HAZWOPER, Day 3

OK, so I have to introduce this one.

Last night I showed the drawing from the preceding post, the product of the second day of weapons-grade boredom, to my kids (who liked it - it's nice to have an appreciative public). My son was VERY enthused, but for today he wanted a commission; "Can you do one with a kraken?" he asked.

So when I got to class today I started this and somehow got sidetracked onto this whole "WW2" thing, so eventually I ended up with a kraken, but with a Nazi kraken.Tomorrow we're doing some sort of hands-on PE and taking the test, so I suspect this is the final gift to you from the nice people at the Federal agencies. Hope you've liked them.

Infamy II: Electric Boogaloo

Apropos of the last post, here's a nice article in Naval History Magazine about the problem that governments and militaries have, not just in assessing threat capabilities, but in assessing their own.

As Parshall and Wenger (2011) point out;

"In the case of the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. Navy had no real inkling of Japanese carrier warfare capabilities and therefore could not accurately assess likely operational targets. Not only that, but Japan’s carrier force—known as Kido Butai—was evolving so quickly on the eve of the Pacific war that almost no naval intelligence organ would have been able to track, internalize, and gauge those capabilities."

Even the Japanese Navy wasn't really able to understand their own strength.The article correctly notes that

"Indeed, the Japanese themselves did not seem to understand clearly the nature of the weapon they had created, or how best to wield it. Within six months of the opening of the war, poor strategy on the Imperial Japanese Navy’s part would end up committing Kido Butai’s component carrier divisions piecemeal, first at the Battle of Coral Sea and then at the Battle of Midway. During the latter, Kido Butai was decisively defeated—with four of its carriers sunk. Japan’s overwhelming early war numerical advantage was thus erased. Shortly thereafter, America’s superiority in production began asserting itself."

My friend seydlitz likes to talk about how the lack of strategic vision in the 2011 U.S. has contributed decisively to our frittering away our blood and treasure pursuing impossibilities in Central Asia. But I think one of the important lessons of Pearl Harbor, as well-discussed in Parshall and Wenger (2011), is how extraordinarily difficult trying to understand even one's own military and geopolitical strengths and weaknesses is.

How much more so trying to integrate all that into an overall assessment of potential threat capabilities, friendly political and military capacity, national interests, and geopolitical variables.Especially in a domestic U.S. political climate of increasing polarization and magical thinking.

Not saying that this shouldn't happen, or can't happen. But just pointing out that all our historical examples show how extraordinarily difficult it is.

Infamy

So I called my parents today, just because I was thinking that it was the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day and I happened to know two people who actually remembered it.

Well, sort of.

My pop freely admitted that he didn't remember what he was doing that Sunday. He was 15 and in high school, so he thought he might have been hanging around with his pals. But he didn't remember being very excited, or even particularly worried. "We were a long way from the West Coast," the Master Chief recalled, "...and it didn't seem likely that Tojo would be coming ashore that day." and that it wasn't really a big fat hairy deal.

But the Master Chief is an engineer and he's always been that way, I think.

My mother was on the West Coast, though, and remembers that at 13 she thought it was a big deal - she was worried that the Japanese would invade San Francisco. She didn't remember many specifics, either, and perhaps after seventy years that's not surprising.

At any rate, that's their Pearl Harbor Day stories.

Four years later the Master Chief was an Ensign in the U.S. Navy and in the last stages of primary flight training on the way to the Fleet as an aviator.

(I don't know why I've always assumed that he would have been a dive bomber pilot; he doesn't seem the sort of cocky sort that fly in fighters but he has a sort of bounce that seems a little too impatient for a low, slow torpedo-bomber driver. But he and I will never know; the bombs of August 1945 ended his trajectory to the deck of a carrier and ensured my arrival twelve years later.)Meanwhile my mother spent a good part of her war in California; long enough to see her parents' Japanese-American friends and fellow Salvation Army officers the Kobiyashis off to Manzanar, anyway. In the Sixties and Seventies I recall her telling me about working with her father, who was the West Coast Salvation Army commander, at railroad stations and embarkation ports and the long trains full of tired soldiers spilling onto the platforms hopeful for a last treat and a friendly face before the long journey resumed that would end, for some at least, in a grave on some crappy little island or in some southwest Pacific jungle.

So I don't get anything from my family other than the long-dimmed sense of duty done and done well.

And I don't see any real reason to write up today's battle. It's been discussed, analyzed, hashed and re-hashed to death. I certainly don't have anything new to add to what smarter and better historians than I have written.

But I do have some thoughts on the events of the Sunday seventy years gone by, as general observations and for what it can tell us about ourselves and the lessons we have learned - or not - from the day that lived in infamy.First, I think the single salient fact of Pearl Harbor is how it shows how individual military success can be - and often is - meaningless in securing political victory.

Which is something we seem to have a hard time comprehending.

