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Old February 19th, 2003, 12:10 PM
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Russian war buffs search for remains of Winter War dead

Remains of more than 30 soldiers sent from Karelian Isthmus to Finland

11.6.2002

Vladimir Chekunov, 37, an unemployed locksmith from St. Petersburg, is struggling through a May hailstorm to get to the banks of the river Taipaleenjoki. He is wearing an old Finnish army uniform.
"Shell fragment", the war buff says as his boot kicks something sticking out of the sand. Chekunov knows all about the Winter and Continuation War, and the iron and bones of the Taipale area.
Close behind him comes Bair Irincheyev, 24, a student of economics who has studied the battles of Summa. Irincheyev, who has also studied in Finland, does a rare Superman imitation on a tank barrier. He sheds his Helsinki School of Economics overall to reveal the uniform of a Red Army soldier, authentic all the way down to the notoriously bad shoes.

We arrive at the fields of Koukkuniemi and the Taipaleenjoki ferry. A plough turns up worms, and a great heavenly host of Russian sea gulls screech. The smokestacks of Metsäpirtti stand on the other side of the river. It is about five kilometres to Lake Ladoga and about 100 to the Gulf of Finland at the other end of the Mannerheim Line. In the Winter War the Mannerheim Line blocked off the Karelian Isthmus, and the reputation will not die. Irincheyev even has a web site dedicated to it (see link below).
On the ferry Chekunov tells how the Red Army crossed the river on Finnish Independence Day, December 6, 1939. The Winter War had broken out a week earlier. In three days thousands of Russians were jammed in the open areas of Koukkuniemi. It was the turn of the Finnish artillery to do some killing.

Chekunov sees something large and rusty among the pine trees running along the edge of the fields. The arch of an artillery shell can be seen in a sand pit. This harbinger of death had been sent to its target from artillery positions in Kaarnajoki 18 kilometres away.
Chekunov and Irincheyev grab the ends of the shell. They soon lose their breath, and their grip and have to rest. The battleship General Alekseyev bites its own dogs one more time.
"During the revolution the ship was sent to Romania to be scrapped. Finland bought the cannons and the shells for a song and set them up to defend Taipalejoki", Chekunov explains.

Chekunov first visited the area before he started school. He and his father came to pick mushrooms at the lake Kiimajärvi just 30 kilometres away, where the family had a cabin.
During one mushroom hunting trip Chekunov found a broken copper coffee pot that had turned green with age. His father could read the letters on the label which were in a strange alphabet. It read "Tampere".
The coffee pot had been left behind by Finnish soldiers or by the civilians evacuated from the area.
The Isthmus had been inhabited by a foreign people who lived on in the Riihimäki glass jars that had been left behind and in the stories of his father, his grandfather, and of war veterans. Already at the age of 12 Chekunov was already "very interested in the Winter War and in Finnish and Soviet politics".
On the way there Chekunov shows a gate that he had to pass quietly and secretly when he was a teenager. Taipale had been turned into a recreational centre for the KGB, where the officers would go "with girls to drink vodka and shoot elk".

Perestroika opened the closed gates of the recreation centre. Chekunov knew the terrain as if it were his home, and he started digging.
"I was perhaps the first to find an unknown Finnish soldier", Chekunov says, pointing to a pit at Surmasuo, the scene of fierce fighting in February 1940.
In the pit he found the skeletons of three soldiers - a Finn on the bottom and two Russians on top.
The identification tag revealed that the dead Finn was Kaarlo Lehtonen of Lahti. Chekunov handed the tag to Lehtonen's relatives on his first visit to Finland in 1993, and the family was able to bring their kinsman home.

