User talk:SimoM

Welcome to the Wikipedia[edit]

Here are some links I find useful

Cheers, Sam Spade 00:58, 12 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you sir. SimoM 07:34, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Bombing in Mikkeli[edit]

159753: Sorry, about this, when I went to Mikkeli on a ESF trip, my Finnish host said that the 90% of the City was destoryed over World War II, and only a few buildings like the Turmiokirkko, and the Provicial building had survived.

Well, I have to seriously doubt that figure. Born and lived my childhood in the Mikkeli area, I would think that such destruction would show as a much more serious absence of pre-1939 buildings, and that it would have been well-known public knowledge. I have heard often references to the damages of the bombings in the Winter War as severe, while of later World War II such tales were not told. According to statistics on the city website [1] (sorry, Finnish only), 88 (about 9%) of 939 separate properties (buildings or groups of buildings) in the city were damaged and 43 (about 5%) were fully destroyed due to all the aerial bombings during the Winter War together. In percentage this was the second worst in Finland, after Lappeenranta. Of course this was already enough to change the "face" of the city significantly, as several notable buildings near the city center were damaged or destroyed. According to a local museum [2] (in Finnish), Mikkeli was bombed only twice in the Continuation War and the damages then were minor. But apparently the legend grows in re-telling: for example, a music reviewer claimed that "Russian bombers destroyed 200 of Mikkeli's wooden houses in one night" [3]. -- SimoM 15:48, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)