By the military calculus of 1941 Japan beat hell out of the U.S. Navy that day. Mind you, there will always be the open question of why Nagumo Chūichi didn't rearm his aircraft and return to finish the job, which would have included destroying the sub docks, the fuel tank farm, and the drydocks and other repair facilities as well as hunting for the U.S. carriers. But the battleship was still considered the naval arm of decision in '41, and Nagumo's force had pretty well hammered the Battleship Divisions of the U.S. Fleet. The USN of '41 was crafted like most of the other navies of its day, to bring its enemies within the big-gun range of its battleships and destroy them, and Pearl Harbor meant that wasn't going to happen.

But...

As we all know, the Pearl attack forced the brown-shoe Navy to lead the counterattack over the next year. And the battles of '42 - Coral Sea and Midway - proved that naval war had moved into a new era and that the Japanese Navy wasn't ready for it. Technically, yes; it had good aircraft, good pilots, and a solid carrier force. But many of the officers who lead it were, like Nagumo, cruiser and battleship guys. They were outguessed and outplanned by their USN counterparts who also had considerable access to the Japanese codes - the tremendous success of Allied decryption was the great secret of WW2 - and the IJN also proved fatally unable to adapt to the rapid changes of modern war.

Which brings us to my next observation; if you think you can design your military for the "next war" you're kidding yourself.

The combatants of Pearl Harbor couldn't even design their armed forces in 1941 for the war they were fighting three years later. And the Japanese industrial capacities of the Forties were completely inadequate, a fact Japan had no clue about until they dragged the U.S. into their war.

Look at the Japanese aircraft in the sky that day; A6M "Zero" fighter, D3A "Val" divebombers, and B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers. Good aircraft, well employed. But in the hangers of the U.S. carriers that Sunday you'd have found F3F "Wildcat" fighters, SBD "Dauntless" divebombers, and TBD "Devastator" torpedo bombers. The Grumman fighter and Douglas bombers were comparable to their Japanese counterparts

(the poor reputation of the Devastator seems to have developed after the massacre of the torpedo squadrons at Midway, an event caused largely by misfortune (the torpedo squadrons got separated from rest of the USN stroke force, arrived alone and were swarmed by the Japanese fighter cover) and the problems inherent in torpedo-bombing tactics (flying low, slow, and straight - the way you had to to deliver an aerial torpedo - turned out to be - surprise! - fatal when your enemy had decent AAA and fighter protection. Go figure)

but had been completely replaced three years later.By 1944 the F6F and F4U were better than the A6M, the SB2C at least no worse than the D3A (though the American aviators called it the "Sonuvabitch 2nd Class" and generally disliked it) and the TBF faster and more maneuverable than the B5N.

And the IJN?

Well, the real problem for the Japanese at this point was death.

Seriously.

The Japanese pilot training system was never efficient and by 1944 it was completely broken. The IJN never developed the equivalent of the USN V-12 program that took in the Master Chief back in his day. Combat losses and the inevitable attrition of a high-risk profession combined with slow training meant that experienced pilots were irreplaceable. So when their fleet air arm guys started coming down with a bad case of death it didn't matter so much that poor industrial capacity meant that the D4Y "Judy" divebomber couldn't fully replace the Val or the B6N "Jill" torpedo bomber the Kate.

But they didn't, and even if the IJN had managed to produce enough decent pilots the USA/USN would have just shot them down as well. It just would have taken a little more work but the Hellcats and Corsairs (and Lightnings and Mustangs) were just that much better; in three years the military situations had changed that much.

Within three years the strike force, and entire the Japanese Naval Air Service, that had been so violently successful over Pearl Harbor was dead, maimed, and destroyed.

Anyone who thinks they can outguess war is an utter fool.

My other thought is that Petroleum will Fuck You Up.

Pearl Harbor and the Great Pacific War in general was as much about Blood for Oil as it was about anything. The Japanese wanted the petroleum then being produced in the South China Sea area, particularly in the then-Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). But the Dutch had cut a deal; Japan had to buy Dutch oil from us. And after the Dutch took their cut and we took ours the Japanese were paying a pretty steep price to kill all those Chinese they were killing.Because the real objective of Japan's foreign policy in 1941 had nothing to do with the U.S.; it wanted pieces of China and the Asian mainland. We were just in the way.

But we WERE in the way. The U.S. forces in the Philippines were a constant threat to the Japanese moves to the southwest into south China and French Indochina. In September 1940 Japanese forces attacked Vichy troops around the northern province of Indochina, Tonkin. In return the U.S. froze Japanese assets and - more devastating - on 26 JUL 1941 we embargoed all that lovely Indonesian and West Texas crude.

Without petroleum the Japanese conquest of China was going to grind to a stop.

And you know the rest: the military men who ran the Japanese government needed that fuel. They were going to get it from Indonesia. And to get it they were going to have to take a slap at the United States.

So the slapping commenced.
And we're still in the slapping business today.

Not slapping the Japanese, though. They came looking for trouble that Sunday morning and found all they could handle. After the millions they killed, and the million of their own people who died the nation of Japan now sits quietly as the western edge of the Pacific still mired in their second decade of economic depression.

