Current Finnish OOB - some notes for discussion

[PvtJoker]

The infantry units with bolt actions and SMGs as secondary weapons do not have multiplied SMGs. The standard post-WW2 OOB was to have two SMGs for each infantry squad and three for each Jaeger squad. After surplus Stens were purchased from the UK in 1957 that was increased to three per infantry squad. Jaeger squads got five SMGs (making them the primary weapon in game terms), but even they always retained at least two bolt action rifles as long as SMGs were used.

In other words, after 1940 the Finnish army never used squads with only bolt action rifles or SMGs as personal weapons for Jaegers or regular infantry troops. After 1957 even homefront or "third line" troops got some Stens.

There seems to be many infantry units with the Rk 54 (AK-47). Only a limited number was purchased in the 1950s (I believe 30,000 pieces). The current OOB has many infantry squads and even a reserve section (unit 513) armed with the Rk 54 as a primary weapon. In reality these second and third line units would have used either bolt actions and SMGs until early 1990s or in some cases Rk 62s since the mid-1980s or thereabouts. There were never enough AK-47s for a significant portion of the regular infantry units.

Please discuss if you have something to note or a different opinion, or even facts to disprove what I wrote

I am planning to make a custom OOB, so this thread is for that purpose only. Specifically, this is NOT suggestion or correction list for the official OOB

[shahadi]

Please consider citing sources when suggesting changes to an OOB. If a designer is going to use your suggestions for Finnish TO&E, he or she may very well need to know the source.

IMHO

[PvtJoker]

Originally Posted by shahadi

Please consider citing sources when suggesting changes to an OOB. If a designer is going to use your suggestions for Finnish TO&E, he or she may very well need to know the source.

IMHO

The problem with sources on old Finnish post-war infantry TO&E's is that there are very little in the way of secondary sources. The old Field Manuals are not available in electronic form, and often they are not available in normal libraries. Getting sources for 1950s and 1960s stuff would therefore require serious historical research, and I'm pretty sure the original OOB designer did not do that, either. Most likely he used what he could find on-line and in the few secondary sources that are available.

Personally I base a lot of this on what I have heard from people who were in the Finnish army in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of it like the use of mixed bolt action rifle / SMG armament squads was standard in WW2, well documented for that period and even included in WinSPWW2 Finnish OOB. The desire to increase the number of SMGs in squads was also clear; hence the purchase of Stens in 1957 (sources for that are easy to find, but here is one: http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/RIFLES6.htm).

[PvtJoker]

More stuff, this time AT weapons:

The 37mm AT guns (both of them, the current OOB has only one) were not really used in AT role after 1945. No source I have seen mentions them as AT assets in the 1950s. A possible exception is the Pak 35/36 with Stielgranate 41 HEAT grenade. However, currently it is not modeled in the game at all. The 37mm guns were kept in storage for infantry gun use until much later, though.

The 45mm AT guns were officially retired from AT use in 1960, but kept for infantry gun use much longer.

I have not seen any evidence that 45mm APCR ammo was ever used by the Finnish army. Almost none was captured during WW2. In the OOB it is provided since 1950. At that time APCR (PzGr. 40) ammunition was purchased for the 75mm AT gun (7.5 cm Pak 40) from West German surplus (there were still many leftover WW2 ammo stocks in Germany), but it's unlikely that they had significant numbers of (captured) 45mm APCR ammo. Soviet Union on the other hand did not sell ammunition or spare parts for weapons captured from them (they were quite adamant on that).

The 75 PstK/97-38 (7.5 cm Pak 97/38) was used in the 1950s and even beyond as an AT gun. Finally retired from reserves in the early 1990s, at the same time as the 75 K/40 (7.5 cm Pak 40).

Source for WW2 vintage weapons info: http://www.jaegerplatoon.net/MAIN.html

95 S 58-61M RCL (weapon 047) should be weapon class 22 (Multi-Charge HEAT). The grenade has a steel "nose" designed to defeat light / 1st gen ERA (even if it's not technically "Multi-Charge"). Official name of the grenade is "Okr 95".

The TOW missiles and launcher names are fudged. TOW missiles used by the Finnish army have been I-TOW/BGM-71C (PstOhj 83), TOW-2/BGM-71D (PstOhj 83M), TOW-2A/BGM-71E (PstOhj 83MA) and TOW-2B/BGM-71F (PstOhj 83MB). The latter two are still in service. http://www.puolustusvoimat.fi/portal...oimien+kalusto

A side note about the I-TOW/BGM-71C and TOW-2/BGM-71D: it appears that these missiles are weapon class 21 (Multi-Charge ATGM) in the USA, USMC and Finnish OOB, and probably others as well. However, to my knowledge the standoff probe is not designed to defeat ERA and I have not seen such a claim in any source. The TOW missiles have a relatively low kinetic energy and it's doubtful if a passive probe or "nose" could detonate an ERA block in any case. If someone has a source that claims the passive standoff probe to have ERA defeating capability, I would be very interested to see it.

[Suhiir]

The BGM-71C and 71D both use improved warheads (71C better then 71B and 71D better then 71C), but should NOT be a milti-charge weapon. they should be changes to Weapon class 13.
The 71E however is a tandem warhead.

[Suhiir]

Note: Really need to fix the "Edit" function on these boards someday.

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

Another factor involved is how the TOW-2 family is divided. Simply put the TOW-2A are your tandem warhead mounted missiles. It is considered a direct attack weapon. you'll notice a multicharge here as well for the tandem penetrator.