Chekunov and his Karelia League - a group of eight people who dig in the area and keep records of what they find, have sent the remains of 30 Finnish soldiers from Taipale and other parts of the Isthmus to Finland for burial.
The most recent funerals were for Second Lieutenant Roger Stark who was buried at Hietaniemi cemetery on May 11, and Private Toivo Mustonen who was buried in Lappeenranta on May 19.
The hailstorm is replaced by cold sunshine. The fields of Terenttilä bring to mind the expression "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust". The bones of an unknown soldier grow green as the high-pitched song of a bird is heard overhead.

http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20020611IE13


11.6.2002

Massive bunker now looks like a cave

Summa, located on the Karelian Isthmus about 30 kilometres from Vyborg, has a road that goes past a massive bunker dating back to the Winter War, and a village of holiday cottages a few years old. The dachas are surrounded by barbed wire, and there is a smell of horse manure on the road.
"I wouldn't want to live on top of bones", says Bair Irincheyev, a 24-year-old economics student from St. Petersburg, as he looks at the cottages.
Irincheyev became interested in the Winter War already as a child at his grandfather’s cottage in Kirillovskaya. The village, formerly known by the Finnish name Perkjärvi, is slightly more than ten kilometres away from Summa.
Even closer were the dugouts of Leipäsuo, where the eight-year-old Bair was taken by his grandfather. This was the beginning of a long journey bypassing the official truth contained in the schoolbooks: "The Winter War was a conflict between Finland and the Soviet Union, in which the Soviet Union got what it wanted".

Irincheyev got the maps of Summa five years ago from the Karelia League - a group of war buffs in St. Petersburg. Since then he has closely studied locations of battles, guided groups in the area, and published interviews with Red Army veterans on his web site.
From time to time war buffs like those in the Karelia League, and Irincheyev's Red Army Club organise re-enactments of battles in authentic uniforms on authentic battlefields. Irincheyev says that the German Club actually went crazy over fascism.
The Summajärvi road begins at the village of Kesäkylä. There are deep puddles, fallen trees, and wartime dugouts. The goal is the gigantic Miljoonalinnake fortification on the Mannerheim Line behind the lake in the county of Kuolemajärvi ("Death Lake").
At the destination a visitor can see entrances surrounded by the iron framework of the concrete structure. In February 1940, 28 soldiers from Vaasa were buried alive in the bunker. Some say the bodies are still in the ruins, while others say they have been taken away.
Irincheyev hands over a flashlight and steps in first. The narrow opening turns into a corridor two metres high. A drop falls on my nose, another on my head. Rain has dissolved some of the calcium in the concrete and the ceiling is covered with small stalactites.
There are two human bones in the small room, but most of the remains have been either buried in the collapsed parts of the fortress or have been taken away. We are not the first visitors there. Little remains in the rooms: wartime memorabilia have been replaced by an empty packet of Chesterfield cigarettes.
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Old February 19th, 2003, 12:25 PM
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The list of Soviet failings was long and comprehensive. The troops wore olive drab or khaki uniforms, their tanks were painted black, and they carried heavy field stoves that sent thick plumes of black smoke visible for miles. Not a super idea for hiding in the snow. The Russian field manual for snow combat was probably written in the Mediterranean, because it had a passage on bayoneting on skis (this won't work for the same reason you can't bowl wearing rollerblades). While Finnish field doctors knew, for example, that morphine would freeze in the cold unless stored in the mouth or armpit, their Russian counterparts scratched their heads as their wounded howled in pain. So great were the casualties that hospitals in Leningrad filled to capacity early in the invasion; soon after, mile-long lengths of trains wound their way as far as Moscow, windows covered with curtains to hide curious passersby from the hideous sight of the frostbitten, the bleeding, the wounded and the dying. Trotter sums up the situation endured by the hapless Soviets:

For many of the encircled Soviet troops, just staying alive, for one more hour or one more day, was an ordeal comparable to combat. Freezing hungry, crusted with their own filth (while the besieging Finns, a thousand meters away, might be enjoying a sauna-bath), for them the central forest was truly a snow-white hell...

One captured Soviet colonel offered some more details during his interrogation: "I know that Stalin and Voroshilov are clever, sensible men and I can't understand how they were led to this idiotic war. What do we need cold, dark Finland for anyway?" He also talked about his time in the woods:

... Finns we couldn't see anywhere... When we sent our sentries out to take their positions around the camp, we knew that within minutes they would be dead with a bullet hole to the forehead or the throat slashed by a dagger... it was sheer madness... We Soviets thought we were respected by other countries because of our peace-loving ways, and the entire civilized world was behind us since we were the cradle of all free workers. Now we are hated and despised. You'd better bury all those soldiers before spring. Otherwise you'll have a plague.