So that leads me to my final thought on the anniversary just past; that war makes you do stupid things.

Not because it makes you stupid, but because you don't have the time or the inclination to look your options over, because war demands you make decisions NOW regardless of how much you know, or what you think you know that's wrong, or whether you really know anything at all.

So you make dumb choices. If you're Japan in 1941, you attack the Americans instead of taking that Dutch oil and then making them decide to fight you. You fight them in the mid-Pacific instead of making them come all the way to you at the end of a 3,000-mile supply chain. You risk everything on a throw of the iron dice...and then you fail, because of little stupidities like not returning to destroy the submarine pens, or the drydocks, or the fuel tanks outside Pearl City.

The Japanese appear to have learned the lesson of December 7th and are unwilling to revisit their dumb choices...but we seem to be demanding to be everything they were in 1941.

We're throwing the iron dice all over the world but especially in the Middle East, because petroleum and our craving for it.

We're powerful enough to take on the world, without wondering if taking on the world is the smartest thing to do, the enduring lesson of Pearl Harbor.We seem to still collectively remember December 7th, 1941, and one would think we'd remember these lessons as well.

But one has to wonder if we understand what they are.

Decisive Battles: Ilomantsi 1944

Ilomantsi - Dates: 31 JUL-13 AUG 1944Forces Engaged: Finland - Group Raappana (Ryhmä Raappana); an ad-hoc organization assembled for the defense of the "U-Line" in the North Karelia region. The major elements of this force were 21st Infantry Brigade (abbreviated on the Finnish tactical maps as "21Pr" from "21 Prikaati" the latter being Finnish for brigade), roughly 7,000 all arms, along with several Border Jager battalions and other elements of the 14th Infantry Division, disorganized after the Soviet offensive of mid-June.When the severity of the Soviet offensive became obvious the Finnish Cavalry Brigade (Ratsuväkiprikaati, abbreviated "RPr" on the tactical maps) was dispatched to reinforce the Ilomantsi sector, bringing the total Finnish strength to between 13,000 and 14,000 all arms under Major General Erkki Johannes Raappana.(Note: the Finns, as in most things, were a pragmatic people when it came to warfare. The Finnish cavalry was known for the delightful foppery of their dress [their dark red uniform pants were known to the ladies of Helsinki as "ecstasy trousers"] before the 1939 Winter War, but the Finns had been looking south and had seen what mechanized war did to horse cavalry. So from the outset the Finnish mounted units - the Uusimaa Dragoon Regiment [Uudenmaan rakuunarykmentti, URR] and Häme Mounted Regiment [Hämeen ratsurykmentti, HRR] - fought as mounted infantry. Later in the war, when keeping horses alive in combat became more trouble than it was worth, the dashing cavalrymen rode into battle...on bicycles.)Soviet Union - A portion of the 32nd Army, Karelian Front (Colonel-General Kirill Afanasievich Meretskov).

The full strength of this army in the summer of 1944 consisted of four infantry divisions; 27th, 176th, 289th, and 313th. The authorized strength of a Soviet 1944 rifle division was around 10,000 troops all arms, but the 32nd Army had been attacking for over a month at the time its right and center divisions - the 176th and 289th - approached the old pre-war Finnish border near Ilomantsi. So the total assigned strength of the two divisions together was probably around 15,000-16,000 all arms.

As the battle unfolded and the situation of the two divisions became clear the Army commander committed a division-size force of ground-pounding squids; the 3rd Naval Infantry (Morskaya Pekhota) and 69th, and 70th Naval Rifle (Morskaya Strelkovy) brigades. These units probably fielded about 1,500 to 2,000 troops each for a total of about 5,000 all arms.

(Note: The latter two Strelkovy brigades should not be confused with the Naval Infantry [Morskaya Pekhota] units. The latter, sometimes called the "Black Death" by their German enemies, were raised and trained as marines by the Soviet Fleet, and their organization dated back to the pre-Revolutionary times.Naval Rifle units, on the other had, were hastily raised from "excess" sailors in the blockaded Soviet fleet bases, augmented with conscripts, and were equipped and trained by the Red Army. They were, in effect, nothing more than a regular Soviet infantry formation and lacked both the amphibious training and the elan of the Pekhota, who considered themselves the Soviet Union's "Marine Corps")

So a rough total of 16,000 to 21,000 all arms.

The name of the operational commander for the Soviet maneuver elements has proved impossible for me to determine. It should have been the 32nd Army commander, whose identity is shrouded in Russian. Any assistance in determining who was in command of the Soviet forces in and around Ilomantsi during the high summer of 1944 would be greatly appreciated!The Campaign: The story of the 1939-1940 Winter War is well known and well-told elsewhere. so I will refer you to the many sources that discuss it. But the Battle of Ilomantsu is the last act in what the Finns referred to as the "Continuation War" (Jatkosota) that began when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941.

