SIMO HYUYAHIA: MAN-LEGEND OR MAN-MYTH?
On April 23, 2020, an article by Oleg Kiselev, specializing in the history of the Soviet-Finnish wars, dedicated to the hero of the Finnish national epic was published on the popular and reputable site warspot.ru.
The following is a Google translation without editing.
SIMO HYUYAHIA: MAN-LEGEND OR MAN-MYTH?
Simo Hyayuha is a legendary man, one of the most successful snipers in world history, who is credited with more than 500 to 700 confirmed murders committed in just 98 days of participation in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. According to the Finnish version, on average, Hyayuha dealt with 5-8 Soviet fighters every day, making the Red Army so terrified that they called him "White Death." Gregory Mast, the author of the book “Being a Military Sniper,” suggests that Hyayuha made such an indelible impression on the command of the Red Army that later Soviet propaganda specially “wound up” sniper Mikhail Surkov to score 702 Nazis killed in order to overshadow the achievements of the Finnish super shooter. So what is behind the achievements of Simo Hyayuha?
CLEAR AND FAST
Simo Häyhä was born in 1905 in a small village in the Rautajärvi community near the town of Imatra. At the age of 17, he joined the Shyutskor, having the opportunity to train hard and hard, and soon established himself as a good shooter, earning a master shooter degree, which gave him the right to participate in shooting competitions. This degree was given after passing through the previous three steps, accompanied by the implementation of standards of varying degrees of complexity.
In November 1925, Hyayuha was drafted into the army. He ended up serving in the 2nd Scooter Battalion, where he graduated from the non-commissioned officer school and was transferred to the 1st Scooter Battalion, deployed in Terijoki, on the border itself. In March 1927, Hyayuha left the reserve and returned home, but did not abandon military affairs and continued to actively participate in the life of the local shyutskor.
With his machine-gun team, Simo participated in many district competitions, regularly taking prizes. So, for example, on one of them he knocked out 93 points out of 100 possible, shooting from 300 meters without preliminary training. Another distinctive feature of Hyayuhya was the high rate of fire, which he achieved while maintaining the accuracy of the fire. Once, he fired 16 rounds in a minute and threw all 16 bullets at a target mounted at a distance of 150 meters. Given the fact that he had to change clips, containing only five rounds, this is an excellent result! Hyayuha fired from M / 28 - the Russian Mosin rifle of the 1891 model, modernized in Finland.
In addition, after the army, Hyayuha became interested in hunting: if many Soviet snipers came from snipers from hunters, then our hero underwent a reverse transformation. In the summer of 1938, Simo completed a two-week sniper course in Utti, amazing everyone with his extraordinary abilities. In general, by the fall of 1939, Hyayuha was already an upscale sniper shooter.
When mobilization was announced in Finland in October 1939, the 33-year-old Hyäuhä was enrolled in the 3rd division of the 3rd platoon of the 6th company of the 34th infantry regiment. His company as part of the 2nd battalion was transferred to the area of the village of Suvilahti (Suojärvi), where the company took up defensive positions in advance prepared positions, hoping to keep the alleged Soviet offensive.
BIRTH OF LEGENDS
Since the border was within reach, the sniper began to "give a result" from the first hours of the war. According to biographer Hyäuhy, company chaplain Antti Rantamaa, already at 08:30 on November 30, as part of a patrol, a sniper advanced to the crossing area of the Soviet 56th Infantry Division (SD) across the Shuya River, where he shot the Russian "company commander". Like it or not, but on the first day of the war, the 56th SD really lost two commanders and two Red Army soldiers killed.
Over the next two days, the Hyayuha company repelled Soviet attacks on the outskirts of Suvilahti, but on the evening of December 2, the entire detachment that defended the village hastily retreated to Loimola and took up positions behind Lake Kollaan-järvi and the Kollas-yoki river. The Hyayuhya battalion defended north of the Suvilahti-Loymola railway, being at these positions until mid-February. The Soviet 56th SD came here by the end of December 6, and on December 7 it launched another offensive, which continued with small interruptions until December 18 and ended unsuccessfully with the stabilization of the front line in the area of Finnish positions on Kollaan-järvi.
