"Picking a Finnish unit for Winter War" Topic

Generally speaking, I like to try and model my units after a historical counterpart; hopefully a unit that is fun and was involved in lots of different types of actions. I also want to have an enemy that is something at least plausible, if not the actual unit.

So as I studied the Winter War, I finally narrowed it down to two units:
16th JR (infantry) and the 34th JR. (I know the Finnish, but too lazy to type it all out).

I like the 34th because one of their company commanders is rather exotic: Aarne Juutilainen. He was known as the "Terror of Morocco" or sometimes just "Terror" from his French foreign Legion days, also he was instrumental in the Kollaa battles. As an added bonus Simo Häyhä was in his company and his brother was a famous war Ace.

I like the 16th because their colonel (A. Pajari) was awesome and the Tolvajärvi battles would be fun to battle.

Still haven't decided. Can it be said that the 34th was more defensive in nature while the 16th was more offensive?

Does anyone know the kind of support equipment either of these units would expect to have? I know they didn't have tanks. I think they had 76mm field artillery pieces – did they have AT guns on that sector? I know they were sparse.

As for the Soviets, I think they were just standard Rifle divisions. My understanding is that they had tank support, which I believe were T26 & T37. Was there anything else there? Finally, what kind of artillery or mortars did they have available?

Thanks

Were their uniforms and organization so different that one set of figures couldn't represent both units?

There is a lot of good info at the forum link below. Scroll down to "The Winter War and Continuation War" near the bottom.
forum.axishistory.com/index.php

Korvessa:

Buy a copy of Red Winter from GMT Games. That will tell you everything that you need to know about Tolvajärvi--or at least everything that can be known. Some of the Finnish researchers for the game dug into the original unit diaries, and there's a lot more information from the Soviet side than we've seen before (I believe that Barin1 published a book that provides invaluable information).

The 139 RD was a more-or-less standard rifle division, although its artillery situation was a little off and it appears that it had nothing like the complement of tanks called for by the TO&E. However, research suggests that it had flame tanks …

Truly, the historical section of the game is longer than many complete rulebooks.

Tanks would be mainly T26 and presumably BT series.

Several T28 were in use in Finland but I don't know about your specific units facing them.

Thanks all – especially emckinney – GMT had it on line.

The 34th is certainly interesting and colorful, however the battles may be rather repetitive after December 1939 with the 34th just defending against attacks. Of course as someone wrote above the men in these units will be indistinguishable apart from some celebrities so you can use your models to represent either.

The 34th had support from 81mm mortars and 76mm mountain gun model 1913s. And possibly the 76mm guns of an armored train. Not immediately sure about the 16th. 37mm Bofors AT guns, captured 45mm Russian AT guns (34th did raids to capture them), and later 25mm French model 34s and Boys 13mm AT Rifles were available on these sectors. Finnish 20mm AT rifles – often seen in Winter War scenarios – were not available in the Winter War at all apart from a couple of prototypes deployed on the Karelian Isthmus.

As for the Russians…
There were no T-28s, KVs, SMKs, T-100s etc. on these theaters of the war. Just T-26s of all models, and T-37s and T-38s. Possibly OT-26 and OT-130. Some BTs were also deployed at Kollaa but their use was limited.

Many Russian units may not have had mortars at all. Not sure. Some infantry units may have had rifle grenades instead or in addition (the Russian 1932 field manual specifies a rifle grenade team of seven men and three launchers per platoon). Artillery in 76 – 152mm was plentiful but it is my understanding that the Russians felt that guns were often not usable in Finnish terrain due to their low elevation. Every regiment had a complement of 76mm regimental guns model 1927 (infantry guns) which would fire direct fire. Additional direct fire was provided by 45mm AT guns. Also 25 and 37mm Bofors AA gun copies were brought to the front to do this because the Finnish Air Force was not present. Similarly four-barrel AA MGs may have been used as support.

Oh yes, NKL-16 aerosans seem to figure in stories from Kollaa.
Apparently they were used on the ice of the lake.

Thanks for thoughtful reply
Good info there