Rating the Finns

Brian DeWitt has created four very good scenario books for Check Your 6! In Battles Above 4 he has provided several scenarios that involve the Finnish Air Force, both for the Winter War and the Continuation War. As a gamer of the less mainstream, I plan on obtaining the planes to do many of these scenarios. As an historian, I also like to keep things as historically accurate as manageable, and with gaming at times complete historical accuracy can certainly be a hinderance. Many Check Your 6! scenarios are representations of much larger historical encounters, necessarily so because putting dozens and dozens of aircraft on the table bogs down the game. 

One area though that is bothering me somewhat are the Finnish pilot quality ratings. Remember, it is the man, not the machine (but really the machine has a large part to play). So how are the Finns able to rack up such amazing kill ratios flying aircraft like the Gladiator, Fokker DXXI, Buffalo, Hawk 75 (P-36), and other such second tier types that as the war progressed were inferior to their Russian opponents? Take for example Lentolaivue 24, perhaps the premier Finnish fighter unit. Claims were such that this unit might have had as high as a 25:1 kill to loss ratio. While Russian/Soviet sources have not been fully examined to compare actual reported losses, even if Lentolaivue 24 managed half that kill ratio, it is an amazing feat. So how is that replicated on the table top? Pilot quality.

But that is my dilemma - in looking at many of the Finnish scenarios in the book, they are often outnumbered, and even the difference in pilot skill between the two forces for any particular scenario does not seem to be great enough to recreate the historical record. To be honest, based on my readings (thus far just a couple of Osprey titles and perusing websites), I believe the Finnish ratings in Battles Above 4 to be too low, the Russians too comparable, or a combination of the two. I would even be, in some cases, tempted to give the Soviets a poor rating as found within the Korean War scenario book for Check Your 6! Jet Age (the dreaded -1 pilot). 

I have a few titles on their way, including what appears to be an amazing work, Finnish Aces: Their Planes and Units 1939-1945 by Kari Stenman and Karolina Holda. I plan to go through Lentolaivue 24 pilots as deeply as I can, accepting that this squadron's performance might have been the exception, but overall I believe that Finland's pilots were well trained, skillful, and far superior to most of their Soviet opponents. Mr. DeWitt mentions that he gives "green aircrew rating for aircrews that are not adequately trained or marginally trained new pilots that are in their first few engagements." I agree with that assessment, but not when it comes to Finland's pilot training and experience. More on this topic once I have a bit more source material.