måndag 10 oktober 2016

4. Finska Vinterkriget 1939-1940: Slaget om Suomussalmi, del IV

Part IV

The two Soviet divisions in this battle arrived at, or near, 100% strength. The 44. Rifle Division, in particular, was considered a crack unit, composed of Ukrainians, and based in the Military District of Moscow. The 163rd Rifle Division was not so well regarded, composed primarily of Central Asians who were completely out of their environment in the far north. The 44th had been issued ski manuals, but no skis, immediately prior to their departure for Soviet Karelia. A ski regiment attached to the 44th was never employed as such. Soviet tanks and other vehicles were painted olive drab, and their uniforms, while generally warm enough, were khaki. The Soviets did not begin to camouflage their uniforms and equipment until January 1940. Soviet petroleum based lubricants froze in the bitter cold, and their vehicle engines had to be run every two hours or their batteries would die. (The Finns used glycerin and antifreeze as a lubricant and were not dependent on vehicles for movement.) The Soviets brought their entire complement of antitank guns, their flat trajectories useless in the forest and in the complete absence of any Finn tanks.

Soviet training had focused on large unit combined arms warfare in open terrain. Their command structure was rigid and prescriptive, primarily a result of the political climate in the Red Army of the late 1930s. Many of their best and brightest officers had been purged in 1937-1938; those who remained were groveling "yes-men" to their "Politruk" commissars or were timid non-entities. Soviet tactical intelligence, in the absence of effective patrolling or sympathetic locals, was non-existent, and their strategic intelligence (including maps) was frequently just plain wrong. In one case, however, they were accurate: in 1937 a Red Army pamphlet on the Finn Army noted that all Finn troops were experienced skiers trained for combat in cold weather, and that their exercise focused on active defense in the difficult Finn terrain. Soviet commanders seem not to have paid much attention to this warning.

The Finns suffered from grave material deficiencies, primarily a result of pre-war political decisions based on economy and an assumption of the inviolability of neutrality. When Col Hjalmar Siilasvuo led his 27th Infantry Regiment into battle near Suomussalmi he had no weapon heavier than .50 cal Maxim machine-guns. The only antitank weapons were grenades, satchel charges, crowbars, and "Molotov Cocktails", witch got their name when the Finn State Liquor Board started manufacturing and distributing empty bottles for just this purpose. He had no artillery, and was even short of some individual equipment, such as load-bearing equipment and uniforms. Most units lacked radios below regimental level and field-telephones were a battalion-level asset.  This was fairly typical of the entire Finn Army. Most of their artillery, of pre-WW I vintage, lacked sufficient ammunition. They did, however, have tents and lightweight, portable, wood-fired heaters. These were carried, along with other heavi gear and supplies, in sleds pulled by skiers, called akhios. These preparation for extended cold weather operations was to become a key advantage as the battle progressed.

Finn individual weapons, however, were generally quite good. Both sides used variants of the reliable and effective 7.92 mm M1891/30 Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle, but the Finns also had a significant number of 7,92 mm Lahti M-26 light machine-guns (comparable to the US BAR, although prone to jam in cold weather as a result of over-fine machining), and the excellent, if expensively mad, Suomi 9 mm M-31 sub machine-gun. This last weapon had actually been considered  and rejected by the Soviets prior to the war; they considered it a "police weapon". After the Winter War, they paid it the ultimate compliment of copying it in simplified form as the PPSh-41 of WW II fame. These two rugged automatic weapons, plus an increasing number of captured Soviet weapons as time went by (the Finns particularly liked the excellent and reliable 7.92 mm Degtyarev light machine-gun) gave the Finns a significant advantage in squad to platoon level firepower. (Each Finn division was authorized 250 M-31s.) Finally, and most important, what the Finns lacked in heavy weapons they made up for in independence, initiative, motivation, training and leadership.

The Finn Army had been born in the Finn seizure of independence from a crumbling Tsarist empire in 1917. Earlier, however, over 2000 young Finn nationalists had traveled covertly to Germany where they enlisted to fight, indirectly for Finn independence, becoming the Prussian 27th Royal Jaeger Battalion. The 27th Jaegers had served on the Eastern Front in the massive campaigns of maneuver around Tannenburg and the Silurian Lakes, the victories of witch led to the fall of the Tsarist Monarchy and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

To be continued...
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