Winter War study

[pdoktar]

Recent studies show that the finnish army most likely would´ve been crushed in a month or even few weeks, had the war continued. There´s still huge debate about this and other "stories" of finnish miitary history, only now really being openly debated and re-evaluated.

The Finlands drift to the German camp started very quickly after the Winter War, however there were many high-ranking officials who would´ve liked the country to remain neutral, and tried to keep good relations to England and USA.

[JohnT]

pdoktar said:
Recent studies show that the finnish army most likely would´ve been crushed in a month or even few weeks, had the war continued. There´s still huge debate about this and other "stories" of finnish miitary history, only now really being openly debated and re-evaluated.

Yes, I think this picture say's it all:
http://www.winterwar.com/War%27sEnd/..._FinDailyD.htm

pdoktar said:
Fun fact #2: Just before the war, finns bought many thousands of light artillery shells from Sweden, only to find out that they were one millimeter too large (76mm vs 75mm) for the finnish guns.. think that in a cold winter night.

Well, it's definite not a fact but one of the "stories".
The level of cooperation had gone further than that.
Compatibility issues had been discussed in detail, down to the chutes torpedoes where loaded into the subs, bomb and bomb racks of aircrafts and so on. The Finns had their russian legacy at 76,2mm guns and 7,62mm rifles while the Swedes where metric - 75mm and 6,5mm.

Although Bofors produced any calibre requested.
12 75mm guns where bought with 4000 rounds in October 39 from Sweden, but that’s closest to the story reality goes.

Cheers
/John T