Finnish Wartime Airfields – A Google Earth Project

Finnish Wartime Airfields – A Google Earth Project

Just wanted to inform that again one huge project has been now released. Finnish Wartime Airfields project makes use of the free satellite mapping program Google Earth, provided freely by the Google corporation.

The project run by the Finnish Virtual Pilots Association (Virtuaalilentäjät ry) is to catalog the airfields used by Finnish Air Force during the wars between 1939-1945, namely the Winter War, Continuation War and Lappland War.

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/articles/wartime_airfields/

The Wartime Airfields project also includes airfield data about ice fields, airfields used during the temporary peace 1940-1941, airfields used by Swedish volunteer unit F.19 during Winter War, airfields used by Germans and Soviet airfields.

Together we have now circa 170 airfields with almost 100 % accurate coordinates. However we still miss some airfields, mainly Soviet, so if you happen to know any, please send an email or two. Also we intend to add information about the different airfields (in Finnish and English), what squadrons used the fields, how the fields were used and so on.

For any feedback you can send email to the project manager Mangrove (email on the project page) or use feedback feature in the Virtualpilots.fi site.

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Other recent releases:

Wing Commander Bob Foster’s lecture
Aviation Museum Society, Finland invited the British RAF warpilot Wing Commander Robert W. Foster, DFC, AE, to Finland in June 2004. Mr. Foster, a true British gentleman, blessed us with two most interesting lectures, the first one at Finnish Air Force Museum at Tikkakoski, the second at Finnish Aviation Museum at Vantaa. Foster’s combat career spans through the Battle of Britain to fighting at Pacific against the Japanese.
“I was the last one back. So I got in, it was really not very nice getting in, in a Hurricane at night with glim lamps on the airfield, you know, no big lighting or anything like that. And I got in and I thought “well, that’s right, the chaps will be here and we can have our beer now”, and blow me, what they’d done is they’d drunk all the beer and gone to bed! My friends and colleagues the idle bums, rotten lot!”
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-BobFoster.html

Brewster BW-372, the story of a Brewster
Finnish Virtual Pilots Association (Virtuaalilentäjät ry) organized a presentation event in which the story of the Finnish World War II Brewster fighter aircraft and its journey to the United States was described in detail. This article contains information from the lecturers and will be updated with new information.
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/articles/bw372lecture/

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Virtuaalilentäjät ry – Virtual Pilots Finland Association is an association, which purpose is to promote World War II multiplayer flight simulators and aviation hobby among people interested in aviation. More information about the association is available from http://www.virtualpilots.fi . Our plan of action also includes active research and preservation of Finnish aviation history – more about that from http://www.virtualpilots.fi/en/info/hist/ and http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/ .

Virtual Pilots is member of “The Association for Military History in Finland” and is dedicated to the Association’s mission of studying and preserving the Finnish military history.

Jukka “Grendel” Kauppinen
PR and Press Officer,
History Team, Chairman
Finnish Virtual Pilots Association