Somehow it so happened that Russia is ranked among the northern countries and is constantly compared with other countries that lie in approximately the same latitudes. Comparisons are often made in terms of the operation of military equipment. And one of the countries with which this kind of comparison is made with a certain degree of regularity is Finland.
Today, such a comparison concerns not so much the current state of affairs as more than 70-year-old history, namely the time when a bloody war was going on between Finland and the Soviet Union. Many military historians and specialists in military technology claim that the Finnish army was not well equipped at all during that war. According to the participants in that war themselves, Finnish soldiers often fought in what they went to the front from home. With military equipment, the Finns were also far from going smoothly. For the front, it was from the Finnish military equipment that the Sisu S-321 cars were used, which were equipped with an all-metal cab, a Volvo engine, and also very low sides. Many experts are sure that, despite all the unpretentiousness of these military vehicles, they had one big advantage - the tread pattern, a derivative of which Finnish tire manufacturers still use today - for example, Nordman tires.
In addition to the Sisu S-321 vehicles, which began to roll off the assembly lines in 1933, the Finnish troops had Sisu SH armored vehicles at their disposal. The engine power of this armored vehicle was 80 horsepower, while the total mass of the Sisu SH was 3 tons. The armored car was equipped with cast tires. In its arsenal, the vehicle had 2 machine guns. Only now the armor of this car could not withstand large mechanical loads and was damaged even from a direct hit from their large-caliber machine gun. Over time, such vehicles were improved and overgrown with additional armor, which led to an increase in their mass to 6.5 tons. These cars were actively used by the Finns during the Second World War.
It should be noted that "Sisu SH" in Finland can be called a long-liver. Until 1962, this armored vehicle was used by the Finnish police.
However, one should not think that the Finnish army was far behind in equipment from the Soviet army. If we talk about comparative figures, then, for example, before the war the Finns had 11,000 rifles, the soldiers of the Red Army - 13,500, heavy machine guns - in a ratio of 116/162. Only in mortars the USSR surpassed Finland twice. However, the Soviet-Finnish war, as you know, did not become an easy walk for Soviet soldiers. Someone blames the Soviet command for this, someone else - the Finnish snowdrifts, and someone is not inclined to look for the guilty and simply speaks of the war as a historical event, the page of which was turned over even before the start of the Great Patriotic War.