It was on these days that the transformation of Simo Hyayuha into a human legend began, by the end of February culminating in a transformation into an epic hero, whose achievements were akin to the exploits of the heroes of Kalevala. The beginning was laid by the publication in the Ladoga magazine of February 28, 1940, which posted an article about Hyayuha. It said that this short man had already killed 219 enemy soldiers from his faithful rifle.
Further more. In just four months, from February 25 to June 21, 1940, Hyayuha was awarded the 1st and 2nd degree Liberty medals, as well as the 3rd and 4th degree Crosses of Liberty. Hyayuhya also received the specially established silver cross of Kolla for No. 4 - all seven were minted, all the rest were iron. Finally, on August 28, 1940, Mannerheim personally awarded Corporal Hyäuh the officer rank of ensign (junior lieutenant), having missed several steps at once and closed his eyes to the training at the officer’s school.
Hyayuha became the hero of many books and articles, the first of which were released in 1940. It seemed that literally everything should be known about him, however, until now the Finn remains not only a legendary man, but also a mystery man. The biggest question is actually the military achievements of the famous sniper. The problem is that Hyayuhya's official personal account is an indefinite thing, and the biographers and apologists of the sniper, starting from pastor Antti Rantamaa and ending with modern researchers, make the lion's share of confusion. Characteristic in this regard is, for example, Tapio Saarelainen’s book “The White Sniper Simo Häyühä”, published in 2016, in which the author regularly hints that in fact Häühä shot many more Russians than 542 “officially confirmed”. “However, given,” writes Saarelainen, “that only a third of Simo’s killings were actually confirmed, his accomplishments are even more astounding.”
However, if one wonders exactly where these 542 killed are "officially confirmed" (in fact, there are several versions of the account, but we’ll try to deal with at least one), then we may be surprised to find that ... nowhere. According to different versions of Finnish authors, Hyuuha’s account was either led by his company commander A. Yuutilainen, also a very remarkable character, or platoon commander feldwebel G. Suvisalo - in both cases, no records have been found to this effect so far. All the threads of the “official account” of Hyäuhy are reduced to interpretations of the words of the pastor Rantamaa already mentioned above, who wrote a book about the sniper in 1940. With such an approach, it would hardly be surprising if in a few years new victories appear on the account of Hyuyakha - for example, the fact that the war ended 80 years ago does not prevent the personal accounts of Finnish fighter pilots from growing up to now.
The only document known at the moment, which somehow reflects the official account of Simo Häuhä, is a letter handed to him together with an award rifle on February 17, 1940, commander of the 12th Infantry Division (PD), Colonel A. Svensson. It says that Hyayuhya destroyed “219 opponents with rifle fire and about the same number from a submachine gun”.
Antti Rantamaa writes that by March 7, Hyayuha accounted for 259 Red Army soldiers killed with a rifle, and about the same - from a submachine gun and light machine gun. Obviously, it’s worth starting from this figure when discussing the real achievements of the Hyayuha sniper.
Hyayuhya himself wrote a short article about himself in the summer of 1940, where he said that during the war he killed “about 500” Russians, and he believed that this figure could be exaggerated, since “the Winter War was not a race, but a struggle”.
It was the December days that became the "high point" of Simo Hyayuha. On December 20, the Finns themselves launched a counterattack, trying to cover the 56th SD from the flanks, while two Finnish battalions of the 34th infantry bound the enemy with an offensive from the front. The Finnish offensive continued until December 25, also ended to no avail, and from December 26, the 12th infantry regiment went on a defensive defense.
According to Hyayuhya, by Christmas of 1939 he had already counted about 150 enemy soldiers killed, and Rantamaa corrects this figure to 138. The most productive day was December 21, when Hyayuhya reported immediately for 25 killed, a little earlier he shot 23 Red Army. Just three days before Christmas, Hyayuha "officially" destroyed another 51 commander and soldier of the 56th SD. How plausible are these impressive results?
