Motti tactics (from Finnish. Motti - a method of logging for firewood, in which logs are not stacked, but stacked in separate logs with a volume of 1 m 3 for easy counting) - guerrilla warfare tactics actively used by the Finns during the Soviet Finnish war . It consists in dividing the enemy’s numerically superior grouping into separate separate groups, cutting them off from each other and from the main enemy forces, followed by methodical destruction. The most characteristic feature of the “Motti” tactic is the attack of small, mobile groups on the dispersed units of the enemy (in other words, on the columns of troops) with the aim of inflicting as much damage as possible on the enemy’s communications, stopping and immobilizing them.
This principle has been known since antiquity. Long before the Soviet-Finnish conflict in 9 A.D. e. the leader of the Cherusks Arminius , taking advantage of the fact that the Roman legions who entered the forest stretched out into a long column, completely defeated the Roman army, which was considered invincible, under the command of Publius Quintilius Vara in the Teutoburg Forest . [one]
But it was the Finns who took advantage of both the nature of the theater of operations (snowy forests and swamps) and miscalculations in organizing the movements of the enemy forces (movement in mechanized columns). For these purposes, the Finns intensely involved highly mobile ski teams .
Content
The essence of tactics
The essence of tactics is to avoid positional combat operations and, in general, any encounters with large enemy forces deployed in battle formations under conditions of significant numerical superiority of the enemy. In other words, to evade, as far as possible, from direct clashes imposed by the enemy. At the same time, to act intensely in the rear and on communications of the enemy’s stretched and dispersed forces, attacking an enemy located on a halt, moving in a convoy, finding out the location of command posts and supply points of the enemy, with their immediate destruction. In a simpler presentation, the tactics of “Motti” is to: 1) find; 2) cut off ; 3) destroy the enemy [2] .
Procedure
The Finnish partisans developed the following sequence of actions when attacking the columns: Undermining a mine charge, machine gun or sniper fire, both the head and closing vehicles in the enemy’s column are simultaneously disabled, and the road section is chosen where it is physically impossible or significantly difficult to avoid or leave it . Snipers destroy first of all the drivers, commanders and signalmen of the enemy, and field kitchens, after which the column is immobilized, uncontrollable and cut off from communication with the main forces. After the military personnel providing communications, movement and command of the convoy are destroyed, the partisans, in no hurry, continue to defeat the convoy until it is completely destroyed or voluntarily surrendered (during the Soviet-Finnish war, the Finnish partisans were instructed not to take prisoners, in therefore, the Soviet units cut off from the main forces were often destroyed until the last soldier). Hence the name of the tactics of action - Motti (lit. “ logs ”) - this is how the Finns called the Soviet units, which were stopped by them, immobilized and prepared for further systematic destruction.
If the commanders were able to maintain command, the troops, according to the charter, fold up “like a worm that they stepped on” in close combat formations, take up a circular defense and begin to call for reinforcements on the radio. Few people tried to make their way to their own, because it only meant that they had to re-create the “mottie” in a new place. [3]
It should be noted that in the conditions of the winter war, the Finns were in no hurry to take up the destruction of the remaining soldiers in the convoy - they only ensured that no one could leave the convoy, and also no one could approach it with reinforcements, counting on severe frosts and lack of supply, which completed the job, actually finishing off the column [4] . Then, in the absence of any support from the main enemy forces, the Finns simply took away Soviet artillery, tanks, trucks and equestrian forces untouched by fire, or destroyed them if it was not possible to withdraw, and left home [5] .
Further development of the idea
As noted by the American military theorist William Shannon, the tactics successfully tested by the Finns were adopted by the Afghan Mujahideen and Chechen separatists and were further developed in the struggle against the Soviet and then the Russian armed forces [6] .
The tactics somewhat changed during the guerrilla warfare in the city, where the Chechen field commanders introduced the practice of organizing ambushes with the help of combat triples by a grenade launcher — machine gunner — sniper : a grenade launcher hit armored vehicles, a sniper — officers, and a machine gunner created a fire screen for an organized trio from the return fire zone Russian units. Such tactics were used by militants not only in Grozny , but also in clashes with federal forces in the field, and, in particular, during the offensive of the 1st and 3rd motorized infantry battalions of the 324th regiment in mid-March 1995 in the area of populated points Chechen-Aul and Starye Atagi [7] . This became possible, in many respects, with the advent of new types of small arms - automatic and anti-tank grenade launchers, in connection with which the incapacitation of the head and closing machines of the column was greatly simplified compared to the conditions of the Winter War , where the Finns relied either on the shooting skills of their snipers , or for accurate calculation when installing controlled subversive charges.
See also
- Environment
- Cauldron at Porlampi
Notes
- ↑ Weltgeschichte-Daten Fakten Bilder-Georg Westermann Verlag; Braunschweig 1987- ISBN 3-07-509036-0
- ↑ Datz, IM Motti Tactics // Military Operations Under Special Conditions of Terrain and Weather . - New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 2008 .-- P. 299-300. - 585 p. - ISBN 81-7062-123-2 .
- ↑ Engle E., Paanen L. The Soviet-Finnish War. Breakthrough of the Mannerheim Line. 1939-1940 / Translated from English by O. A. Fedyaev. M .: Centerpolygraph 2004. 253 p. ISBN 5-9524-1467-2
- ↑ Falk, Greger. En Kronika: Den Svenska Frivilliga flygfottiljen i Finland Under Vinterkriget 1939-40 (Swedish) . - Stockholm, Sweden: Svensk Flyghistorisk Förening. - P. 30.
- ↑ Sprague, Martina. Combat Operations // Swedish Volunteers in the Russo-Finnish Winter War, 1939-1940 . - Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010 .-- P. 95. - 249 p. - ISBN 978-0-7864-3981-2 .
- ↑ Shannon, William D. Swarm tactics and the doctrinal void: Lessons from the Chechen wars (English) (PDF). Thesis . Naval Postgraduate School (June 2008). - P.8. Date of treatment October 11, 2011. Archived August 31, 2012.
- ↑ Skipsky G.A. Combat operations of the 324th motorized rifle regiment in 1995 // Russia and the Soviet Union in local wars and armed conflicts of the 20th century: Reports of a scientific conference April 13-14, 2002. - Yekaterinburg: University of the Humanities , 2002. - S. 221 . - ISBN 5-9015-2712-7 .