The Continuation High School crew and Finnish influence in GuP der Film [der Film Spoilers]

First: I liked the movie and it was worth the wait.

Second: I as a Finn was deeply honored by all the little details and attention they had put into the movie and BT-42 even when the tank really was just a bad experiment gone wrong.

Now let me get into some of the details they had put into the Continuation High School, the BT-42 and its Finnish crew.

#Name The name “Continuation” comes from the continuation war Finland fought against the Soviets during WW2 to regain some of the lost land during the winter war.

#BT-42 The tank model was spot on and they had included most of the details surrounding the tank. Reference to the Christie suspension and the possibility to use the road wheels without the tracks. In practice you would want to use that only on roads since the traction wouldn’t be that good on a bunch of narrow hard slick rubber wheels and when the turning angle of the front wheels isn’t good enough to make sharp turns. To switch into the wheeled mode you had to take a steering wheel and use that to steer the tank. The gun of the tank is a donated British 4.5-inch howitzer that wasn’t designed to be used in anti tank warfare. The slow muzzle velocity meant that even when the mass of the projectile is high the ammunition was useless against soviet T-34’s. The Finnish tried to copy some German HEAT shells with poor success caused by the lack of experience in high caliber ammunition manufacturing. The BT-42 saw service in the continuation war with bad performance against more modern Soviet designs.

#Crew The Continuation crew consists of the commander Mika, her gunner and loader Aki and a mute rather silent and badass redhead driver Mikko who had only one line in the movie. There are quite a few good Finnish rally and F1 drivers so they had to include some skillful driving with the BT-42. The names Aki, Mika and Mikko are all common Finnish male names, so there might have been a miscommunication somewhere or they wanted to use male names on purpose. (This has made me almost use “he” and “his” by accident when talking about them many times) edit: I think the names are references to Mika Häkkinen a retired F1 driver, Mikko Hirvonen ex rally driver and Ari Vatanen also a former rally driver.

#References The hat Mika is wearing has had inspiration from a traditional Finnish hat Väinämöinen is sometimes pictured wearing in the national epic Kalevala of Finland. The instrument she can be seen and heard playing throughout the film is the Finnish national instrument kantele. Which links the character further into Kalevala since it’s an important object in the epic. This scene reminds me of the Moomin but it might be me just looking for references.

#Music We can hear Mika play Säkkijärven polkka with her Kantele throughout the film. The song has it’s roots in the parts of Karelia that were lost to Soviets in WW2 and it had an amusing use in the Continuation war. Since the melody is from at least the 1800’s it’s use should be free of copyrights, but remember they still own the rights for the soundtrack of the movie. The movie version of the song can be heard here

#"Tulta!" In English "Fire!". It was nice seeing them trying to get a single line of Finnish in the movie. The grammar is right and pronunciation is spot on, but the tone of the phrase is a bit out of place. Also Finnish use the order differently. We say the first part of the word "Tul-" is to prepare the gunner and with emphasis to the latter part "-ta!" that is actually the trigger for the gunner to shoot.

#The Boat The boat they are seen using to get back to their school is an Uisko-class landing craft. Another Image showing it from the side. The boat has a top speed of 55 km/h fully loaded. The full load of this boat is 2.5 tonnes but BT-42 weights 15. Maybe they cut some unnecessary weight off the boat to make it float with the tank.

#Credits There are a few Finnish names in the credits under Wargaming (WG) Japan. The names all link to a forum for model hobbyists and most of them have BT-42’s in their collections there. This link makes me believe that they asked WG to source some reference images for the BT-42 and its internal compartment. There is one BT-42 still standing in the Parola tank museum (I have seen the beauty in person when I was there). Also under those names there is one name linking to the Finnish embassy in Japan. I would think they received some help or confirmation about the music used and references to Finnish culture from there.

An image album in order of appearance in the movie.

I'm no expert in Finnish culture or tanks but I made this post to compile my thoughts and enthusiasm that the movie brought up. I'm open to critique but please be gentle.

Edit: Made some parts clearer and added some info and links here and there.