[Juha]

Hello Tony
why Soviets failed at Tali-Ihantala? Because attacking troops suffered too heavy losses and ran out of time, the timetable was fixed so that in mid-July 44 many of the best Soviet units were to be transferred to South to attack Germans. So the leaders of the Soviet offensive decided that the troops in Ihantala area were too exhausted and decided to make of a couple more main attacks on different parts of the Karelian Isthmus, but still they didn’t achieve breakthrough.

Why Finns survived. The main reason was that Soviet knew that the key player on Axis side was Germany. So they concentrated their efforts against it. If some of their main attacks failed to achieve designed results, Soviet made a new try. And Soviets were good in breakthroughs and very good to achieving surprises. Also Finns were well adapted to fighting in terrain dominating here, no vast plains here, and fighting in close country is bloody and usually slow. So the “race to Berlin”, tactical skills, good field artillery shooting procedures and stubbornness saved us but the price was high. Soviets were tough, excellent in planning attacks and they had very powerful artillery, they were difficult to stop and very difficult to push away from areas they had reached.
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Yes, there was plenty of Il-2s, Pe-2 and Il-4 level bombers, plus of course fighters. In times over 200 planes were attacking at same time. But Finns were clearly more worried on very powerful Soviet artillery than on Il-2s.

IS-2s were destroyed by Panzerfaust/Panzerschreck hits on turrets, on sides and on rears, some were disabled by artillery, by bombs and by A/T mines and later destroyed by infantry/pioneer teams with explosives, some probably by direct hits by bombs or medium arty shells.

The key to successful defence against tank-infantry attack was the separation of tanks from their infantry escort, that was well understood by all, and best way to do that was powerful artillery barrage.

Quote:” that modern war is successful only where there is intimate all-arms cooperation.”

Yes, co-op was the key and Germans had understood that already before WWII. Finns also knew that, but early on lacked tanks and had too few shells and suffered from paucity of communication equipment. Also even NKVD (Soviet secret police) officers knew that already at the beginning of the Winter War, already in their reports in Dec 39 they criticized Red Army units for bad co-op between different branches. On co-op in British army, IMHO co-op for ex. between 15 (Scottish) Div and 6th Guards Tank Br was good, some other tank brigades had problems with co-op with infantry but that probably got better as time went because war is good if very hard teacher. And from Jun 44 to May 45 British Army advanced much farther than between Sept 16 and Nov 18.

And BTW there was no invulnerable tank in WWII, almost all of those 1800 Soviet heavy tanks destroyed in 44-45 were IS-2s.

Juha