Talk:Finnish Air Force

Invasion of Poland

I noticed the following statement in the article: The Finnish command knew from Invasion of Poland that Germany had destroyed most of Poland's aircrafts at the airfields. Therefore Finnish planes were decentralized to many different airfields and hidden to forests. Fake targets were made and many airfields also had sharpnel protection for the planes. As an effect, Soviet air attacks to Finnish airfields were not efficient.

In reality, it was but a myth spread by the Soviet and Nazi propaganda. In fact the Polish Air Force was not destroyed on the airfields, specifically because most of the planes had been relocated to secret airfields just prior to the outbreak of the war. Could someone correct that? //Halibutt 20:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I changed the text a little, not mentioning Poland, but the new tactics instead. MoRsE 08:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Merging of F-18 Hornet to F/A-18 Hornet

There is a discussion going on on merging F-18 Hornet to F/A-18 Hornet. See here: Talk:F/A-18 Hornet -- Petri Krohn 22:19, 23 November 2006 (UTC) It is claimed that the F-18 could be rapidly converted back to F/A-18 in an emergency. I dought this but won't remove the comment. 217.7.209.108 16:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I just love this:

Aircraft Factory was burdened with restoration/repair of Soviet war booty planes, foreign aircraft with many hours of flight time, and the development of indigenous Finnish fighter types.

hahahahahahahhaha

hey you propably ment war bounty?

war booty means: war ass

No it means you are ignorant, see War booty --MoRsE 01:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Finnish Air Force bases

I miss information about Finnish Air Force bases in this article. Is it possible to add it? Thank you. Miraceti 10:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Reverted vandalism. 21:14 27.6.2007

Quality of the article

Quality of the article could be better, especially the chapter about Hornet. First of all, the difference of the "variants" is exaggerated. As far as I know, the differences are very minor if there are any. I've never heard of any difference in avionics for instance. Software might be somehow different though. At least there should be source for this information. The sentence describing the special features of Finnish variant is in general vague as if the writer was not sure what he is writing. Change from F/A-18 to F-18 is basically renaming instead of reconfiguring. Finnish aircrafts are even able to operate on carriers as it was cheaper to retain the standard configuration so it seems unlikely that there were any significant modifications to the ground attack capabilities. Also the sources suggest that Hornet's life-time costs were lower than most of the other's so the comment on Hornet's high price is questionable. The paragraph describing the reasons for limiting the aircraft to interceptor duties is also off the point and gives a misleading impression although it is factually quite accurate. However it is not at all uncommon to use word defense instead of war, attack, army etc so there's really no point in making a big deal out of it. Paris peace treaty only banned bombers with internal payload so it had no influence of the decision whatsoever. The list of ground attack weapons also needs references, I've never heard of any complete list of the possible weapons. The picture of Finnish Hornet is not actually of a Finnish Hornet. The insignia is way bigger than in real Finnish Hornets. It is either manipulated or painted on some other Hornet for PR purposes.

Khilon 19:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I just found an article in Finnish aviation magazine Siivet (6/1998). In the article the commander of the FAF (at that time) stated that enabling ground attack capability on Hornet only requires acquiring some pylons and launchers. This supports my claim that there are no "missing features", the equipment to use air to ground weapons just has not been acquired. I include quote from the magazine for those who speak Finnish: "Koneissahan on softavalmius eli teknisesti se edellyttäisi vain joidenkin ripustinten, laukaisulaitteiden ja itse aseiden hankintaa ja koulutusta". Khilon 19:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I removed from the article any references to removed ground attack features as there's no proof that anything was actually removed. Khilon (talk) 11:50, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

World's First Independent Air Force

I notice that both here and on Air force, it states that the Finnish Air Force is the World's first independent air force. Although this is cited, I have my doubts. I would welcome comments at Talk:Air force. Thanks. Greenshed 22:57, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Mention of bombing of civilian targets

