Finnish Army

Strengths of the Finnish Army:

1. High level of individual tactical and marksmanship training of enlisted men, especially members of the Home Guard. Infantry is skilful in handling their weapons, snipers are excellently well trained and know how to combine their fire with SMG fire and MG fire. Most Finnish soldiers and officers are good skiers. A platoon and a squad are well trained for combat.

2. The Army knows how to select a terrain for defence. The Army is good in building defences, using different objects of terrain in defence, building anti-tank and anti-personnel obstacles, and can build strong fortifications from any materials they can find. The Army is good in delaying actions.

3. Soldiers and officers are very skilful in camouflaging themselves both in defence and in small unit action at our flanks and in the rear. They use terrain in an excellent way, use concealment, deceipt and camouflage, both natural and artificial. Scout parties activity and reconnaissance is well organised, a lot of attention is paid to the sound reconnaissance during night time. Flares are used quite commonly for illumination and signalling.

4. Finnish Army has mobile ski units for action in cross-country forest terrain without roads. Men and officers have special lighter equipment and footwear. They are armed mostly with rifles, SMGs and a small amount of mortars. All the hardware and battle equipment of these units is on the backs of officers and men, and on specially designed sleds and snow boats. Food supply of these units is also mostly from the local population or from the enemy’s rear units.

5. The Army has officers who are specially trained for coordination of partisan ski troops activity in the enemy’s rear. Partisan tactics are very well developed and rehearsed.

6. The concrete, steel and concrete and wood and soil bunkers, constructed on the Karelian Isthmus, was extremely well fitted to the terrain and camouflaged. The strength of the fortified line was in good location of the bunkers on the back slopes of hills, edges of forests and behind natural obstacles. Flanking fire of machine-guns, mortars and artillery was the base of fire system. Finnish Army was trained to fire on the enemy by flanking fire in front of the neighbouring unit, while our Army, despite large numbers of automatic weapons, tended to frontal fire. There was no distinct pattern in design of the bunkers; in every specific case the bunker was built to fit the terrain and its mission.

7. Entire training of the Army and population of Finland, tactics and equipment were tailored to take into consideration the possible enemy – the Red Army. Finnish intelligence had worked a lot in peacetime and obtained a lot of information about training and equipment of our Army.

8. Leadership of the Finnish Army, using consultancy services of General Staffs from the most important capitalistic states of Europe and America, fully digested the experience of the World War and made all necessary conclusions. From the experience they learnt that strength of modern defences is made of good use of terrain, strong permanent fortifications and automatic fire; they used all this when building defences against our Army.

9. Equipment of a man and an officer is well designed and adjusted for the theatre of operations and the methods of warfare that they used.

10. Finns managed to surprise us with wide use of SMGs, their barricades, active operations in the secondary areas of operations and stubbornness in defence of the fortified area.

11. the Army is trained to save ammo, has high discipline of fire.

12. Men and officers are good in orientation on terrain and in thick forests.

13. They managed to study and analyze the experience and methods of warfare and immediately dispatched it to the frontline troops in the form of short instructions.

14. Finnish air force was active regardless of weather and time, even when our air force was grounded.

Weaknesses of the Finnish Army

1. The Army was not trained for offensive operations against enemy, which is well-prepared for defence. Their faith in strength of enveloping and pincer movements had its drawbacks as well – they were afraid of being enveloped and encircled by the enemy. Owing to outflanking some enemy units we managed to capture some strongpoints quite easily. Finnish Army turned out to be completely unprepared for carrying out counterattacks, during which they always suffered high losses.

2. Finnish Army had strictly limited, trained human resources, which were obviously insufficient for waging a large-scale warfare. Many units were in action from the first days of the war, did not have any replacements and became extremely weak in numbers.

3. The Army was equipped with scarce and mostly outdated artillery. Ammo stocks were low, high percentage of grenades did not explode. Finnish Army had weak air force, with many planes of obsolete types. Ammo stocks were low in general.

4. Weaknesses of the fortified line are the following:

a) lack of artillery and short ammo supply, weak air force.

