments to Finland at that time getting the sights from there was difficult). So arming them was terribly slow and diffucult.

By late February of 1940 Finns had managed to arm 13 of the 32 Vickers 6 ton tanks, armament was like this:
- 37 mm Bofors M/36 at-gun (sights were somewhat improvised so shooting accuracy of this weapon was not great).
- Coaxial 7,62 mm aircooled Maxim machinegun (not very accurate weapon either as its sight was improvised also).
- in front hull (used by 4th crew member) tank-version of 9 mm Suomi M/31 SMG (this actually had quite a good sight).
Those 13 tanks were used to do counter-attack at Honkaniemi in Karelian Isthmus, unfortenately the fuel used had gotten water mixed in it for some reason, because of this 7 out of the 13 tanks broke down before they got to the battle-field. And after that just about everything else went wrong also. Check this page of Honkaniemi counter-attack:

http://www.winterwar.com/Battles/Naykkijaervi.htm

Honkaniemi was the only sizable tank battle fought by Finnish tanks during Winter War. Large amount of captured Soviet tanks (mostly T-26) and remaining Vickers 6 ton tanks (called T-26E after being rearmed with Soviet 46 mm m 1932 guns and coaxial DT machineguns during Interim Peace of 1940 - 1941) allowed Finns to establish Armour Brigade by summer of 1941, later (after infantery, artillery etc elements were united into it) it got renamed as Armour Division.

During Winter War the most often used Finnish antitank weapons were molotov cocktails and satchel charges. Finland soon started factory production of both, so they were available in large numbers and proved quite effective if terrain was good and if they were with proper tactics. Finnish Army also had very small number of at-guns (37 mm Bofors M/36, also few 20 mm Madsen M/40 and some 25 mm French M/34 and M/37 at-guns were used during late part of the war). Small amounts of at-mines also proved quite effective (except against T-35 heavy tank). During Winter War Great-Britain delivered 100 14 mm Boys at-rifles to Finland and these were also used to destroy few tanks. Also Finnish field artillery had some success in destroying Soviet tanks.

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JTV
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Re: Armoured division was founded first in 1943

#5

Post by JTV » 04 Apr 2002, 09:09

JariL wrote:Hi Antti,

Armoured division was founded first in 1943. Before that I believe Finnish army had one tank battalion. When the Stug III's arrived it was possible to form an other battalion. At the same time Jägerbattalions 2,3,4 and 5 were attached to the unit that was named Panssaridivisioona (armoured division).

During Winter War the only active engagement of Finnish armour was near Viipuri where an independent tank company was used to support a conter attack. The attempt failed badly and 7 (?) Vickers tanks were lost without much damage caused to the Russian armour.

Regards,

Jari
First there was Tank Battalion, it existed on paper already during Winter War (most of its tank companies had no tanks at that time). During Interim Peace (1940 - 1941) it got its tanks.

Finnish Armour Division of late 1943 had (among other things):
- Tank Brigade (with 2 tank battalions and detached tank company)
- Assault Gun Battalion

Check this page from my site:

http://www.ankkurinvarsi.net/jaeger/FORMATIONS4.htm

JariL
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Armour unit organization

#6

Post by JariL » 04 Apr 2002, 12:49

Hi JTV,

Thanks for the link to your page.

Jari

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#7

Post by Gwynn Compton » 04 Apr 2002, 23:31

I know another efficient way the Finns disabled Russian tanks was for Ski Troops to wait until the Russian tanks had passed their positions, then they emerged from the snow and caught up with the Russian tanks and proceeded to try and damage the tracks with spanners. Aparantly if you didn't get shot in the process it was quite a successful method, and allowed Finland to capture many Soviet tanks.

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Tiwaz
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#8

Post by Tiwaz » 05 Apr 2002, 00:27

Don't know about spanners but they did use logs. They tried to place it so that it would pop track out of it's place immobilizing the tank.

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JTV
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Logs yes, spanners no

#9

Post by JTV » 05 Apr 2002, 09:29

Gwynn Compton wrote:I know another efficient way the Finns disabled Russian tanks was for Ski Troops to wait until the Russian tanks had passed their positions, then they emerged from the snow and caught up with the Russian tanks and proceeded to try and damage the tracks with spanners. Aparantly if you didn't get shot in the process it was quite a successful method, and allowed Finland to capture many Soviet tanks.
Finnish ski troops were typically just Finnish infantry that had been issued with skis. Practically everybody knew how to ski, so it didn't really demand more then that.

The one part that you left out: Where there are tanks, there are typically also infantry. First kill some infantry to get it seperated from tanks - then its time to attack tanks with close range antitank weapons. Open terrain can make this tactics difficult to use, but it could also be used at night (less visibility the better).