The Continuation War - 1941-1944

Finland's leaders had met with the Nazi German hierarchy in the spring of 1941 and were informed of the plans for Barbarossa. They did not share Hitler's territorial ambitions but wished to recover the territory they had lost on the Karelian Isthmus and in "Ladoga Karelia", the area north of Lake Ladoga. After some inconclusive scuffling and air attacks the Finnish Army attacked in July of 1941 and within the month of August had regained the old 1939 borders.I get the sense that most Finns thought that once the old borders were retaken the need for war was over. But I think that the apparent success of Barbarossa seduced the Finnish leadership; President Ryti publicly mooted the notion of a "Greater Finland" which would include the Kola Peninsula, East Karelia and possibly even much of Ingria, Inkerinmaa, the region that runs along the eastern Baltic around then-Leningrad.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Army, FM Mannerheim swore to "liberate" Karelia on 10 JUL 41. But the Soviet defenses stiffened, and by the autumn of 1941 the stalemate in the north was becoming obvious.Finland had succeeded in 1941 largely because they mobilized a huge proportion of their manpower, far more than they had in 1939. The result was a near-collapse of the far-from-lavish Finnish agriculture. Finnish soldiers had to be demobilized to prevent economic collapse, and ended up needing to import half of their cereal grains from Germany that fall to prevent widespread hunger.

By December 1942 the offensive in eastern Karelia had ground to a halt. The Finnish Army had lost 75,000 troops out of a force of no more than 550,000. The northern war then settled into a grim static slog for the next two and a half years.

Finland has typically been well thought of in American lore for it's "plucky" defense in 1939. The Continuation War is usually forgotten. And, broadly speaking, of the Axis powers Finland was probably the least-objectionable other than the hapless Italians. It remained a democracy. And it refused to participate in the extermination programs of Nazi Germany. The total number of Finnish Jews known to have been murdered for their parentage was eight.

But the Finns are a hard people, and the Finnish record is not spotless.

The temporary rulers of East Karelia were determined to ethnically cleanse the Russians living there. Some were expelled, as many as a third were interned in camps, almost all women, children, and old people. The Wiki entry reads:

"The winter of 1941–1942 was hard for the Finnish urban population due to poor harvests and a shortage of agricultural laborers. However, for the interned it was disastrous and over 3,500 of them died, mostly from famine. The figure was equivalent to 13.8% of the inmates, where the corresponding figure for the free population of the occupied territories was 2.6% and for Finland proper 1.4%"

The Russians have not forgotten this, those that still live in the Karelian region, and like as not they have not forgiven it, either.By 1943 the Finns began to recognize that things were not going to turn out well in the fight their German neighbors had picked. The Finnish government reorganized with a new cabinet and began negotiating with Stalin to try and find a way out of the war without getting skinned. Stalin had little or no interest. The Soviet STAVKA then tried an air campaign in February 1944 to try and bomb the Finns into unconditional surrender, but the Finnish Air Force and antiaircraft defenses managed to make the air attacks, as so often in history, a waste of Russian time, lives, and money.

In January 1944 the Soviet Leningrad Front had forced the German and Finnish forces back, finally ending the siege. With the road to Berlin becoming ever more visible Finland asked for peace terms in February, but the Eduskunta, the Finnish Parliament, wouldn't accept the harsh terms Stalin insisted on. Finland resolved to fight on, and Stalin's STAVKA resolved on an attack to knock the irritating little bastards out of the war.

Endgame 1944 - The Soviet Isthmian Offensive

This attack is known as the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Offensive. The Leningrad Front would attack up the Karelian Isthmus, whilst the Karelian Front would cross the Svir River through Ladoga Karelia. Between the two army groups the Soviet forces would smash the Finnish forces in Karelia and move on Helsinki.The Finnish Army had pissed away its time since 1941 and the supposed fortifications that had been planned for the Isthmus were in terrible shape. The plan was for a triple line of fortifications; the "front line", the "VT Line" and the "VKT Line". Only the front line had been fully fortified and these defenses were typically a single string of positions that had been allowed to fall apart while the troops opposing Leningrad sat on their collective asses. The VT line is reported to have had decent strongpoints but many holes where little more than foxholes had been dug.The VKT Line existed principally in Mannerheim's imagination.

This sloppy mess was defended by two corps up front; III AK (15th Division and 19th Brigade) and IV AK (10th and 2nd Divisions) with two infantry divisions 3rd and 18th, the Armored Division (Panssaridivisioona) and the Cavalry Division in reserve behind the VT-line or further west; a total of 6 infantry divisions and a separate brigade, an armored division, and a mounted infantry division.

Against this the Leningrad Front was going to hit the Finns with 24 rifle divisions; 21st Army with 15 divisions, and 23rd Army with 9 divisions. Included in the echelons-above-corps were 14 brigade-sized tank units and 11 assault-gun regiments - 852 armoured fighting vehicles included ISU-122, ISU-152 assault guns, and T34, T-70, and IS-2 tanks. Two artillery divisions from the STAVKA Reserve plus divisional artillery added up to 2,850 cannons and mortars. The Soviet 13th Air Army had about 1,500 aircraft. And to throw in makeweight there were the massive fortress and railway guns of the Leningrad defenses and the battleships of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet.

