Finnish Motorized Heavy Artillery Battalion 1, 1941-1944
Moottoroitu Raskas Patteristo 1, 1941-1944
The Story...
The motorized heavy artillery battalion 1 was formed in Kurikka, Finland on June 19th, 1941. It was under direct control of the Army HQ. Tuomo Aho, whose grand-father served in the battalion, has since 1990 done research on the battalion's time in war 1941 - 1944.
During the past 26 years he has interviewed heavy artillery battalion 1 veterans, collected and preserved a lot of material about the battalion. He is still collecting information on it and in the future there is a book coming about the battalion's war time.
In addition to the research Tuomo, in 2011, came up with an idea to run a tribute re-enactment event of a heavy artillery battalion 1. He started to work on the idea, and after four years of through planning an event to demonstrate heavy artillery battalion 1 actions in war was organized and held in Kurikka.
The first re-enactment event took place in Kurikka August 22nd. 2015. There were 65 men with war time gear, 2 ea. original Canon de 155 C mle 1917 Schneider howitzers, 2 ea. war time International Harvester McCormick T-6 crawlers, 5 ea war time cars, war time telephone, radio, measurement and fire calculation equipment.
Short Youtube video on the Aug. 22th 2015 event
The interest in the heavy artillery re-enactment event was huge and exceeded all expectations. Tuomo had estimated around 1 500 - 2 000 people to come and watch the show, but it was more than 4 500 people from Kurikka and the surrounding municipalities in the event.
It was such great event that the artillery re-enactment activity was decided to continue. The next goal is to have a double size event to celebrate Finland's 100 years Independence on June 28th, 2017. This is the very first time when such a big artillery re-enactment event takes place in Finland.
The Suomi 100 (Finland 100 Years) event consists of:
- around 100-125 men with war time gear
- 4 ea. 100 years old Canon de 155 C mle 1917 Schneider howitzers (3,3 t) renovated back to wooden wheels!
- 3-4 ea. war time International Harvester McCormick T-6 crawlers
- 1 ea. war time Packard passenger car
- 10+ war time trucks:
Including Citroën T-45, Ford BB 51-157, Chevrolet Master/4040 and International KB-6.
- War time artillery measuring, telephone, radio, fire calculation and fire observation gear.
The organisator of the event
Everybody who is interested in old WWII artillery is most welcome to come and join the event!
I'll take the opportunity to thank all of the supporters and persons participating in the event and it's preparation. This is an event requiring a lot of effort and man power and it’s mostly done on voluntary basis. Activities like this are good examples of Finnish "to do it together spirit".
Thank you!
Tuomo Aho