A division of Russian ground forces issued a communique so desperate it took on comic overtones:

Please airdrop food and supplies, regardless of weather. Last drop did not include ammunition. Please air drop ammunition. Two days without bullets. Food and fodder all gone. Try to send some today. Why do you let us suffer without food and fodder? Please do something about it! Four aircraft did not drop any food at all. Generally we received too little food. The greater portion landed on the Finnish side.
After hours with no response, they lamented, "Why don't you answer our messages?" Long ago the Finns had figured out the Russian radio signals and had their transports dropping supplies on Finnish positions. Of course, the Russians eventually got wise and dropped a "supply" of bombs.

While we have made much of the Russians' difficulties, we should remind ourselves that the Finns were terribly short on ammunition, arms and other supplies -- many of their artillery pieces were from the nineteenth century. Even with these shortcomings, they managed to completely outmaneuver the Russians on nearly every front, including the art of gentlemanly war. Russian soldiers injured more seriously than Finns received medical care first in Finnish field hospitals, and captured Russians were always treated to hot meals, warm shelter and saunas. A Russian man who had hopped the Finnish border to buy some shoes for his wife was shanghaied by the Red Army and put into service without a shred of training. He was captured by the Finns, still toting his wife's shoes. "The Finns took pity on the wretch," Trotter writes, "gave him fresh socks, some cigarettes, and a turn in the sauna bath... he was retained at headquarters as a kind of mascot for the rest of the campaign."

Finland's antitank forces endured a 70% mortality rate, but had no shortage of volunteers. However, this is not to say they were without their failings: Most of a division ran screaming from an armored car that happened to be Finnish, having mistaken it for a Russian tank. Trotter reports, "Most of the Fifth Division troops didn't stop running until they were back in line, where officers who had witnessed the debacle cursed and punched and in some cases threatened to shoot them." Engle and Paananen describe a platoon commander who went crazy during combat for the shortage of guns and ammunition:

He burst into the command dugout, and started raving: "My wife is coming here with more machine guns. We're going to kill them all. Even the last one. My wife is coming with more machine guns." Then he turned into the open without his weapon or hat and screamed, "My wife is coming, my wife is coming, with more weapons!" A piece of red-hot shrapnel stuck him, and he was quiet.

Nevertheless, Finland managed to inflict in between 230,000 and 270,000 fatalities plus 200,000-300,000 injuries on Russia, while losing 48,745 troops and enduring 159,000 other casualties during the campaign. It held on for as long as it could before succumbing on March 13, 1940, but only after a two-week-long bombing and artillery effort by Russia, which threw everything it had at poor Finland. Mannerheim's orders to his troops upon their surrender survive as a piece of inspired patriotism.

While cleaning up, a Finnish officer muttered to a photojournalist, "The wolves will eat well this year." After the "victory", a Russian officer muttered, "Well, we've won just enough land to bury our dead."

http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/winter_war/



"Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish Army."

J. Stalin
1948
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Old February 19th, 2003, 09:19 PM
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Great stories Kai--I especially enjoyed the first one.
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Old March 20th, 2003, 01:02 PM
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The Finnish Peoples Army

By Mikko Härmeinen

http://www.geocities.com/kumbayaaa/finnishpeoparmy.html

When the Soviet Union invaded Finland on 30 Nov 1939, its excuse for doing so was to liberate the people of Finland from its capitalist oppressors. On the very next day was announced the founding of the People's Government of Finland, Finnish emigrant communist Otto Wille Kuusinen as the Prime and Foreign Minister (this 'government' is also known as the Government of Terijoki, after the Finnish seaside resort-town nearby the Fenno-Soviet border, where Kuusinen's government was allegedly founded).

The Soviet Union promptly recognized Kuusinen's crew as the one and only government of Finland, and made a Treaty of Friedship and Co-operation with it. Stalin could announce that Soviet Union has excellent realtions with the 'real' representatives of Finnish people. Of course, both Kuusinen's government and its Army were both carefully planned in advance by Stalin and his cronies to act as the fig-leaf of the Soviet aggression.

A government has to have a military force. Thus was born the curious and short-lived footnote to the history of the worlds armed forces, that was the Peoples Army of Finland. On 1 Decemberr 1939 was founded what was called the Ist Finnish Army Corps, which was directly under the Peoples Comissar of Defence, Marshal of the Soviet Inion Kliment Voroshilov. Its mission was to "bring the flag of the Democratic Republic ofFinland (as Kiisinens government was to rename Finland) to the Finnish capital, for the joy of all the workers and the dread of all the peoples enemies".