The TOW-2B are multiple explosive warhead missiles that are designed as "top attack" missiles and will react differently when hitting a target vs. tandem missile. Both will defeat ERA but generally specking a tandem warhead is considered more efficient at it. But remember you can't cover the top of a tank fully with ERA ethier.


The TOW-2 family portrait...


Good background on all this concerning the TOW-2...
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/tow/tow5.html

It is important to note Tow represents many other folks ATGW systems out there as well as shoulder launched systems. I (And others.) have written/discussed much on ERA in the MBT Thread and elsewhere. It is somewhat more complicated then this however, but you need to ask yourself why certain Eastern European and Asian countries rely so heavily on ERA and most Western and certain Asian countries don't. It boils down to the research in the STEEL and practice of using advanced applique armor solutions. This is why the Russian ARMATA is so important to them. If it lives up to expectations it will compete with the best out there. You can also mark the shift in the Ukraine as well with the OPLOT and more so the OPLOT-M.
ERA does serve a purpose and it does generally what it's designed to do. But NERA type coupled with defensive systems will be more of the future and we're seeing it now. ABRAMS and BRADLEY couple very well see TROPHY or similar systems in the current games lifespan.

NERA...
The easy read...
http://www.aerodefensetech.com/compo...achinery/12841

The technical read but, with neat pictures of the test.
http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublicat...ts/5901287.pdf

Regards,
Pat

[PvtJoker]

Originally Posted by FASTBOAT TOUGH

Another factor involved is how the TOW-2 family is divided. Simply put the TOW-2A are your tandem warhead mounted missiles. It is considered a direct attack weapon. you'll notice a multicharge here as well for the tandem penetrator.
Attachment 13081

The TOW-2B are multiple explosive warhead missiles that are designed as "top attack" missiles and will react differently when hitting a target vs. tandem missile. Both will defeat ERA but generally specking a tandem warhead is considered more efficient at it. But remember you can't cover the top of a tank fully with ERA ethier.
Attachment 13082

Thanks about the NERA info. I knew about its existence but hadn't looked at it more closely .

About the TOW-2B: I was under the impression that it uses an EFP (Explosively Formed Projectile) warhead, which has relatively low RHA penetration and basically relies on the fact that most of the time the EFPs will hit the lightly armored turret top or the engine deck.

Related anomaly in the Finnish OOB: the Finnish "Kylkimiina" (Side Mine in English) (weapon 154) in the OOB is not really what the Finnish Army nomenclature means by a "Kylkimiina". "Kylkimiina" was initially developed in the early 1970s and it uses the EFP principle, which allows it to be placed up to 50 meters from the target. The mine is placed at the side of the road or other assumed path of an enemy vehicle and detonated by an observer electrically or by a wire pull. It is not a close assault but an ambush weapon intended primarily against unarmored vehicles and light armor, although the heavier version (KM 81) can penetrate the side hull armor of many MBTs. They were not available before the 1970s and the penetration of 20 is quite excessive for the weapons: http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index...68#entry667789 (the links don't work any more)

I don't think the WinSP engine lends itself very well for modeling this type of weapon, but in any case they should not be available before the 1970s (the first model was KM 73).

[PvtJoker]

More AT related stuff:

I am going to add a 122 H 63 (D-30) AT unit from mid-1990s. This howitzer has a secondary AT role in the Finnish Army and although it is "emergency only", the gun crews are trained for it and the weapons themselves come with a direct fire telescopic sight. LRF's are used for ranging.

The biggest problem I have with this addition is that there seems to be no reliable penetration data for the BK-13 HEAT grenade. Russian Wikipedia lists 460mm, but no hit angle. I also couldn't find the number in the listed sources, so who knows where it comes from. Russian Wikipedia also claim that max. range is only 1 km, but you can find scanned copies of the original firing tables going up to 2 km (somebody mixed up max. range with "direct fire" range to 2 or 3 meters tall target often mentioned in Russian manuals).

In Western sources the older BK-6(M) is also listed at 460mm at 0 degrees. Russian Wikipedia gives 400mm for it (incidentally, or perhaps not, 400 at 30 degrees is roughly the same as 460 at 0). According to the sectional drawings floating around in the net that come for a fairly reputable Western source, the BK-13 has a wave shaper booster and 105mm cone diameter, which would make 460mm at 0 degrees a much lower than expected RHA penetration compared to others of the same era (late 1970s). So, I assume it is actually at 30 degrees, which gives 530mm at 0 degrees. No more than a guesstimate, but then again the SPMBT OOB's are full of them.

I am also going to add a version of the 95 S 58-61 "Musti" recoilless rifles with a LRF since 1995. The Mobhack Guide says that recoilless rifles should always have RF value 2, but I suppose Don and Andy were not aware at the time of writing that many of them are these days provided with a LRFs, which did not exist during the heyday of recoilless rifles.

[Mobhack]

You obviously have not looked at the OOBs - RCL with a ranging MG (MOBAT say) and those with a 12.7 spotting rifle (WOMBAT for example) will have better RF than "naked" RCLs. Check the UK OOB - ther eprobably are others with differing stats as well.

(My battalion had 2 AT platoons, one with each type, back in the 1970s... but 1/51 Highland (V) was one of those truly weird cases that you love to beat TO&E freaks about he heads with. Heck - one company even had their very own tartan (London Scottish))

The design guides are a starting baseline, and not gospel. So if your team actually had laser RF on some of their RCL - go large. The points calculator will charge for them, after all.