MOG OR NOT MOG?
We will not consider the question itself that in the conditions of a sniper war there are these same "confirmed murders." Here, of course, there is a very high degree of conventionality inherent in any army in the world. If the words of the sniper were confirmed by his assistant, then the target was considered hit, and even the sniper hit the careless target that appeared from the trench, or she, frightened by the bullet whistling past, herself removed her head from the sight - the tenth case for statistics of sniper achievements.
Of course, about 138 or 150 killed, not to mention the "understating threefold" results of Hyayuha due to the non-confirmation of his applications, there can be no talk. Who and how kept the count of those killed by automatic fire is not at all interesting to discuss.
It has long been known, including Finnish researchers, that the 56th SD in December lost 678 people killed and 58 missing. The latter could hardly be among those who fell from a sniper bullet working on the front line, so we will not take them into account. Thus, Simo Hyayuhya had to kill every fourth or fifth of the dead soldiers and commanders of the 56th SD, or actually become the only one who killed enemies in the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp. The answer to the question of whether this could be possible in principle lies on the surface. We will conditionally consider not only those killed but also wounded (1704 more people) lost from sniper fire, which will be the most logical.
Speaking about the military work of Simo Hyayuha, one can not fail to note the rather strange reaction of the Finnish command to the actions of a supersuccessful sniper. In fact, there is no mention of him in the combat magazine of his 2nd battalion, which is very strange, and the magazine of the 6th company either did not survive, or for some reason was not digitized, but researchers, including Finnish ones, do not use it. It is unlikely that a sniper, killing 25 opponents per day, is so commonplace for the battalion commander that it is not worth mentioning. Whether it’s a matter of a couple of Russian planes flying over the location of the battalion!
Moreover, the company commander is not so excited about Hyuuhya’s success that his productive sniper participates in attacks along with everyone else. How else did Simo manage to act with a submachine gun and a light machine gun? For example, Hyayuha participated in a company counterattack on December 14, during which the Finns inflicted heavy losses on one of the battalions of the Soviet 37th Infantry Regiment (joint venture). They knocked out five tanks and dragged two anti-tank guns, three easel machine guns and other weapons. The Soviet side recognized the failure of five tanks and the loss of five artillery pieces.
However, Hyayuha interests us not as a submachine gunner, but as a sniper. For several years now, there has been a discussion about raising the documents of the Soviet units against which Hyayuha fought, and at least as a first approximation to answer the question: was Hyayuhya so productive as it is believed? Alas, this will not happen. Not because there are no documents of the Soviet units - they were preserved quite well, but because the list of achievements of Simo Hyayukha is not known in any form in order to day to day compare it with the Soviet losses. From year to year, the same numbers walk on the Internet and in literature, most of which have been known since 1940. It is also pointless to compare Hyayuha’s successes for December with the losses of the 56th SD. Above, this was done and exactly what was obvious was obtained: Hyayuha could not kill so many people.
DECEMBER SPRINT
Taking for comparison the most productive period of Finn’s activity in December, namely the period from the 18th to the 25th, when the Finnish sniper chalked up about a hundred people (21 + 25 + 51), still try to compare these figures with Soviet losses. For most of this time, the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp either sat on the defensive or simulated activity, trying to forge the opposing Soviet units. Against him at the front were the 213rd joint venture and the 1st battalion of the 184th joint venture, the losses of which were recorded quite fully. The front was relatively calm, the conditions for the sniper to work were practically ideal. Losses of parts of the 56th SD for the period of interest, to which Hyayuha could be involved, are indicated in the table.