The commander of this corps was another emigrant Finn, kombrig (a rank used in the Red Army before the introduction of general-ranks in 1940, equivalent to brigadier) Akseli Anttila, who was also the Minister of Defence in the Kuusinen's government. It had 22 594 men in two divisions, tank regiment and a fighter squadron. However, this corps was not used in fighting in the early stages of the Winter War. Anttila's corps was spared to be used in the expected victory parade at Helsinki, and it was strictly forbidden to use it in the front. After the start of war further People's Army divisions were founded, but they didn't belong to the Anttila's corps. The 3rd Division was formed in northern Karelia, but it was and remained under-strength. In far north was founded the 4th Division, but it never reached operational status.

It was originally intended that the People's Army of Finland would field some 80 000 men, but it never came even near. It was supposed to get its men from the Finns and Finnish-speaking peoples living in Soviet Union, and once the war started, it was expected that tens of thousands of Finnish soldiers would desert to join its ranks. But after the Stalinist purges of late 1930s there weren't that many Finnish-speakers left, and even the exile Finnish Communist Party was purged almost to extinction. Thus many purely Russian, Ukrainian and Bielorussian men found themselves impressed into the People's Army. Finally about half of the Army's manpower was non-Finnish, and it didn't considerably help that in an ironic reversal of Stalin's national policy many of the non-Finns in the Army had their names changed into Finnish ones. And the Finnish deserters never materialized.

It was especially hard to find Finnish officers for the Army, and the Gulags were scraped clean of any men that could pass themselves as Finnish officers. The CO of the 1st Division was a Russian Aleksei Gretshkin, as was the CO of the 2nd Division, Georgij Zverev. The CO of the under-strength 3rd Division was Finnish Toivo Tommola, as was the CO of the 4th Division Albert Saviranta (aka. Väinö Alanne), but this latter formation existed only on paper.

People's Army's uniforms were different from the Red Army ones. They consisted mostly of items that came from the captured Polish Army stocks, but the badges of rank and other insignia was the same as in the Red Army. Its other equipment, like weapons, was wholly of Soviet origin. People's Army units had also heavy weapons, like artillery and tanks.

As said, it was strictly forbidden to use the People's Army troops in fighting, which naturally made its leadership quite unhappy once it became clear the war would be prolonged. The men had to contend themselves with rear security duties and field exercises. However, in the latter stages of the war some People's Army units were allowed to fight. For a short period of time the units of the 3rd Division fought on the northern shore of the Lake Ladoga, and on the Bay of Viipuri the Corps artillery took part in the fighting. After the Winter War ended on 13 March 1939, the People's Army was quietly disbanded.

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Old March 20th, 2003, 03:04 PM
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Great stuff as usual Kai!!! I am just putting together my Finnish wargames army and intend to re-fight the winter war... will let you know how my Finns get on, and now have plenty of ideas...
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Old March 20th, 2003, 08:51 PM
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Thanx RedBaron!




"Soldiers of the glorious Red Army" not doing so well in the 1940 winter...Next year the Germans were as stupid...!!!

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Old March 23rd, 2003, 01:04 AM
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Very interesting and amazing information, Kai!

Certainly, all the films and pictures I have seen about the Winter War are very heartbreaking and rough... Many, many Russian soldiers frozen, a blond woman with her little girl among her arms, covering with snow to avoid the Russian bombs...

That's war...
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Old March 25th, 2003, 12:43 PM
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Swedish volunteers:

By Mikko Härmeinen

When the Soviet Union started the Winter War on 30 Nov 1939 by invading Finland, there were many in Sweden, esp. in the military, who hoped that Sweden would intervene in behalf of Finland. Numerous Swedish officers had fought as volunteers in the victorious White side in the Finnish Civil War of 1918, and personally knew their Finnish collagues. In the inter-war period the Finnish and Swedish General Staffs had jointly drawn up detailed plans on how Sweden could send military help to Finland in event of Soviet invasion, but the political context of these plans need to be stressed. In the 1920s and early 1930s many small European states hoped that the League of Nations would evolve into an efficient arbiter of international affairs. It was hoped that the League would develop a system of sanctions to discourage aggression, and the possible Swedish help to Finland was supposed to take place in context of internationally approved sanctions.

