Thanks for that, Bob. I'll sock that away for use as needed
I should probably describe my efforts differently...I'm not so much trying to draft official TO&E as trying to assemble OOB's for actions in the field. Many factors are in play, and for that you often have to rely on anecdotal evidence such as personal accounts. A few days of continuous action generally has a unit looking radically different from its first day.
I would certainly agree that no "official" Finnish TO&E (at least none I could find) describes platoons or squads comprised exclusively of troops armed with SMGs. I think as the war went on, the numbers for a rifle squad shifted somewhat. During the "Winter War" a squad of ten might have one SMG (NCO) and nine rifles; however, in later years the number of SMGs increased to something like a 50-50 split, with maybe 4-6 SMGs per squad of ten.
One area where there seemed to have been a preponderance of unofficial SMG use was in the Finnish "Close Defense Platoons", ad hoc tank-killer teams developed by the Finns to try to offset the dearth of anti-tank rifles and anti-tank guns available. These guys were loaded down with satchel charges, Molotov cocktails, magnetic mines, etc., and typically the personally preferred SMG. I believe they were officially armed with rifles, but quickly rearmed themselves with Suomi's and Soviet PPD's recovered in the field (PPD's apparently were laying about in great numbers and easily recovered in working order, at least in the early going).
Of course the real rub of trying to write scenarios is quantifying what the infantry regiment, for example, might have looked like after 3-4 days in action. It certainly is unlikely to look like its official TO&E. Not only will the numbers be reduced, but there's a good chance things have been a bit reorganized or reconstituted, possibly even reinforced with a few replacements. After a bit of reading, one is left to make a lot of presumptions to assemble something that "feels right".
One of the great things about MP, as you point out, is that it's not weighed down with minutia. Whether a rifle squad has changed up its mix of rifles and SMGs is unlikely to shift efficacy in any meaningful way...it's tough to put a finger on it, but I would agree with your sentiments. Scaling also plays into it (i.e. if you use a stand of four infantry figures to represent a squad of ten, what should that look like). I've gone back and looked at the OOB's others have assembled for various "Winter War" actions and things seem to vary widely.
I have found the Jaeger Platoon site (JAEGER PLATOON: FINNISH ARMY 1918 - 1945 WEBSITE), among others, handy for looking at the official organization of the Finnish Army. It provides a pretty good sense of structure, along with some commentary regarding the evolution of units as the war progressed. Another useful site (Order of Battle – Finnish Infantry Regiment - Finland at War) offers a lot of additional info (the amount of info on the Finland at War site Republic of Finland - Finland at War is pretty staggering). It should be noted that neither describes purely SMG-equipped infantry squads sanctioned officially. You gotta wade through a lot of this stuff to get a sense of what the troops were actually doing.
I have a number of hard-copy accounts, probably the best of which IMHO is Trotter's A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40. Not much in there OOB specific, but an excellent account of the fighting.
Thanks again, Bob, for taking the time to take a look at the concept of an exclusively SMG-armed squad.
Paul R.