b) There was too much faith put into strength of the bunkers, as result of this they did not have sufficient reserves for systematic rotation of troops at the main defensive line, replacements in frontline units were not organized in a proper way;

c) Due to our active reconnaissance in force and some small assaults we managed to spot the bulk of wood-and-soil bunkers, and part of concrete bunkers. After that the spotted bunkers were destroyed by our artillery during the preparation period, thus damaging system of fire of Finns. Prolonged artillery fire on the fortified line caused significant difficulties in repairing and replacing the systematically destroyed system of fire;

d) Armoured cupolas that some bunkers had gave them away very quickly, some bunkers did not have armoured shutters on the gun ports. Due to this our artillery fire could harass the garrisons of the bunkers almost all the time;

e) due to lack of proper reserves, garrisons of the fortified line suffered losses and did not receive necessary replacements. Being under constant artillery fire, besides losses, the troops had quite low morale. One also has to take into consideration, that the fortified line was defended by regular field troops, not special units of a fortified line;

f) Lack of special weapons designed for installation in concrete bunkers, had a negative impact on the strength of the fortified line;

h) Artillery was not well used at the approaches to the fortified line. Units that were fighting delaying action in front of the main defence line, were quite sensitive to outflanking;

i) Anti-tank stone fences, barbed-wire fences and anti-tank ditches could be clearly seen on the photo panoramas. As we knew that Finns were building their defences based on flanking fire, it was quite easy to find areas where MG bunkers or canons were located, as they had to fire on the obstacles; The observations teams on the ground were carefully studying the terrain and the best approaches to the fortified area from our side. Based on this analysis we spotted places that would be favourable for placing weapons. All suspicious places in the area would be subject to artillery fire - this is how we could find the concrete bunkers.

j) Careful placement of MGs and 37 mm cannons in the fortified line also had its weak sides – the enemy was placing them in the most favourable places. Making decisions for the enemy, in some cases it was possible to guess, where a bunker would be located. The guess would be followed by our artillery fire and this way we could find the bunkers.

k) We were very suspicious about any hills and hillocks, especially if they were located next to good routes of attack, part of them turned out to be bunkers after artillery strikes;

l) The concrete bunkers built in 1938-1939 could only resist the 203 mm grenades, enemy had to strengthen them with granite rocks, steel plates etc.;

m) many bunkers had low resistance of concrete - 300-450 kg/sq. cm;

n) Abundant use of steel reinforcement does not reach its goal. When heavy grenades hit the bunker, the concrete is washed away and the steel reinforcement is opened up.

Training level of our troops

1. Red Army rifleman

Level of individual tactical and marksmanship training of our rifleman turned out to be low. Our wonderful Red Army man is faithful to the Motherland, fights bravely, if he has precise orders, is patient, enduring and can survive in extraordinary conditions of frontline life. A Red Army man is brought up in a group – in a kolkhoz, at a factory or a plant. When NCO level or Junior commander level leadership is poorly organised, a Red Army rifleman instinctively tends to act in a group, which is often unprofitable in modern warfare. Entire system of propaganda and education in the last decades was to make our new equipment – tanks, air force and even artillery – seem unbeatable. Because of poor propaganda of infantry weapons, their power and might, we did not manage to make our infantry to believe in power of their weapons. Some divisions, after they were completely formed, had a very low percentage of professional enlisted men in companies. Professional men were themselves not well organised and thus could not play a leading role among reservists. Our rifleman is told a lot about his rights and very little – about his responsibilities. Given low level of enforcement of our field manuals, this badly influences the level of military discipline. Our rifleman is poorly prepared for fighting in trenches, communication trenches and in forests against mobile enemy.

Due to low level of training of squads and platoons, companies were quite bad in combining infantry fire and manoeuvre in combat. MGs and mortars were despised in many units for a long time.

A rifleman had not been trained to get close to explosions of grenades of friendly artillery. Very rarely during combined training of infantry and artillery we had our infantry at least in 250-300 meters from explosions. A rifleman did not know at all, how one had to close in with the enemy and assault his positions, utilizing all the power of artillery, mortars etc. Low training level, Russian carelessness made our rifleman despise camouflage, proper digging-in and use of terrain. they had to learn all this in battle, and, unfortunately, they were taught by enemy’s fire.

Our rifleman fights well, stubbornly and bravely in organized defence. After four to six weeks at the front a rifleman becomes a veteran, gets used to battle conditions and can complete missions in offensive operations, even in hard winter conditions. Such rifleman can easily repel counterattacks of the enemy, destroy the cuckoo snipers and so on. Frequent reorganizations, arrival of new recruits in rifle units caused us to lose our snipers that had been once trained by the Army.

We should take note of the most important flaws that the war had revealed. Tactical and marksmanship training should be carried out as often as possible on unknown terrain in any weather conditions; regiments should build real barricades and obstacles on their training fields and teach infantry to overcome them; train troops to use skis, teach the riflemen to crawl and advance in short and long rushes; teach riflemen to fight with armour support and without it, with artillery support or without it.

We should spend as much as possible for individual training of a rifleman and action on squad level, and in a short time we will have a well-trained infantry man.

