The raids on Helsinki

On the evening of 26 February 1944 Soviet bombers appeared over Helsinki. It was the third and largest of the great raids that the Soviet Union carried out on the Finnish capital in February 1944, after the attacks on the nights of 6/7 and 16/17 February. According to the Finnish anti-aircraft defence, more than 900 aircraft came over the city that night, and the whole three-phase air battle lasted eleven hours. The raids had a political aim. Moscow wanted to break the Finns’ will to resist and force their government to accept the peace terms that Juho Kusti Paasikivi had been given in Stockholm a few days earlier. Militarily, however, the effect was slight. Thanks to the Finnish defences and to deception, only about five per cent of the bombs fell within the city limits.

Helsinki in the air war

Helsinki had been bombed from the first day of the Winter War, when on 30 November 1939 Soviet aircraft dropped bombs on the city centre. After the outbreak of the Continuation War in June 1941 raids recurred, but until 1944 they were usually small, because Soviet aviation was mainly attacking the Germans in the Baltic states. The bloodiest single attack before February 1944 was the work of one reconnaissance aircraft: on 8 November 1942 a bomb that fell near a cinema killed 51 people, most of them children and young people.

In the spring of 1943 the capital’s anti-aircraft defence was taken over by Lieutenant Colonel Pekka Jokipaltio, commander of the 1st Anti-Aircraft Regiment. The batteries were regrouped into four sectors, communications were improved, and a barrage-fire plan was drawn up in advance: rings of barrages a kilometre apart, at distances of 4 to 14 kilometres from the centre. The Germans supplied two early-warning radars, four fire-control radars and eighteen heavy 88 mm guns. In February 1944 the city was defended by 13 batteries. Warnings were also provided by Finnish radio intelligence, which intercepted Soviet reports before the bombers took off, and by a network of observers on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, many of them women from the Lotta Svärd organisation. Many of the gunners were older reservists or school-age volunteers.

The political aim of the raids

In the winter of 1943/1944 Finland was still on Germany’s side, although its government had been looking for a way out of the war for a year. Its rejection of American mediation in the spring of 1943 and an exchange of notes through Stockholm in the autumn had settled nothing. In January 1944 the siege of Leningrad came to an end, and on 31 January the United States warned Helsinki that if Finland did not break away from the Axis it would bear the consequences itself. Stalin decided to hasten the decision with bombs. Finnish authors write that at the Tehran Conference he had obtained the Western Allies’ acquiescence for this. The raids were carried out by Long-Range Aviation (ADD), subordinated directly to the Stavka and commanded since 1942 by Alexander Golovanov, who was promoted to Chief Marshal of Aviation in August 1944. For the February operation it was reinforced with other units.

The first raid: 6–7 February

The first attack took the defences by surprise with its strength. According to Finnish figures, 785 aircraft took off, of which about 730 dropped bombs, in two waves: from 6.51 to 9.40 p.m. on 6 February and from 12.57 to 4.57 a.m. on 7 February. Among the nearly seven thousand bombs were two five-ton bombs dropped by four-engined Pe-8s. About 350 bombs hit the city, about 2,500 fell in its surroundings and the rest in the sea. Katajanokka and the streets of the city centre suffered most, and the Polytechnic building on Hietalahti square was destroyed. Bombs also damaged the Soviet embassy building, empty since 1941. More than a hundred people were killed and about three hundred wounded, and more than 160 buildings were destroyed or damaged. The Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, was in the city that day. The blast of a bomb rocked his car, and the marshal sat for two hours in a shelter, although he considered this unworthy of a commander-in-chief.

Finnish studies attribute the heavy losses to the fact that the raid proved much stronger than expected, and that on the most important, southern axis the fire-control equipment of the lead battery was out of action. The Finnish air force did not yet have night fighters at that time.

The second raid: 16–17 February

After the first attack the defences changed. A German night-fighter squadron (1./JG 302) with twelve Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6s was moved from Estonia to Helsinki-Malmi airfield. A large part of the population left for the countryside, and those who remained took shelter at the first alarm. Above all, however, a ruse was prepared. East of the city, in the area of Vuosaari, piles of wood were set up to be lit once a raid had begun, while the searchlights in the western part of the city stayed dark. A special decoy battery at Vuosaari kept up the densest fire it could. Crews approaching at night from the Gulf of Finland saw fires and anti-aircraft fire a few kilometres from the real target, and many of them dropped their bombs into the forests.