As is well known, the League of Nations proved to be a failure, and when the Soviet Union invaded, all Finland could get was declarations of sympathy. Swedish government was naturally enough not interested in getting involved in a war against a Great Power, especially as it thought the Nazi Germany a bigger threat. As it in early December 1939 became clear that Sweden would not intervene (at least for the time being), certain Swedish officers began to plan a movement of Swedish volunteers to aid Finland - with the motto "Finlands sak är vår", "Finland's sake is ours".

On 4 Dec 1939 lieutenant-colonels Carl August Ehrensvärd, Magnus Dyrssen and Viking Tamm founded the Finlandskommittän (the Finland committee) to organize the volunteer movement. Initially the Swedish government tried to strictly regulate the actions on the committee, but finally it had to bow to the popular pressure to help Finland. It was promised that regular officers going to Finland would be released from service for the duration of the war, and that a maximum of 5000 reservists and conscripts would be free to go to Finland. Later that limit was raised. The Swedish government, however, rejected the Finnish plea to allow the sending of ready units of volunteers to Finland. The result was that the Swdish volunteers had to travel to Finland with their equipment, where they were organized into units.

The Swedish volunteers were trained in Tornio and Kemi near the Fenno-Swedish border. What was of utmost importance for Finland was that the Swedish volunteers brought their own equipment with them. Finland was at the time hard pressed to equip properly all its own men, and it would have been impossible to equip the foreign volunteers. Because the Norwegian government did not allow the regular officers to volunteer to serve in Finland, the Norwegian volunteers were also annexed into the Svenska Frivilligkåren (Swedish Volunteer Corps, SFK). The CO of the SFK was Lt. Gen. Ernst Linder.

Gen. Linder (1868-1943) had a very curious career, and it is a fitting illustration of the close Fenno-Swedish relationship. Linder had been born in Finland, but was Swedish by nationality and made his early career in the Swedish Army. In 1918, as a colonel, he resigned his commission and travelled to Finland and volunteered to serve in the White Finnish Army. There he became a personal friend of Gen. Mannerheim, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the White Army. Later in the year Linder was promoted to Major General in the Finnish Army. Linder resigned his commission in the Finnish Army in 1920 and returned to Sweden, but failed to get a new commission there, and was transferrred to reserve. In 1927 he was promoted to Major General in the Swedish Army reserve, and in 1938 Lieutenant General in the Finnish Army reserve. Thus it was quite natural for Mannerhem, now Field Marshal and again the C-in-C of the Finnish Army, to give Linder the command of the SFK.

The SFK saw action for the first time on 12 January 1940, when the planes of the Flygflottilj 19 (Gloster Gladiators and Hawker Harts) began to fly combat missions. At the same time SFK's AA-artillery took the responsibility of the aerial defence of northern Finland. On 22 Feb 1940 Gen. Linder's SFK took the responsibility of defending northern Finland, and the Finnish units of Detachment Willamo in far north were subordinated to him. On 27 Feb the two reinforced battalions of SFK manned the front around M=E4rk=E4j=E4rvi in Salla, freeing five Finnish battalions to the desperate battles in and around the western shore of Gulf of Viipuri. Of SFK's third battalion only a company and a battery made it to the front just before the end of the hostilities.

The front-line battalions belonged to Col. A. Nordensvan's Stridsgruppen SFK (Battlegroup SFK). The CO of the Ist Battalion was Lt. Col. Dyrssen, and after he was KIA on 1 March, he was followed by Lt. Col. C.-O. Agell. The CO of the IInd Battalion was Lt. Col. Tamm. The Finnish units of 16. Jäger Company and Separate Battalion 17 were also subordinated to the Stridsgruppen SFK.

SFK had relatively easy time in the front. The Soviets had already concentrated their effort on breaking the Finnish front on the most important front of the war, Karelian Isthmus, so the Swedes were spared the worst fighting. However, if the war would have went on for a week longer, the SFK would have been subjected to a major Soviet offensive. Nevertheless, the 8042 Swedish volunteers of the SFK suffered 33 KIA and some 50 WIA as losses. The 693 Norwegians lost 2 KIA. After the war ended on 13 March 1940, the SFK was disbanded on 25 March and the men demobilized between 1 and 25 April 1940.

