Salpalinja - Finnish WW2-lock line fortification

Hello,

Last summer I visited the WW2 military installation called Salpalinja - 'lock line' in english.

This is a fortification built in 1940-44 to secure the eastern border of Finland. It extends from the Gulf of Finland to the Lapland. It consisted over 700 concrete bunkers, and over 3000 wood supported field fortifications. The concrete bunkers are still there.

They never fought at this line. The russians didn't invade that far until the war ended.

It's not a secret, nor it's any kind forbidden or restricted (except by some private landowners)

Anyway, I thought some of you might find the photos I took interesting. I visited about 30-40 bunkers. Most of the photos are taken from inside of those.

www.vaurio.fi...

There's an english summary at www.miehikkala.fi...
There are some maps and photos at that site too.

Were many of these 'warm houses' for ski patrol? Finnish Ski Patrol was unit that my NHANG unit was based on.

The most typical bunker consisted of a machine gun nest and quarters for 20 men. There were about 170 bunkers like this.

Some of them were bigger, with quarters for even 50 men and some were just firing stations with anti tank and machine gun nests. Bunkers with quarters were equipped with a heating stove, proper ventilation (the pipes at photos), drainage and if possible, a well. There's a well with an open wooden cover at photo 031.

The bunkers were made to hold under bombing or artillery fire. The troops were supposed to rest in and fight from these field quarters and defend the line. There were also hundreds of kilometers of anti tank barriers made of rocks as shown at photo 020.