Scandinavian testers needed

[wulfir]

I set the dates for July-August. I assumed there is a normal amount of daylight that time of the year and there is no snow.

There is no snow, except maybe for some patches of ice in some of the high altitude areas mainly in the Norwegian-Swedish border region..., northern Finland is less mountainous. Daylight is probably not quite normal though around June-July because the sun does not set in the arctic region during high summer, i.e. daylight around the clock basically. By August you will start having some hours of darkness again...

In an Emergency would Sweden send military help to Finland? IF they knew they were next? KNEW it, not just suspected it?

Probably. During the Winter War Swedish aid to Finland was substansial, not least in military equipment something there was a major shortage of in Sweden after years of neglect of the armed forces. Nobody, certianly not the Soviets, were ever fooled by the so called Swedish neutrality - though it is likely that in the event of war the Soviets would want to encircle Sweden similar to what the Germans did in WWII.

During the cold war large sums had been invested in the armed forces, with special priority to the Air Force which was larger than all other Nordic countries combined. In an emergency it is likely the Swedish air force would have been the only branch capable of any major action in Finland.

Swedish plans for meeting a Soviet invasion in the north was known as "Krigsfall II N" (War Case II N") was made up of three phases, meeting the invasion, stalling it and finally a counterattack phase aiming at the destruction of the invading force. It would be in the interest of Sweden to aid Finland if Finland was attacked becasue what the Finns would be doing in practice was fighting a delaying action against the marshalling of Soviet forces on the Swedish border - the question is however if any preparations had been made, if not it would be very hard to deploy and sustain any large number of forces inside Finland.

Sweden expected to face an invading force of about 8-10 divisions (inlcuding paratroop etc forces) in the north. One problematic factor for the Soviets would be the lack of roads - there are five major roads running on an east-west axis in the immediate (and best defended) border region between Sweden and Finland - past the border region and in the direction of Norway there are three roads - all prepared for extensive demolition. Meanwhile there are plenty of roads running north-south. For the Soviets lack of roads would limit their ability to deploy, especially thier armour heavy units, as the terrain is in most cases heavily wooded. It would also be hard to relive spearhead divsions expected to have attack strength for about 100 km. The worst case scenario would have been if the Soviets attacked in a slower, more traditional infantry based manner with heavy tank and artillery support similar to what the Soviet 21st Army did at Tali-Ihantala 1944. Sweden expected the Finns to delay a Soviet attack for at least to weeks, if the Finns let the Soviets through without fighting it would take three days for them to march up to the Swedish border...

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Regarding the "S-tanks" (Strv 103) the Swedish armour officers were not entirely happy with the model - considering it not to be a propper tank because it had a limited offensive capability and during the later stages of the cold war a limited defensive capability as it lacked punch to penetrate the most modern Soviet tanks frontal armour.

The OOB of a Swedish tank battalion was also diffrent from that of most other nations, including:

HQ
Staff Company with command elements and 3 Armoured Recce Platoons (none however carried in armoured vehicles).
2 Tank Companies
2 Armoured Infantry Companies (APCs)
1 Artillery Company (with 105mm towed guns).
Supply Company (inlcuding a pioneer platoon caried in trucks).

The idea of this "Kampfgruppe" approach was to give the battalion commander more options and stress the need for combinded arms at lower levels as the limitations of the terrain would often limit the force deployable to battalion size..., there was not enough cash to make the battalion truly mechanisised though. Swedish Bkan 1 SP artillery were all deployed in the north as a higher level assets and operated dispersed with traling ammo carriers.

In the north there was a type formation known as Stridsvagnsbataljon ÖN ("Tank Battalion ÖN) with
HQ
Staff Company
2 Tank Companies (Strv 103)
1 Norrlandsskyttekompani ("Arctic Rifle Company) basically a rifle company carried in Bv 206s, unarmoured.
1 Artillery Battery (105mm, towed)
Supply company

(Three of these were established, but was reduced to two when the S-tanks were introduced).