On 25 March 1940 Marshal Mannerheim promoted Gen. Linder to the rank of ratsuväenkenraali (General of Cavalry) in the Finnish Army. This was a very rare honour. When the Winter War started there were no full generals in active service in the Finnish Army (nor were in Air Force and there were not a single admiral in the Navy), and Linder was the first promoted to the rank since the beginning of the war. In the later war years, only three other officers reached the rank.

The SFK was not the only body of Swedish volunteers during the Winter War. Some 420 Swedes served in air-defence all around southern Finland, and there was also a corps of Swedish and Norwegian volunteers building in fortifications around Luumäki in Svenska Arbetskår i Finland (Swedish Labour Corps in Finland, SAK). The strength of the SAK reached some 900 men before the Norwegians were recalled on 11 April.

The SFK was the only significant body of foreign volunteers to see action in the Winter War. It can be argued that their presence in northern Finland had certain strategic significance - it freed five desperately needed Finnish battalions to fight in southern Finland, where the war was decided.

http://www.geocities.com/kumbayaaa/f...olunteers.html

---------------------------------------------
F19, Swedish volunteer unit in Finland during the Winter War

http://www.sci.fi/~fta/f19-1.htm

The Swedish volunteer unit, F19 operated in northern Finland for 62 days during the Winter War. The Finnish and Swedish pilots had made several squadron visits between the two countries prior to the war so there were already very good ties between the air forces.
The 12 Gladiators represented 1/3 of the Swedish Air Force fighter inventory. The Swedes had already ordered more modern aircraft from the USA and they were partly on their way to Sweden - 120 Republic EP-106s, which were the export version of the Seversky P-35. Only 60 of the ordered aircraft arrived in Sweden and they were designated J.9.

The new volunteer unit was formed already on the 19th of December 1939. Major Hugo Beckhammar was selected to be the commander of the unit. Capt. Björn Bjuggren was the executive officer and the commander's aide was Lt. Gregor Falk. Major Beckhammar gave his first orders to the new Flygregemente 101 unit on the 22nd of December.

The ground personnel arrived in the Kemi area in early January. Kemi became the main base for the squadron. The first air raid alert was on the 3rd of January and gave foretaste for the Swedish unit of what they were about to experience - this was no exercise.

When the ground personnel arrived, the new unit was renamed LentoR 5 (Flight Regiment 5), which was changed by the FAF HQ on the 9th of January to F19 (Flygflottiljen 19). The liaison officer for the Swedish unit was Lt. Wartiovaara.

The Finnish General Staff had ordered F19 to be responsible for the aispace north of Oulu (Uleåborg) - Hossa - Kärkjärvi.

During the 62 days there were flight operations on 60 days and on the average eight aircraft were airborne per day so the maintenance personnel did a pretty good job. 600 hours were flown, which means 10 hrs per flying day.

Victories: Ensign Iacobi one I-15, Salwén one I-15 and SB-2, Frykholm and Steninger together one SB-2, Tehler two SB-2s, Karlsson one TB-3 and Martin one I-15. Four enemy aircraft were destroyed on ground.

Losses: six aircraft, three Harts and three Gladiators. One of each type was shot down. Personnel losses: Ensign John Magnus Sjökvist, Lt. Sten Åke Hildinger, Lt. Anders Robert Zachau. Taken prisoner: Lt. Sterner and ensign Jung (returned to Sweden after 5 months).

On the 13th of February the Swedish pilots received Finnish military pilot's wings.

In the Swedish Air Force museum at Malmslätt there is one Hawker Hart and one Gloster Gladiator in the F19 Winter War colours.


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Old March 25th, 2003, 01:07 PM
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Those are great stories Kai. Thanx for sharing them with us [img]smile.gif[/img] .
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Old August 8th, 2008, 01:25 PM
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Kenraali
 
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Default Re: Winter war 1939-1940

Winter war losses etx.

The casualties in the Winter War

Finnish navy in Winter War

Finnish antitank units and tactics in the Winter War

HELSINGIN SANOMAT - International Edition - weekly

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Sodat kuvina - Pictures From Wars

Talvisota kuvina
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