" - - the direct quote from Lauri Leppänen's brand new "Rynnäkkötykit isänmaamme puolustajina" ("Assault guns protecting our Fatherland"):
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>
The following description is based on information given by Lt. Yrjö Nieminen:
One gun [BT-42], probably Sippel's command vehicle 717, was dug in the Ristimäki graveyard. The driver was sergeant Aarne Virtanen and the loader was private Adiel Sorvisto. As the situation was quite worrying, Lt. Sippel had a conversation with Maj. Bäckman about possible methods of improving it. After this
Sippel and Nieminen decided that Nieminen goes into the gun and starts firing the enemy. The main objective was
to improve the morale of the supporting infantry. The gun was positioned so that it could fire close support if the enemy attacked but the trees in the graveyard prohibited the direct fire to enemy positions that were some distance away.
After this
Sippel and Nieminen agreed to fire indirectly so that
Sippel would be some distance away from the gun in a place with good visibility to enemy positions and give the corrections with hand signals. They did so but the enemy soon located the gun and started to fire at it, either by an AT gun or by a tank.
The first shots missed quite much but the subsequent shots got closer and finally one shot exploded in the rear part of the tank-hole. Dirt and shrapnel entered the vehicle via the open rear-hatch but
no-one was hurt.
Nieminen ordered Virtanen to drive fast to the secondary position that was on the far side of the graveyard. Nieminen himself jumped out of the gun and stayed in the hole. Sippel and Nieminen then had a conversation and Nieminen found out that
Sippel had noticed that the enemy was starting to fire back and had tried to signal that the gun should retreat to the secondary position
but Nieminen had misunderstood those signals as fire correction signals.
Few notes on the description of the event:
1) The assault gun men decided to start an ad-hoc indirect fire barrage without doing any preparations that would have been normally necessary for firing indirectly. Also,
the main objective was to distrupt the enemy and give a moral boost to own infantry.
2)
The fire was directed by a nearby observer and no radio links were used (actually,
BT-42s didn't even have radios).
3) The fire didn't happen during the actual Soviet attack but shortly before it. The description doesn't say how much time passed between the shooting and the start of the attack, but
it seems that there was at least 30 minute pause before it and the main thrust of the Soviet attack wasn't directed at the graveyard.
4) The account doesn't give details on how long did the preparations for the fire take and what was the rate-of-fire.
Later that day Finnish defence collapsed and Soviets captured Vyborg without too much trouble but they couldn't cross the straits on the other side of the town because the bridges were blown.
The BT-42 company lost five vehicles out of nine, including Sippel's no. 717, that was hit in the turret by a T-34-85.
Sippel and Sorvisto both died but the driver survived. - -
- Tommi "
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