[wulfir]

The Swedish Naval Force was made up of two branches, one was the Navy (“The Costal Fleet”) and the other the Coastal Artillery. The Coastal Artillery operated a number of fixed artillery batteries and so called mine stations (a bunker from where propositioned sea mines could be detonated), but also had mobile artillery units (battery strength or Bn size, the so called “Blocking Battalions” of wich there was one on Gotland, the Bn had 7.5cm guns and Rb52 anti-ship missiles), amphibious light infantry units (normally no light inf on Gotland though) and operated smaller naval craft. Bunge was the mobilization location for the mobile 7th Coastal Artillery Battery (15,2cm m/37B guns - not in the OOB). Its intended primary area of operations was however Östergarnslandet further south. Near Bunge on Bungenäs just outside the game map there was the fixed Battery BN (with three turrets of two 15,2cm m/51 guns each, also not in the OOB). The primary mission of the Costal Artillery was to engage enemy ships, esp. landing efforts, but could in a pinch also be used for ground targets. Because the brigade and local defence artillery battalions all had 10,5cm guns it was popular among the army to request support from the heavy CA units when traning.

The Swedish Navy – for much of the 1980s the Navy suffered from lack of funding and some odd command decisions. By 1989 it had seen a lot of use in the anti-submarine field ("We're fighting a war under the water", the commander of the Coastal Fleet claimed) and received some new craft and more powerful anti-ship missiles (RBS 15) that gave it a more credibility as an anti-invasion tool.


The Swedish Air Force – throughout the cold war the air force was given priority. It's attack resources were pooled into E1 (1st Attack Wing), sometimes called the heavy club. It's first mission, for which the pilots trained extensively, was attack against a seaborne invasion. In case of invasion the idea was to press home attacks ruthlessly but not piecemeal. About three strong sorties were expected to be possible against the “invasion cake” before it reached the Swedish coast. The air force was willing to trade heavy losses among planes and air crew for the chance at delivering a crippling blow at sea. Especially Soviet escort craft was to be targeted. Sink enough and the rest would have to turn back or be massacred by the next layers of defence, the navy and close to shore the coastal artillery. Some argue that the Soviets would also have been equally willing to throw men, air craft and ships into the battle, and that their strong AA defences would have cleared the skies. In the Falklands the British had less air defence assets - but it is said that the Argentinians would have stopped the British effort had only all the bombs that hit British ships exploded. And the Argentininas had long distances to the operations areas and were mostly not trained for anti-ship operations...

In numbers the Air Force dwarfed that of the other nordic countries - Finland, Norway, Denmark - it had more planes than the others combined.

While the army depended heavily on mobilisation to flesh out the war time units, the navy (in 1989) and especially the air force did not.

For the army one problem with mobilisation was that there was not enough people on Gotland to fill up the units intended to be used there so bodies had to be drawn from the mainland. If mobilisation was not ordered before the war started getting the people there could be a problem..., it was however not uncommon to field excersises with this problem in mind.