Notes: The 2nd battalion of the 184th joint venture from 12/22/1939 participated together with the 1st battalion of the 37th joint venture in the deblockade of the 3rd battalion of the 184th joint venture and in the defense area of the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp the Finns did not act. From December 23 to 25, the 213rd joint venture also fought with a group of Finns from the 35th pp. Trying to get around the division from the flank. For the 56th SD, data are given from the operational reports of the division. The discrepancies with the data on the regiments are explained by the fact that some losses fell into the division reports later and were taken into account as they were received. For example, the losses of the 184th and 37th JV battalions that were surrounded by them became known only after they left for their early morning on December 25th and were included in the reports for December 25th and 26th - for example, 77 killed and 46 the wounded, although no active operations were carried out at the front that day, and the December 25 report shows a huge imbalance between the dead and the wounded.
It is easy to notice that there is no question of any one hundred people killed or even killed and wounded by one person - otherwise you have to admit that Simo did half the work not only for his battalion, but also for the 1st battalion 35 -th pp, which also fought with the 213rd joint venture of the 56th SD. What is characteristic, the vigorous activity of Simo Hyayukha on the Soviet side was not too noticeable. So, the word “sniper” or its synonyms in the operational reports of the 56th SD and its parts for December was found only once: in the report of the 213rd joint venture for December 22, where it is specially noted that two wounded in the regiment are the result of the activities of snipers .
At the same time, the same reports regularly mention artillery fire, mortars and machine guns, rifle shootings and other enemy activities. About the same picture is observed at the beginning of January - losses, with rare exceptions, are quite comparable with the ongoing hostilities, Finnish snipers are mentioned extremely rarely. So that the reader does not think that this is simply a reflection of the tendency to hide the activities of enemy snipers, it can be noted that in the strip of other divisions - for example, the 18th SD, and indeed the entire Soviet 8th Army - the activities of Finnish snipers are quite noticeable in the documents. Is it necessary to say that in such circumstances the story about the nickname “White Death” given by Hyayuha by Soviet soldiers is nothing more than a legend that has nothing to do with reality?
Does the above mean that Simo Hyayuha is just a hoax to an incredible extent? Of course not. As already mentioned, he was an excellent shooter, and it can be assumed that his fire caused serious losses. If we take Hyuyuha, specially marked by biographers, as a record day on December 21, it is clearly visible that the loss of the 1st battalion of the 184th joint venture jumped up significantly on this day, and this may well be a consequence of Hyayuhya's activities as well. This is evidenced, among other things, by a marked increase in the number of wounded relative to the number of those killed compared to other days.
It is unlikely to be an exaggeration to say that during the participation in the Winter War, Hyuyakha with sniper fire could well incapacitate a total of up to a company of Soviet soldiers. Fortunately for those who could still be the victim of his sniper fire in the last days of the war, on March 6, 1940, an unknown Red Army man was able to shoot a bullet in the head of the most famous Finnish sniper. Fortunately for Hyayuha himself, his comrades managed to pull the sniper from the front line before the Soviet infantrymen broke into the position of the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp. Hyayuhya, although it was disfigured for the rest of his life, safely survived until 2002.
The famous Finnish sniper rifle M / 28-30 with serial number 60974 still remained somewhere in the abandoned positions, it is likely that the Red Army soldiers got it as a trophy. The Finns still do not lose hope someday to find a precious relic.
SOURCES AND LITERATURE:
RGVA, f.34980. Op. 10. D. 951. Operational reports of the 56th SD. 11.30.39 - 12.31.39
RGVA. f. 34980. Op. 10. D. 952. Operational reports of parts of the 56th SD, December 1939
RGVA. f. 34980. Op. 10. D. 962. Operational reports of the 56th SD, January 1940.
RGVA. f. 34980, op. 10. D. 965. Operational reports of parts of the 56th SD, January 1940
Saarelainen T. The White Sniper: Simo Häyhä. - Casemat Publisher, 2016
Petri Kivimäki. Tutkijan kädet alkoivat vapista - maailmankuulun sotalegendan Simo Häyhän muistelmat löytyivät sattumalta (https://yle.fi)
Kinnunen Annika. Sotamuistoja - Simo Häyhän kuvaus talvisodasta - Oulun yliopisto, 2019 (http://jultika.oulu.fi)
Jalkaväkirykmentti 34. II pataljoona 1941-1941 (11633, 1.7.1941 - 07.17.1941) (http://digi.narc.fi)
source
The following is a Google translation without editing.