By comparison the effort north of Lake Ladoga was relatively meek; sixteen divisions of the 7th and 32nd Armies of the Karelian Front, with less than half the tank strength.

Here the Finnish defense had originally consisted of three Army Corps; II AK (1st, 4th, 6th, and 14th Infantry Divisions, 21st Infantry Brigade, and four separate battalions) V AK (11th and 17th Infantry Divisions, 20th Infantry Brigade), and VI AK (5th, 7th, and 8th Infantry Divisions, 15th Infantry Brigade, and seven separate battalions).

The thunder of massed artillery announced in traditional Soviet fashion that the Leningrad Front thought they were hard enough to give the isthmian lines a go.As you might expect, the Soviet attacks on 9 JUN 1944 went through the Karelian defenses like a dose of salts. The Finnish 10th Infantry Division was posted on the south end of the "front line" in open country that was decent for tanks. Between the catastrophic artillery prep and the waves of tanks and infantry the 10th Division effectively ceased to exist in 24 hours and the Soviets poured through.The Kannaksen Joukkojen Komentajan Esikunta (the Finnish command element in charge of all troops on the Karelian Isthmus, identified by the to-English-speaking-eyes-comical acronym of KaJoKE) ordered a pullback to the VT-line, but this, in turn, was assaulted and taken, the breakthrough coming again on the Finnish right, and over the next seven days the KaJoKE forces executed a well-conducted withdrawl-under-pressure to the notional VKT-line. Here the Finns finally got lucky; for more than half of its length this "line" ran along the Vuoksi River. In June this watercourse was unfordable, too deep to wade and too wide to swim and, of course, impassible to tanks.A combination of mistakes and misfortunes managed to lose Viipuri/Vyborg on 20 JUN, but from there the Finnish lines stiffened. The German Heer supplied an infantry division and an assault-gun battalion while the Luftwaffe transferred Gefechtsverband (Detachment) Kuhlmey of mixed Ju87 and Fw190 ground-attack aircraft, Fw190 fighters, and Bf109 reconnaissance aircraft - a crucial piece of assistance that was even more vital than the crates of antitank rockets - Panzerfausts and Panzerschreiks - arriving from Germany.Between 25 JUN and 9 JUL the Soviet forces attacked IV and V Corps along the Tali-Ihantala line, but the Finnish defenders held. This was largely because

- The defenders used a combination of blocking positions and spoiling attacks to prevent the Soviet attacks from developing, and counterattacked immediately to prevent the Soviet troops from consolidating gains.

- Finnish radio intelligence was excellent, and Soviet communications security exceptionally poor. Several Soviet attacks were smashed inside their own line of departure due to careless commo procedures that compromised operational security.

- The Finnish had developed a truly exceptional command-and-control net for their artillery, allowing a single observer to coordinate fires from units across the defensive sector. As many as 200 cannons and mortars would be directed by one FO, resulting in truly shattering massed fires.

After almost two weeks of continuous fighting the KaJoKE units had lost 8,000 men killed or too wounded to fight. But the Soviets has lost over a quarter of their fighting vehicles and probably on the order of 20,000 casualties. The isthmian phase of the “fourth strategic strike” of 1944 was over.Endgame 1944 - The Attack in Ladoga Karelia

Perhaps the most critical element in the outcome of the next phase - the last phase - of the July battles around Lake Ladoga was the Finnish response to the success of the Soviet isthmus offensive. Finnish Army command ordered their forces north of the Lake to shorten their lines, and withdrew all of V Corps to bolster the lines to the south.Between 16 JUN and the kickoff of what is termed the Svir–Petrozavodsk Offensive on 20 JUN the Finnish forces in Group Raapana were reduced to the equivalent of about six divisions in two Corps; Group Maaselkä (later II Corps) in the north with 1st Infantry Division, 21st Brigade, and four separate battalions, and "Group Aunus" with 5th, 7th and 8th Infantry Divisions, 15th Brigade, and seven separate battalions.

And more importantly, both units stepped back from the 1942-43 lines to the so-called "PSS-line", and were authorized to fall back even further if pressed.

So, when the Soviet Karelian Front crossed the LD on 20/21 JUN it fell mostly on empty air. In the south the Finnish 5th Division conducted a delaying action against the Soviet 7th Army falling back to the PSS-lines on the Maaselkä isthmus between Lake Ladoga to the south and Lake Lake Ääninen (Onega to the Russians) to the north. To the north of Ääninen the Soviet 32nd Army pushed II Corps back as well, doing considerable damage as it did.The Karelian Front then conducted a neat little amphibious operation on the night of 22/23 JUN, landing 3rd Naval Infantry and 70th Naval Rifle brigades between Tuulos and Vitele on the north coast of Lake Ladoga, effectively turning the PSS-line positions. By the next day Group Aunus ordered a withdrawal to the "U-line", the final fortification lines located just inside the 1939 borders.

