Jorma "Joppe" Karhunen, recipient of the highest Finnish military honor Cross of the Mannerheim Order.
Died at Tampere Finland 88 years old after a prolonged illness. Mr. Karhunen had been in poor health for a long time, almost dying in the President's Independence Day reception 6.12.2001, only surviving alive because predident's staff immediately noticed he was in bad condition and giving first aid.
Mr. Karhunen shot down 31 and half enemy planes and received the Mannerheim Cross in 1942.
After the war mr. Karhunen started writing books, and has written alltogether 37 books, mostly about Finnish Air Force and Finnish pilots in WW2.
From Ace Stories:
" In 1952 he led the introduction of D.H. Fb52 Vampire jet fighter in the FAF. Karhunen was proud of the fact that the single-seat jets were taken into use without a single accident. Some two-seat Vampires were acquired only in 1955.
Karhunen retired in 1955 with the rank of Colonel-Lieutenant. He was promoted in the reserve to Colonel.
The first thing he did after retirement was to write for his friend Bob Winston an account of the career of the Brewster fighters in the FAF. (Of course he wrote in Finnish and had it translated for his friend, whom he visited in the U.S. in 1958). Having completed his story, he showed it to a publisher - and was awarded a contract. His book "The Knight Flight" was published for the Christmas season of 1956, and three prints were taken. The success was beyond expectation, and Karhunen found a new career. In the course of years he has written 36 books. All of them are documentary or semi-documentary, most of them about the FAF during the 2nd WW, but also about Finnish aviation and Finnish military history. To my knowledge, none have been published abroad. Karhunen refuses to call himself "author", he considers himself a "literary worker". "
Never had a chance to meet him because he was in poor health. I did send him twice a large parcel of photos, articles and so on about the simulation pilots and our hobbies, hoping those would cheer him up. Mr. Karhunen actually even called me thanking for the parcels and the old ace was very happy to learn about the sim pilots and seeing we were very active in the aviation thing, in our own peculiar ways.
Joppe Karhunen:
http://hkkk.fi/~yrjola/war/faf/karhunen.html http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/karhu/karhu.htm Four air combat episodes:
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/karhu/karhu1.htm Joppe's Fokker D.XXI, Winter War 1939. With this plane he fought his first ever air combat.