Individual training of a rifleman should last his entire service term. One should minimize the amount of theoretical training of riflemen, especially in annual training sessions of reservists, and maximise the field training, both during day and night, in any weather. We should only welcome publishing a manual for battle training of infantry – a rifleman himself can read it and find a lot of information useful in battle.

2. Infantry NCO

NCOs that graduated from Regimental schools and served professionally before the war, mostly demonstrated average level of training. NCOs that arrived from reserve had forgotten all their training and lost even appearance of an NCO. One could rarely hear NCO’s orders in battle. An NCO in a difficult winter situation quickly loses initiative and mingles with his subordinates – this is the result of endless “care and control” for NCO during peacetime. Our regular life in the military is designed so that an NCO has almost no independence from the commanders. His entire work is done in the eyes and under control of commanders and politruks, who hang around barracks almost around the clock.

Middle-level commanders of infantry suffer high losses, as they themselves get squads and individual men up to assault, walk along the assaulting line and by their habit try to do the NCO’s job, exposing themselves to enemy’s fire. Many commanders in infantry and other branches try to compensate for low level of NCO training by unnecessary and harmful control measures.

Our Army needs a real NCO, we need to get new ranks system for NCOs as soon as possible, give them privileges in both civil and military life, give them better looking insignia and improve tailoring of their uniforms.

Regimental NCO schools should introduce the most stern discipline for the cadets, pay more attention to real drill and physical training, and set the best and most demanding commanders as teachers. The war had demonstrated that we still have a problem of a company’s (battery’s, squadron’s) Sergeant Major, one can rarely meet a real “Soviet Feldwebel” – a Sergeant Major. We should pay more attention to selection of NCOs for this position , delegate more power to them, demand more, teach by example and not exercise any control over them. I do not think we should train them to become Junior Lieutenants. We need an excellent Company Sergeant Major and this is more important than a Junior Lieutenant. Our country now has all the possible resources to train well-educated Lieutenants for our Army.

We will have a well-trained Red Army rifleman when we have a good NCO, provide them with field manuals and so on. Most of our NCOs now have secondary education now, they can now themselves read what they need to learn.

3. Red Army Artillery man

Professional artillery men knew their basic responsibilities quite well by the beginning of the war. All key positions in artillery are normally taken by professional men, the recruits from reserve normally take secondary roles and learn from the “old hands” all the time.

Complicated professions – photography officers, sound intelligence officers, topography officers, weather officers etc – were well trained, but we always felt lack of officers of these professions due to fallacies of distribution system and training of officers in peacetime.

A large achievement in artillery is an unshakeable faith in power of our equipment – an artillery piece became a battle banner of an artillery man and officer. The first mighty 30 minutes barrage on November 30, 1939 demonstrated that men were prepared for war. Artillery men fought with the same stoicism at forward positions, at communication lines, at open firing positions under MG and mortar fire of the enemy, on positions for indirect fire under artillery fire of the enemy, in the rear, at transportation areas, at field kitchens and so on. Men demonstrated examples of stoicism and personal bravery in self-defence. As the result men fell in love with small arms and automatic weapons. there were many volunteers for scout missions in enemy’s rear and so on. Very often our artillery fought in terrain where no artillery of a capitalist army could fight.

There are also many drawbacks in training of the artillery men:

• A Red Army man in artillery is quite chubby, not very well physically trained;
• does not use terrain well, does not like to use camouflage, is building shelters and dugouts in a bad and uneducated manner and does not apply any concealment;
• One has to study our complicated equipment more in all its tricky details and know how to use our hardware 100% in battle;

4. Training level of artillery NCOs. Professional NCOs had average level in their military professions, but were not demanding to themselves and to their subordinates. NCOs drafted from reserve had lost all their knowledge; many were drafted into type of artillery different from the one where they had served in peacetime. Artillery had to fight in very heavy conditions, many NCOs did not have sufficient knowledge and skills; they had to learn during the war and gain experience. Control over NCOs during peacetime played its bad role here. An NCO was deprived of independence, had to do everything under control of commanders and politruks. NCOs could not demonstrate their abilities, their feeling of responsibility was lowered, and their careers were delayed. The situation in the war was completely different; first time they had hard time working independently, but gradually they got used to it.

All other training activities should be the same as in section above ”Infantry NCO”. This war gave us a large number of experienced NCOs; the main drawbacks are the same as with artillerymen.

Komandarm 2nd Rank Voronov

TO BE CONTINUED. TRANSLATION OF PART 2 COMING SOON

Russian text cordially presented by Alex Shvarev, webmaster of Around St Petersburg webpage

Russian State Military Archive. Fund 33987. List 3. Document 1391. Pages. 92-122. 128-146. Original.

© Bair Irincheev 2001 - 2004