SIMO HYUYAHIA: MAN-LEGEND OR MAN-MYTH?
Simo Hyayuha is a legendary man, one of the most successful snipers in world history, who is credited with more than 500 to 700 confirmed murders committed in just 98 days of participation in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. According to the Finnish version, on average, Hyayuha dealt with 5-8 Soviet fighters every day, making the Red Army so terrified that they called him "White Death." Gregory Mast, the author of the book “Being a Military Sniper,” suggests that Hyayuha made such an indelible impression on the command of the Red Army that later Soviet propaganda specially “wound up” sniper Mikhail Surkov to score 702 Nazis killed in order to overshadow the achievements of the Finnish super shooter. So what is behind the achievements of Simo Hyayuha?
CLEAR AND FAST
Simo Häyhä was born in 1905 in a small village in the Rautajärvi community near the town of Imatra. At the age of 17, he joined the Shyutskor, having the opportunity to train hard and hard, and soon established himself as a good shooter, earning a master shooter degree, which gave him the right to participate in shooting competitions. This degree was given after passing through the previous three steps, accompanied by the implementation of standards of varying degrees of complexity.
In November 1925, Hyayuha was drafted into the army. He ended up serving in the 2nd Scooter Battalion, where he graduated from the non-commissioned officer school and was transferred to the 1st Scooter Battalion, deployed in Terijoki, on the border itself. In March 1927, Hyayuha left the reserve and returned home, but did not abandon military affairs and continued to actively participate in the life of the local shyutskor.
With his machine-gun team, Simo participated in many district competitions, regularly taking prizes. So, for example, on one of them he knocked out 93 points out of 100 possible, shooting from 300 meters without preliminary training. Another distinctive feature of Hyayuhya was the high rate of fire, which he achieved while maintaining the accuracy of the fire. Once, he fired 16 rounds in a minute and threw all 16 bullets at a target mounted at a distance of 150 meters. Given the fact that he had to change clips, containing only five rounds, this is an excellent result! Hyayuha fired from M / 28 - the Russian Mosin rifle of the 1891 model, modernized in Finland.
In addition, after the army, Hyayuha became interested in hunting: if many Soviet snipers came from snipers from hunters, then our hero underwent a reverse transformation. In the summer of 1938, Simo completed a two-week sniper course in Utti, amazing everyone with his extraordinary abilities. In general, by the fall of 1939, Hyayuha was already an upscale sniper shooter.
When mobilization was announced in Finland in October 1939, the 33-year-old Hyäuhä was enrolled in the 3rd division of the 3rd platoon of the 6th company of the 34th infantry regiment. His company as part of the 2nd battalion was transferred to the area of the village of Suvilahti (Suojärvi), where the company took up defensive positions in advance prepared positions, hoping to keep the alleged Soviet offensive.
BIRTH OF LEGENDS
Since the border was within reach, the sniper began to "give a result" from the first hours of the war. According to biographer Hyäuhy, company chaplain Antti Rantamaa, already at 08:30 on November 30, as part of a patrol, a sniper advanced to the crossing area of the Soviet 56th Infantry Division (SD) across the Shuya River, where he shot the Russian "company commander". Like it or not, but on the first day of the war, the 56th SD really lost two commanders and two Red Army soldiers killed.
Over the next two days, the Hyayuha company repelled Soviet attacks on the outskirts of Suvilahti, but on the evening of December 2, the entire detachment that defended the village hastily retreated to Loimola and took up positions behind Lake Kollaan-järvi and the Kollas-yoki river. The Hyayuhya battalion defended north of the Suvilahti-Loymola railway, being at these positions until mid-February. The Soviet 56th SD came here by the end of December 6, and on December 7 it launched another offensive, which continued with small interruptions until December 18 and ended unsuccessfully with the stabilization of the front line in the area of Finnish positions on Kollaan-järvi.