That night, while Paasikivi was in Stockholm, according to Finnish figures 383 bombers came over Helsinki and dropped more than 4,300 bombs. Finnish radio intelligence intercepted Soviet reports an hour and forty minutes before the attack, and the alarm was sounded well in advance. About a hundred bombs hit the city. Twenty-five people were killed and 29 wounded.

The third raid: 26–27 February

On the afternoon of 26 February a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft appeared over Helsinki. The weather was cloudless, which favoured the attackers. This time the Soviet command tried to maintain radio silence, but Finnish radio intelligence again intercepted the reports – an hour and 28 minutes before the first bombs. A few minutes later observation posts on the gulf reported approaching bombers. A so-called silent alarm was declared in the city: the street lamps were put out, trams and trains were stopped and radio broadcasts interrupted to hinder navigation. At around 6.30 p.m. the first aircraft appeared on the radar screens, the night fighters took off from Malmi, at 6.45 p.m. the sirens wailed, and at 6.53 p.m. the batteries opened their barrage. The first bombs fell at 7.07 p.m. Mannerheim, who was again in the capital, was driven to a safe place outside the city.

The battle went on without a break for eleven hours and, according to Finnish studies, had three phases. For the first four hours the bombers attempted a concentrated attack on the city, and some of them succeeded. During the night smaller groups tried to knock out the anti-aircraft batteries, and towards morning large formations again tried to break through over the centre. Most of them were turned back by the barrage. The heavy anti-aircraft artillery fired more than 14,000 shells and the light guns more than 4,000 – by Finnish reckoning, that one night used up the ammunition from some 25 railway wagons.

According to Finnish figures, 929 aircraft came over Helsinki and 896 of them dropped bombs, more than 5,100 in all. About 290 of them fell within the city limits. Twenty-one people were killed and 35 wounded; 59 buildings were destroyed and 135 damaged. One bomb hit the main building of the University of Helsinki, destroying, among other things, a large part of the collections of the museum of the history of medicine.

The February balance sheet

The Finnish defences counted 2,121 bombers in the three raids, which dropped about 16,500 bombs with a combined weight of about 2,600 tons. Depending on how they are counted, between about 530 and just under 800 of them fell within the city limits – about five per cent. One hundred and forty-six people were killed, including six soldiers, and 356 wounded. One hundred and nine houses were completely destroyed. The two sides give different figures for aircraft shot down: according to tallies based on Finnish data, some 20–25 bombers were brought down, most of them by the artillery and a few by German night fighters. Finnish bombers retaliated with night attacks on ADD airfields near Leningrad, tagging on to the returning Soviet formations.

Finnish studies differ on how great a part was played by the decoy fires themselves and how great by the barrage. They agree that most of the bombers dropped their loads short of the ring of barrages or over uninhabited ground. The Finnish authorities also deliberately fostered, through the Swedish press, the belief that the city had been severely damaged.

Place in the war

The February raids did not force Finland to capitulate, but they increased the pressure on a government that had just learned the Soviet terms. On 8 March Helsinki replied to Moscow that it wanted those terms clarified before taking a position. At the end of March Paasikivi and Carl Enckell travelled to Moscow, where they were presented with even harsher demands, including reparations of 600 million dollars. In April Risto Ryti’s government rejected them. No further great raids on the capital followed. In March, however, Soviet aircraft bombed Narva and Tallinn. In June 1944 the Red Army launched its offensive on the Karelian Isthmus, and on 19 September Finland signed the Moscow Armistice.

When the Allied Control Commission under Andrei Zhdanov arrived in Helsinki in the autumn of 1944, its members are said to have been surprised at how little damage they found in the city. According to a story popular in Finland, Stalin was angered with Golovanov on that account. There is no strong evidence for this, and the ADD was converted into the 18th Air Army in December 1944 as part of a wider reorganisation. Unlike many European capitals, Helsinki escaped extensive destruction. The air defence of February 1944 is remembered in Finland as one of the greatest defensive successes of the war.