Finnish Army marked Carcano carbine

[hang fire]

In the three month Winter War (1939-40) against the Soviet invasion, the Italians sent considerable arms and material to Finland. Several other nations (to include the US) also sent same, but most arrived too late to help the Finns. But the Soviets got a very bloody nose, Nikita Khrushchev his memoirs wrote the Soviets lost one million men. One Finnish sniper using only a iron sighted rifle, had over 700 confirmed kills in the 3 month conflict.

IMO, Talvisota, (English subtitles) 1989 movie about the Winter war is one of the best war films ever. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&rlz=1R...or.r_qf.&fp=90d91c4868abcf15&biw=1152&bih=476

The Winter War makes for a very interesting David versus Goliath read, (Fire and Ice PBS documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR2FqMUVZzc )

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp...94,d.aWc&fp=90d91c4868abcf15&biw=1152&bih=476

 

[voicomp]

so, now, i feel completely clueless except for feeling compelling to look for Carcanos w/ the Finnish SA as an added agenda item for gunshows. Damn you, I had been deluded that collecting Finn WWII might be easy and affordable....

 

[toivo]

The Winter War is a fascinating subject. As I understand it, there are several reasons the Finns were able to hold off the Russians for so long.

One is that Stalin had recently purged his officers corps of those who were "politically undesirable," which included some of his best and most experienced officers. What he ended up with was a crew who were loyal and politically correct, but not necessarily competent or experienced at warfare.

Another factor is that the Finns were fighting on their home turf in the middle of a very brutal winter. While the Russians were freezing in tents and scrounging for shelter, the Finns had wood-heated bunkers scattered around the forests, where their troops could rotate in and out to get warm and sleep.

The Russians also had a lot of difficulty moving their armor through the rough, wooded terrain of Finland. Often they were strung out on single-lane roads through dense forests. A Finnish tactic was to attack and disable the front and rear of a column, thereby trapping the rest to be encircled and picked off at leisure. The Battle of the Raate Road is a famous example of that tactic.







The Finnish Army was made up primarily of reservists who were called up to defend the homeland, but they were mostly country people who already knew how to shoot, how to ski, and how to live in the woods. In many cases, they were fighting in their own home areas, so it was their own woods. Big advantage.