It was on these days that the transformation of Simo Hyayuha into a human legend began, by the end of February culminating in a transformation into an epic hero, whose achievements were akin to the exploits of the heroes of Kalevala. The beginning was laid by the publication in the Ladoga magazine of February 28, 1940, which posted an article about Hyayuha. It said that this short man had already killed 219 enemy soldiers from his faithful rifle.
Further more. In just four months, from February 25 to June 21, 1940, Hyayuha was awarded the 1st and 2nd degree Liberty medals, as well as the 3rd and 4th degree Crosses of Liberty. Hyayuhya also received the specially established silver cross of Kolla for No. 4 - all seven were minted, all the rest were iron. Finally, on August 28, 1940, Mannerheim personally awarded Corporal Hyäuh the officer rank of ensign (junior lieutenant), having missed several steps at once and closed his eyes to the training at the officer’s school.
Hyayuha became the hero of many books and articles, the first of which were released in 1940. It seemed that literally everything should be known about him, however, until now the Finn remains not only a legendary man, but also a mystery man. The biggest question is actually the military achievements of the famous sniper. The problem is that Hyayuhya's official personal account is an indefinite thing, and the biographers and apologists of the sniper, starting from pastor Antti Rantamaa and ending with modern researchers, make the lion's share of confusion. Characteristic in this regard is, for example, Tapio Saarelainen’s book “The White Sniper Simo Häyühä”, published in 2016, in which the author regularly hints that in fact Häühä shot many more Russians than 542 “officially confirmed”. “However, given,” writes Saarelainen, “that only a third of Simo’s killings were actually confirmed, his accomplishments are even more astounding.”
However, if one wonders exactly where these 542 killed are "officially confirmed" (in fact, there are several versions of the account, but we’ll try to deal with at least one), then we may be surprised to find that ... nowhere. According to different versions of Finnish authors, Hyuuha’s account was either led by his company commander A. Yuutilainen, also a very remarkable character, or platoon commander feldwebel G. Suvisalo - in both cases, no records have been found to this effect so far. All the threads of the “official account” of Hyäuhy are reduced to interpretations of the words of the pastor Rantamaa already mentioned above, who wrote a book about the sniper in 1940. With such an approach, it would hardly be surprising if in a few years new victories appear on the account of Hyuyakha - for example, the fact that the war ended 80 years ago does not prevent the personal accounts of Finnish fighter pilots from growing up to now.
The only document known at the moment, which somehow reflects the official account of Simo Häuhä, is a letter handed to him together with an award rifle on February 17, 1940, commander of the 12th Infantry Division (PD), Colonel A. Svensson. It says that Hyayuhya destroyed “219 opponents with rifle fire and about the same number from a submachine gun”.
Antti Rantamaa writes that by March 7, Hyayuha accounted for 259 Red Army soldiers killed with a rifle, and about the same - from a submachine gun and light machine gun. Obviously, it’s worth starting from this figure when discussing the real achievements of the Hyayuha sniper.
Hyayuhya himself wrote a short article about himself in the summer of 1940, where he said that during the war he killed “about 500” Russians, and he believed that this figure could be exaggerated, since “the Winter War was not a race, but a struggle”.
It was the December days that became the "high point" of Simo Hyayuha. On December 20, the Finns themselves launched a counterattack, trying to cover the 56th SD from the flanks, while two Finnish battalions of the 34th infantry bound the enemy with an offensive from the front. The Finnish offensive continued until December 25, also ended to no avail, and from December 26, the 12th infantry regiment went on a defensive defense.
According to Hyayuhya, by Christmas of 1939 he had already counted about 150 enemy soldiers killed, and Rantamaa corrects this figure to 138. The most productive day was December 21, when Hyayuhya reported immediately for 25 killed, a little earlier he shot 23 Red Army. Just three days before Christmas, Hyayuha "officially" destroyed another 51 commander and soldier of the 56th SD. How plausible are these impressive results?
MOG OR NOT MOG?