This fact is mentioned that FAF never did such thing, but has "citation needed" tag behind it, i just wonder why. Its hard to prove something that just didnt happen, why dont we change it so that you actually have to prove any civilian target was bombed rather than not, that should be easiet to prove, but of course impossible cause nothing like it ever happened. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.231.217.247 (talk) 15:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Swaistika/insignia

The .gif illustrating the change from the old swastika to the new insignia is a nice idea, but it's making it very difficult to concentrate on actually reading the article, and it's not really something that needs to be illustrated with an animation. Wouldn't it be better to just have two pictures: one of the swastika and one of the new insignia? /Julle (talk) 12:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I strongly agree so I have removed the animation, with the Edit message "Annoying animation removed, both symbols can be seen elsewhere on the article and there never was the progression shown in the GIF". There is no need to repeat the symbols in the article because the current roundel is in the infobox and the swastika is on some of the photos - Adrian Pingstone (talk) 12:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Air Force flag

As far as I've ever known, no branches of the Finnish Defence Forces have their own flags. They only have their emblem, that is now in the template. The Swastika flag that was there, is not the Air Forces' flag, but the flags of all the Air Commands are based on that. They have their own emblem in the upper left corner of the flag, but that flag isn't used without them because there is no 'generic' Air Force flag. Therefore, I have moved it to the Organization -part with description. More information on the Air Command flags, see end of the page. --Pudeo' 22:10, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Surely You are right. In that case, You may correct the information in the Russian-language Wikipedia: Военно-воздушные силы Финляндии (Флаг ВВС Финляндии/Flag VVS Finlandii means Flag of the Finland's Air Force). --WPK (talk) 14:56, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

F-18 purchase

I made some changes to the section describing the purchase of the F-18. First of all I changed "Due to the F-18's high price, the number of fighters to be purchased was decreased by three" so that it no longer makes a reference to the price of the F-18. In articles written after the competition it has been said that F-16 assembled in the USA was actually the only choice that would allow buying 67 aircraft within the budget so I don't see that cutting the number of aircraft is specific to the Hornet in any way. I also removed the whole section discussing the semantics of "attack" and Paris peace treaty and replaced them with one sentence. The ban on bombers had absolutely nothing to do with the fighter competition so there's no point in mentioning it here. Also the lengthy and somewhat speculative part on the motives of the exclusion of the ground attack capability was mostly irrelevant. It was simply easier to get everyone to accept the Hornet when it was marketed as an interceptor. The section about Finland's foreign policy seems also irrelevant and it is not any way connected to the rest of the article but I chose to keep it for now. It should at least be rewritten. -Khilon (talk) 16:17, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Clearing up the lead.

Hello

Can someone please clear up the lead as i have just removed information stating that the Finnish Air Force was is the oldest independent airforce in the world on 6 March 1918 yet the lead says it was part of the Army Corps of Aviation and did not become independent until 4 May 1928.

I have tried to clear it up a bit but the lead is still mis-leading as it says "the Finnish Air Force is the oldest in the world, having existed officially since 6 March 1918" yet the French Air Force article says "It was formed in 1909 as the Service Aéronautique, a service arm of the French Army". How can the Finnish Air Force be older if the French Air Force was founded in 1909?

Gavbadger (talk) 21:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

This confusion arises from not understanding the difference between a country's army owning aircraft and a country having an airforce. There were no Independent airforces, as opposed to army or navy aircorps, until the (British) Royal Air Force was founded in 1918. The American army actually bought an aeroplane (a Wright Flyer) before anyone else, but didn't have an airforce as such until 1947! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:45, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Treaty limits

Finland declared that the limiting treaties were no longer active in 1990. A declaration does not of itself have any legal effect nullifying the peace treaties or any part of them. The signatory states may have "abstained from diplomatic notes regarding the declaration", but this does not "confirm [sic] the nullification" - it merely shows that no action would be taken in respect of the purported nullification of the treaties.101.98.175.68 (talk) 00:05, 4 May 2014 (UTC)