Never heard from Finnish books about spanners being used (would have been way too small for this use I think). Logs however were used few times, they worked reasonably well with lightest tanks, but not with the heavy ones.

BTW: Talvisota (Winter War) movie shows one way of using log: Push log between track of light tank (T-26 in this case), so the track gets stuck and stops the tank). Then throw molotov cocktail on top of the tanks engine (the burning liquid will leak through engine grill on top of the tank engine an in T-26 the air intake will probably swallow the burning liquid to crew space also).

Ken
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#10

Post by Ken » 18 Apr 2002, 05:43

Antti V.. What is a "sisu"?

What are satchel charges? And how were they used?

Andreas Lärka
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"Sisu"

#11

Post by Andreas Lärka » 18 Apr 2002, 09:00

"Sisu" is a Finnish term for "guts" or beeing "gutsy".

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JTV
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Sisu & satchel charge

#12

Post by JTV » 18 Apr 2002, 09:10

Ken wrote:Antti V.. What is a "sisu"?

What are satchel charges? And how were they used?
Well, I am not Antti V, but I try to answer those.

"Sisu" is part of Finnish culture and way of thinking usual to Finns. It could be also seen as part of national character of Finns. Basically it could be described as "having guts" combined with stubbornness or as a state of mind in which giving up even against impossible odds is not an option. Its manifestations include willingness to suffer whatever needed to get the wanted result and berserk-like rage used in physically demanding situations.

One personal experience of mine that might give you the idea:
When I was in military we once set a camp on top of a very large hill. Firewood were delivered at bottom of that hill. We had "ahkio" type of sledge for getting the fire wood to our camp on top of the hill. One day three of us went with "ahkio" to get fire-wood needed for our tent for couple of days.

The winter was slowly turning to autumn so the temperature was in both sides of 0 degrees celsius but there still were almost meter of snow on the ground. The temperature changes had covered the only (very steep) road with ice making it very slippery.

Some officers who saw how slippery the road was and how much firewood we had loaded to sledge offered to tow it up with small tracked towing tractor that they had - it soon proved that towing tractor was unable to pull the loaded sledge up, its tracks didn't hold on steep ice-covered road and they had to leave the sledge to us.

So, there were we. There was three of us and the sledge full of fire-wood at bottom of hill and we had to get the sledge to our tent on top of the hill or the next night would be very cold. We picked the towing ropes of sledge and tried to tow the sledge upwards few time with very little success - the ice was too slippery to our winter-rubberboots. After falling down to our asses after loosing footing or sliding back back down several times we got pissed - "sisu" started to appear. We ended up pulling the loaded sledge to top of the hill by pulling it on our knees (the throusers were not so slippery as rubberboots and when we could use both our hands and knees to hold the ground it somehow worked). When we got on top of the hill our muscles were sore and our knees were bruised, but we had achieved our goal.



Satchel charge: In primitive form its bundle of explosives detonated with some appropriate method (detonation cord etc...). Finnish Captain Kaarlo Tuurna had developed Finnish improved version already at 1936 and it was factory produced during WW2. Basically it had box-shaped contained filled with TNT (=trinitrotoluene, powerful military expolosive) made from thin metal combined with handle-part of Finnish M/32 stick (hand) grenade used as detonator. Satchel charge sizes typically used were 2 kg, 3 kg and 4 kg sized.

For more info about satchel charge check:

http://www.winterwar.com/Weapons/FinAT/FINantitank2.htm

lehto
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Great Winter War story

#13

Post by lehto » 19 Apr 2002, 21:26

I have heard this story, when I was yuonger (didn't believe it at first). But few weeks ago I saw this book about Knights of Mannerheim Cross (highest medal in Finnish Army. "Finnish Medal of Honor".) and there was this story about this man, who climbed on top of the Russian tank in Winter War. He knocked the hatch with handgrenade and yelled "Hello Ivan, death is knockin!" (In Finnish: Halloo Iivana, tiälä kuolema kolokuttaa). Russian tank crew in the middle of battle thought that there could be only friends, but when they open hatch Finn threw grenade in and jumped to snow. Tank was destroyed. There was some propaganda pictures about this event in international newspapers, small Finn on top of the big furious tank shooting all directions.

IAR80
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re

#14

Post by IAR80 » 19 Apr 2002, 21:43

Anyone have some data on the, forgive my spelling if incorrect, T-50 Pikku Sotka? Especially when and were it saw action?

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Juha Hujanen
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T-50

#15

Post by Juha Hujanen » 21 Apr 2002, 16:36

Designed by L.S Trojanov and manufactured in "factory 185"in Leningrad.2 made in late 1940 and manufactured between april 41 to end of 41.Only 65 made.It weighted 14.5 tons and had sloped armour of 37mm.4 men crew.45mm gun with co-axial mg.Some were in action in Finnish front and one was captured by Finns.It's now in tank museum in Parola.

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