We will not consider the question itself that in the conditions of a sniper war there are these same "confirmed murders." Here, of course, there is a very high degree of conventionality inherent in any army in the world. If the words of the sniper were confirmed by his assistant, then the target was considered hit, and even the sniper hit the careless target that appeared from the trench, or she, frightened by the bullet whistling past, herself removed her head from the sight - the tenth case for statistics of sniper achievements.
Of course, about 138 or 150 killed, not to mention the "understating threefold" results of Hyayuha due to the non-confirmation of his applications, there can be no talk. Who and how kept the count of those killed by automatic fire is not at all interesting to discuss.
It has long been known, including Finnish researchers, that the 56th SD in December lost 678 people killed and 58 missing. The latter could hardly be among those who fell from a sniper bullet working on the front line, so we will not take them into account. Thus, Simo Hyayuhya had to kill every fourth or fifth of the dead soldiers and commanders of the 56th SD, or actually become the only one who killed enemies in the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp. The answer to the question of whether this could be possible in principle lies on the surface. We will conditionally consider not only those killed but also wounded (1704 more people) lost from sniper fire, which will be the most logical.
Speaking about the military work of Simo Hyayuha, one can not fail to note the rather strange reaction of the Finnish command to the actions of a supersuccessful sniper. In fact, there is no mention of him in the combat magazine of his 2nd battalion, which is very strange, and the magazine of the 6th company either did not survive, or for some reason was not digitized, but researchers, including Finnish ones, do not use it. It is unlikely that a sniper, killing 25 opponents per day, is so commonplace for the battalion commander that it is not worth mentioning. Whether it’s a matter of a couple of Russian planes flying over the location of the battalion!
Moreover, the company commander is not so excited about Hyuuhya’s success that his productive sniper participates in attacks along with everyone else. How else did Simo manage to act with a submachine gun and a light machine gun? For example, Hyayuha participated in a company counterattack on December 14, during which the Finns inflicted heavy losses on one of the battalions of the Soviet 37th Infantry Regiment (joint venture). They knocked out five tanks and dragged two anti-tank guns, three easel machine guns and other weapons. The Soviet side recognized the failure of five tanks and the loss of five artillery pieces.
However, Hyayuha interests us not as a submachine gunner, but as a sniper. For several years now, there has been a discussion about raising the documents of the Soviet units against which Hyayuha fought, and at least as a first approximation to answer the question: was Hyayuhya so productive as it is believed? Alas, this will not happen. Not because there are no documents of the Soviet units - they were preserved quite well, but because the list of achievements of Simo Hyayukha is not known in any form in order to day to day compare it with the Soviet losses. From year to year, the same numbers walk on the Internet and in literature, most of which have been known since 1940. It is also pointless to compare Hyayuha’s successes for December with the losses of the 56th SD. Above, this was done and exactly what was obvious was obtained: Hyayuha could not kill so many people.
DECEMBER SPRINT
Taking for comparison the most productive period of Finn’s activity in December, namely the period from the 18th to the 25th, when the Finnish sniper chalked up about a hundred people (21 + 25 + 51), still try to compare these figures with Soviet losses. For most of this time, the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp either sat on the defensive or simulated activity, trying to forge the opposing Soviet units. Against him at the front were the 213rd joint venture and the 1st battalion of the 184th joint venture, the losses of which were recorded quite fully. The front was relatively calm, the conditions for the sniper to work were practically ideal. Losses of parts of the 56th SD for the period of interest, to which Hyayuha could be involved, are indicated in the table.
Notes: The 2nd battalion of the 184th joint venture from 12/22/1939 participated together with the 1st battalion of the 37th joint venture in the deblockade of the 3rd battalion of the 184th joint venture and in the defense area of the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp the Finns did not act. From December 23 to 25, the 213rd joint venture also fought with a group of Finns from the 35th pp. Trying to get around the division from the flank. For the 56th SD, data are given from the operational reports of the division. The discrepancies with the data on the regiments are explained by the fact that some losses fell into the division reports later and were taken into account as they were received. For example, the losses of the 184th and 37th JV battalions that were surrounded by them became known only after they left for their early morning on December 25th and were included in the reports for December 25th and 26th - for example, 77 killed and 46 the wounded, although no active operations were carried out at the front that day, and the December 25 report shows a huge imbalance between the dead and the wounded.