Here, as on the Karelian isthumus, the combination of better fortifications, artillery and aerial coordination, and, probably, Soviet exhaustion and supply problems caused the offensive to slog to a stop on the Maaselkä front. Attacks and counterattacks ranged along the U-line from mid June to mid July without significant effect. STAVKA looked to the north to attempt to turn the Finnish defenses and threaten a strategic debacle.

Here the Finnish position was shaky; two divisions of the Soviet 32nd Army, 176th Rifle and 289th Rifle, were set on a single brigade (21st). The overwhelming numbers made even a delaying action precarious - at least once the Finnish brigade was nearly enveloped. By late June the 21st Brigade had been backed up nearly to the Ilomantsi area.This position was important for the Finns to hold. East of Ilomantsi the terrain was just more Karelia; a nasty, swampy wilderness without decent roads or anything of military value, really. But from Ilomantsi west was "Finland" - good roads and infrastructure that led to Joensuu and the inner Finland heartland. Taking Ilomantsi offered the Soviet offensive its last, best chance for a breakthrough into Finland proper and a hope for proper military victory.

The Finnish Army command knew this as well.

Now that the situation along the Karelian Isthmus had stabilized it transferred the Cavalry Brigade north to bolster II Corps. The two brigades (21st and Cavalry) were reinforced with two infantry battalions fro 14th Division to form Group Raappana, setting the stage for the engagement around Ilomantsi.The Sources: As always with 20th Century warfare between industrialized nations the problem of sources is vastly simplified by the habit of Western armies of keeping voluminous records. Ilomantsi is documented in unit histories, strength and casualty returns, after-action reports, and official accounts...not to mention the widespread written records of individuals all the way from the lowest private soldiers to their commanders.

In this case, however, we English-speakers have two significant difficulties.

On one side the records of the defense are largely in Finnish. Not an easy language, and barriered, as well, by the rather taciturn position of Finland as the most eastern-facing of the Scandinavian nations, many of the Finnish records are difficult to find in English without serious effort. And what is available online is often poorly translated or fragmentary.

On the other, the Soviet records are still in the archives constructed by the old Soviet Union, whose purpose was not nearly so much to record history as to use it as a way to make the Soviet Union look good. The post-Soviet Russian archivists are said to be only slightly more forthcoming than they were when their pay notes featured Lenin on the front.

While researching this post I noted that very few of the online sources contain information from both Finnish and Soviet records. The most comprehensive appears to be the Wiki entry for the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Offensive. Interestingly, the little website for the military hobby wargame "Flames of War" has some nice background pages, including this one discussing the Karelian operations of 1944.

There are several items of interest available on the internet for an English-speaker, particularly this 2008 translation of a 1947 doctoral dissertation by one Knut Pipping. This work, "The Infantry Company as a Society", is primarily concerned with soldier group and individual behavior. But Pipping also served as section sergeant for a machinegun platoon in the 12th Infantry Regiment through the entire Continuation War period, and does a nice job of describing the daily lives of the ordinary jalkaväki during this time.

One recent examination of the engagement that looks promising is Pasi Tuunainen's "The Battle of Encirclement at Ilomantsi in July-August 1944—An Example of the Application of the Idea of Cannae in the Finnish Art of War" in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, v. 19, issue 1. It's available here but costs $34, which is a little steep for me. A serious student of the battle, however, would seem to do well to investigate this material both for its accessibility and its discussion of the engagement in its historical context.

The Engagement: The fight at Ilomantsi has been called the "last work of the motti-master", and so we should probably first stop and discuss what this odd Finnish art was and how it was performed.

A motti is, literally, one cubic meter of cut wood. Finnish and Swedish woodcutters would fell and trim their logs and then stack them to be picked up later. So a "motti" in Finnish military slang was a larger enemy unit cut up into fragments for ease of destruction.The main reason that the Finns could do this is that most Soviet units were not adept at moving through the northern terrain. I've never been to Finnish Karelia, but those who have described it to me as very similar to an area I have visited, the boreal forest of northern Minnesota and the U.P. of Michigan. Stands of thick dog-hair timber on the uplands with lots of nasty, boggy swamps in the low ground. Dense brush separated by mirey cold seeps, infested with bugs in the summer, frigid in winter.It's the kind of place that only a Finn could love, which may be why so many ended up in the upper U.S. Midwest...

And the Finland of the Forties was still a largely rural nation. Even Finnish draftees were more familiar with their woods and swamps than the Soviet conscripts they fought, and their Army trained specifically for fighting in the boreal forests.What helped was that the Soviets were more roadbound than their enemies, and especially by 1944 the Soviet steamroller was very dependent on their armor to lead its attacks and artillery to anchor its defense. Neither of these arms was particularly deft at moving and fighting in the dense woods and soft ground of Karelia.

