F19 claims and losses

[Slon-76]

You are right that moral factors was a important factor but
I'd rather talk of "freedom of action" and the concept of "fleet in being".
As the main objective for F19 was to remain a fighting force.

In all there should be reasonable borders...
In my opinion, the Finnish command has a little overdone with "preservation" of the Swedish airgroup.
By the way, motives why airgroup have removed from front are rather interesting. In fact all over again it frightened nobody, Swedes quite on a regular basis appeared above a front line. The reason in high losses of group can?

If F19 had been annihilated in one big fight that would given Soviet bombers a free ride thereafter.
One risk with concentration would be that IF you met Soviet fighters you'd loose a significant percentage of your force. By spreading out you didn't make any decisive victories nor losses. But the bombers had always to look for fighters.

The nearest to Rovaniemi the Soviet air station of fighters was almost in 200 kilometers to the east. It reduced an opportunity of meetings with the Soviet fighters to a minimum.
But low "efficiency" Finnish (read - Swedish) aviation in area of 9-th army (in 8-th army too, but to a lesser degree) conducted to that command of the Air Forces of 9-th army did not consider it necessary to distract fighters from performance of other tasks. I have in view of to distract on protection of bombers. Even there, where it needed to be made (for example, in Kemijarvi)

But this is not really a right/wrong question, possibly a matter of what we consider most efficient .

Here in that and a problem. I very much try and I can not understand my opponents.. In what, in their opinion, efficiency of fighting application F19 consist? In doubtful statements, what from one kind of "Gladiator" the Soviet bombers ran the whole squadrons?

Regards

[Hanski]

See my post of May 10 2009. "The pilot löjtnant Per Sterner became a Soviet POW and the observer löjtnant Anders Zachau was killed. The second Hart’s pilot fänrik Arne Jung also became a Soviet POW".

These two surviving pilots, löjtnant Per Sterner and fänrik Arne Jung, can be identified in their flight gear from the Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive photos of Winter War exchange of POWs in 1940 with other released Swedish POWs. The captions refer to the two pilots being placed under quarantine at the Aleksis Kivi School of Helsinki.

[Hanski]

Some happy faces...

[Hanski]

In his book Det svenska vinterkriget 1939-1940 published in Swedish in 2007 (ISBN 978-91-7224-029-2), Leif Björkman tells about the historical contexts of Sweden and the Finnish Winter War, F19, as well as the personal fates of Per Sterner and Arne Jung.

[Marcus]

Thanks Hanski, interesting photos.

/Marcus