It is easy to notice that there is no question of any one hundred people killed or even killed and wounded by one person - otherwise you have to admit that Simo did half the work not only for his battalion, but also for the 1st battalion 35 -th pp, which also fought with the 213rd joint venture of the 56th SD. What is characteristic, the vigorous activity of Simo Hyayukha on the Soviet side was not too noticeable. So, the word “sniper” or its synonyms in the operational reports of the 56th SD and its parts for December was found only once: in the report of the 213rd joint venture for December 22, where it is specially noted that two wounded in the regiment are the result of the activities of snipers .
At the same time, the same reports regularly mention artillery fire, mortars and machine guns, rifle shootings and other enemy activities. About the same picture is observed at the beginning of January - losses, with rare exceptions, are quite comparable with the ongoing hostilities, Finnish snipers are mentioned extremely rarely. So that the reader does not think that this is simply a reflection of the tendency to hide the activities of enemy snipers, it can be noted that in the strip of other divisions - for example, the 18th SD, and indeed the entire Soviet 8th Army - the activities of Finnish snipers are quite noticeable in the documents. Is it necessary to say that in such circumstances the story about the nickname “White Death” given by Hyayuha by Soviet soldiers is nothing more than a legend that has nothing to do with reality?
Does the above mean that Simo Hyayuha is just a hoax to an incredible extent? Of course not. As already mentioned, he was an excellent shooter, and it can be assumed that his fire caused serious losses. If we take Hyuyuha, specially marked by biographers, as a record day on December 21, it is clearly visible that the loss of the 1st battalion of the 184th joint venture jumped up significantly on this day, and this may well be a consequence of Hyayuhya's activities as well. This is evidenced, among other things, by a marked increase in the number of wounded relative to the number of those killed compared to other days.
It is unlikely to be an exaggeration to say that during the participation in the Winter War, Hyuyakha with sniper fire could well incapacitate a total of up to a company of Soviet soldiers. Fortunately for those who could still be the victim of his sniper fire in the last days of the war, on March 6, 1940, an unknown Red Army man was able to shoot a bullet in the head of the most famous Finnish sniper. Fortunately for Hyayuha himself, his comrades managed to pull the sniper from the front line before the Soviet infantrymen broke into the position of the 2nd battalion of the 34th pp. Hyayuhya, although it was disfigured for the rest of his life, safely survived until 2002.
The famous Finnish sniper rifle M / 28-30 with serial number 60974 still remained somewhere in the abandoned positions, it is likely that the Red Army soldiers got it as a trophy. The Finns still do not lose hope someday to find a precious relic.
SOURCES AND LITERATURE:
RGVA, f.34980. Op. 10. D. 951. Operational reports of the 56th SD. 11.30.39 - 12.31.39
RGVA. f. 34980. Op. 10. D. 952. Operational reports of parts of the 56th SD, December 1939
RGVA. f. 34980. Op. 10. D. 962. Operational reports of the 56th SD, January 1940.
RGVA. f. 34980, op. 10. D. 965. Operational reports of parts of the 56th SD, January 1940
Saarelainen T. The White Sniper: Simo Häyhä. - Casemat Publisher, 2016
Petri Kivimäki. Tutkijan kädet alkoivat vapista - maailmankuulun sotalegendan Simo Häyhän muistelmat löytyivät sattumalta (https://yle.fi)
Kinnunen Annika. Sotamuistoja - Simo Häyhän kuvaus talvisodasta - Oulun yliopisto, 2019 (http://jultika.oulu.fi)
Jalkaväkirykmentti 34. II pataljoona 1941-1941 (11633, 1.7.1941 - 07.17.1941) (http://digi.narc.fi)
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