Soviet attacks then tended to be channelized down whatever roads or tracks the reconnaissance elements could find. Even if the Soviet unit commanders had a map - and many didn't - the Soviet topographic engineers were few and generally underresourced when present. So the Soviets were often unsure of there their enemies were, and just as often unsure even of where their own flanking elements were.

The Finnish Army was surprised by the mottis they created in 1939; they thought that the Soviets, when defeated, would run, and were not actually pleased finding these knotty little groups of Russians that had to be reduced. Finnish troopers noted that the individual Russian soldier was usually good at digging in, and even though the "mottiryssä" were no longer able to contribute much to the tactical advantage of their forces they seldom collapsed and nearly always had to be reduced by assault.

Neither of the Soviet rifle divisions attacking Ilomantsi had fought in the Winter War, so they had to learn the hard way what happened when you attacked Finns on ground of their choosing without overwhelming strength.The 176th Division on the right attacked west around the villages of Lehmivaara and Vellivaara, the 286th on the left attacked west and southwest from the village of Kolismaa towards Lutikkavaara and Konukka. The Finnish defenses stalled both divisions, and counterattacks split them into mottis as the Group Raapana troopers cut the roads and tracks, felling trees and destroying vehicles, then slipping around the flanks and rear of the stalled Soviets. The 176th managed to at least retain most of its unit integrity; the 286th was badly cut up, with elements encircled in or near four separate villages - as many as five mottis are shown on the Finnish battlemap.By 4 AUG 44 both divisions were cut off and ineffective in attack. Border Jager detatchments ranged along the supply routes east, ensuring that the Soviets received no replacements for food and ammunition.

STAVKA attempted to relieve the encircled units by throwing a division-sized naval unit down the Kuolismaa-Leppävaara road. The attacks, which were unsupported by significant armor or artillery, did nothing.Rather surprisingly the Finnish cannoneers had far the better performance; the Soviet mottis were deluged with 3:1 throw-weight superiority, more than 35,000 shells of all calibres against some 10,000 counterfire rounds. Innovative Finnish fire control techniques again paid off, allowing the Finnish attacking-defenders to hammer strongpoints and break up reaction forces before they could seal up break-ins.After nine days and some 3,000 casualties the Soviets had enough. The rifle divisions requested, and received, permission to break out, and on 12/13 AUG did so, leaving behind their dead and many wounded along with nearly all their heavy weapons. The Finns did not pursue.The Outcome: Finnish tactical victory leading to political conclusions.The Impact: The 1944 Karelian battles had several effects on both the Finnish and Soviet governments.For Stalin and STAVKA, the fight the Finns had put up, from Tali-Ihantala to Ilomantsi, suggested that forcing a victor's peace on the pesky northern neighbors wasn't worth the time, losses, and effort. There were bigger Nazi fish to fry, and more prosperous lands to subdue, on the central European plain.The Soviet offensive had gone much better than it had in 1939; the troops were better trained, the equipment better designed, and the Soviet commanders better all around. But the cost had still been heavy; not the 7-to-1 casualty ratio the Finns had exacted five years earlier, but still...3-to-1 was nothing to cheer about, and the Finnish artillery had been shockingly good. One thing Soviet armies respected was good gunnery, and they had been outgunned in Karelia.

If Stalin was anything he was a ruthless pragmatist. He had no need for a Finnish client state so long as the Finns could be made harmless.

In Finland the successful defense of Karelia was almost no victory. The Finnish Army had been mishandled badly in the opening weeks of the fourth strategic offensive, and overall had lost 60,000 men dead in the three years of the Continuation War, and for nothing. The total casualties for the war, about a quarter million, were about six and a half percent of the Finnish people. And equivalent loss in the U.S. of 2011 would come to some two million total, nearly 500,000 dead, the sort of bloodletting we have not seen since our Civil War.The Finnish people, and the Finnish government, knew that if the Soviets wanted to pay the price they could march on Helsinki and dictate a conqueror's peace. So an agreement must be reached, and before the Germans could be crushed.

President Ryti would need to be the first to go - he had signed a pact with Hitler that Finland would not seek a separate peace with the Soviets. Marshal Mannerheim was appointed to replace him.

Fighting ended in Karelia in early September, and on 19 SEP 1944 Finland and the Soviet Union signed an armistice agreement.

The critical element of this agreement was that Finland avoided a Soviet occupation. She had to demobilized pretty much all of her Army, cede some fairly substantial chunks of eastern Finland, including the battlefields of Karelia and the city of Viipuri/Vyborg, to the Soviets, and pay a sizeable reparation.In one of the most farcical chapters in World War 2, the Finns were required by their treaty to attack the German forces that had been stationed in their Arctic north when the latter refused to abide the Soviet deadline to withdraw. What started out as comedy - for the first two weeks the former allies conspired to hide their cooperation from the Soviets; the Germans would sneak away and then the Finns would come up roaring and shooting into empty positions - ended in tragedy, with Germans taking Finnish civilians hostage to try and force a release of POWs, and then destroying much of Finnish Lappland as they retired to Norway. The mines they left behind killed hundreds of Finnish EOD troopers and presented a nightmarish hazard to life in northern Finland well into the Fifties.Finland has, in my opinion, done a fine job of managing its dangerous eastern neighbor. It remains a vital and tidy little state, and maintains a good little Army that holds onto the traditions of the tough fighters that held the Karelian woods outside of Ilomantsi and sent the Soviets fleeing back east for one final time.Touchline Tattles: There's a very Finnish story told about the border guard who is well-hidden in his OP on the first day of the Winter War. He's got good warm clothing, his rifle is sighted to hit within a couple of millimeters over a kilometer, and he's invisible to the immense column of Soviet infantry and armor slogging towards him through the gloomy woods. He contemplates this parade for some time, chewing on his hard ryebread pettuleipä, and says to no one in particular;

"So many of them, and so few of us."

He chews for a moment more and adds glumly;

"How will we ever manage to bury them all?"

Me Tondelayo

Caught the 1942 MGM chestnut "White Cargo" the other night.

Hard to try and discuss the thing, what between the bad acting, wooden directing, terrible script and, particularly, the amazingly out-front Forties racism and misogyny. All it lacked was some dancing pickaninnies and a comical John-Wayne-variety wifebeating. Seriously. It stunk just that bad.

The racism was so bad it wasn't even Forties-tolerable. The original New York Times reviewer called White Cargo "that antique lot of bunk which could, with the proper treatment, be made into screaming farce—you know, that lurid business about white men in darkest Africa going to pot from the heat, too much booze and the charms of a dusky native girl."But the "dusky native" girl" is, of course, the only reason to watch this dog anymore, since Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler - better known as Hedy Lamarr - was a native of Austria and dusky by virtue of whatever Metro used as spray-tan in the war years (since the genuine spray-tan was needed to make GI boots or something...) but was certainly all girl, or woman, and slinks about the film in cocoa makeup and a sarong speaking a bizarre sort of pidgin. Although the film is set somewhere in British colonial Africa Hedy's character, "I am Tondelayo" is said to be Egyptian/Arab, probably to get around the Hays Office issue with portraying white-black sex on screen.

And thats "White Cargo" summed up, really. Sex. Forbidden, blacky-white sex. It's about the stalwart White Man's burden; the slinky, scheming Dark Woman, who wants only to mulct him for the benefits of his White Progress by enticing him with her irresistible dusky poozle. Of course, Whiteness triumphs in the end, as the scheming Hedy/Tondelayo is forced to drink the Vile Puggle she is using to poison her white husband and runs screaming off to, presumably, Do The Right Thing and die in lonely agony in the jungle.

Hedy is both wonderfully scenic and monumentally awful, though her thigh-slapping Tonedlayo Dance really has to be seen to be appreciated. It's hard to believe she can't act, as she did well in other pieces both before and after this, and it's difficult to guess whether it was the rotten script or the bad direction that makes her so bad, or whether she just really hated the film and the part. Certainly the reviewers did, but at least they got some vicious entertainment value from it. From the NYT, again;

"...Metro has chosen to play it for Drachmae and implications of sex—or, at least, as much as the Hays office would let pass, which is mostly wiggles and leers. It has given Hedy Lamarr a mahogany finish, a limited vocabulary and a few dry goods and turned her loose to play Tondelayo with whatever else she happens to have. It has called upon Richard Carlson to be the sap who cracks up at this display, and it has set Walter Pidgeon, Frank Morgan and several other able actors to sweating and shouting the most abusive and ridiculous twaddle that has been heard in a long, long time.

As the gentlemen keep telling one another, the dry rot has set in—on the Capitol screen. Or is it the damp rot? We can't remember. But it is some kind of rot; that much is sure."

You write that today, Jackson, and you've got a hell of a lawsuit on your hands, but I have to agree - "White Cargo" sucked pipe.

The injustice hidden underneath all that makeup is that Hedy was, in her way, a really brilliant woman. Her adventures, beginning with her escape from Europe and a beast of a first husband, are as good as a storybook, and she seems to have been something of a minor genius with a knack for invention, developing an early version of radio frequency-hopping that eventually became the SINGCARS radios I used in the Army in the 1990s and Oughts.

I'm not kidding. Got it patented and everything. Smart woman.She was also a difficult person, too, apparently, with all sorts of personal and money problems. She was broke a lot later on, and was caught stealing several times. She sued a lot of people later in her life over use of her name and image; she never really managed to transfer her wartime-era glamor into a career in films that survived the Next Hot Girl and she seems to have become pretty damn bitter about it. She had a very up-and-down sort of life after the stardom years, and died in Florida ten years ago this January in relative obscurity.

But she was riding the crest the year she made "White Cargo", and as bad as the film is it's hard to watch it, and her vamping sullenly in her ridiculous makeup and imagine the hard years to come. In the flickering monochrome darkness of my living room in Portland, 2010, it was still 1942, the war was waiting outside, and the gorgeous woman with the lissome figure was still smiling up succulently and husking "What Tondelayo want, Tondelayo get."