Brits loved the P-39!

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... and then turned around and gave most of the P-39's (P-400's actually) to the Soviets. Before USA had worked out Soviet Lend Lease.

MM

Post Script: And let's be clear here - there'd have been no P-51 Mustang had British purchasing agents not gone to the US to talk to Curtiss and North American Aviation. I guess the long range bomber escorts of 1944 would have been Fischer Eagles.
 
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michaelmaltby said:
I guess the long range bomber escorts of 1944 would have been Fischer Eagles.
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I thought P-38 issues were being/had been resolved, but the transition to P-51's was already well under way/complete (?)

W/O P-51's, P-38's may have fulfilled the escort role in Europe.
 
timshatz said:
Only that which wasn't destroyed and then it was .03 on the dollar with a 60 year loan.

The orignal subprime loan!
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Economically the British did a fair bit to ensure that the USA had an aviation industry when Japan attacked. In 1938/39 European countries were buying almost anything that could fly and American companies such as Brewster, Bell, Martin, Grumman and Curtis borrowed huge sums of money to expand their production facilities to meet these orders.

With the totally unforeseen collapse of Europe to German forces, these companies were left with massive debts and no money coming in as the countries had fallen. The UK agreed to take up and pay for all these purchases whether or not they were in our plans to purchase them. If we hadn't, these companies would have been in serious trouble and in some cases would have gone bankrupt.
Either way without that infusion of cash the USA would have taken a lot longer to build up its production and who knows what would have happened.

It's almost true to say that war in an economic battle. We spend a lot of time debating what would have happened if this plane/tank/gun/ship had been in this scenario or that. But at the end of the day it could be argued that Germany lost the war because it didn't have the economic might to achieve Hitler's ambitions.
 
"... It's almost true to say that war in an economic battle. We spend a lot of time debating what would have happened if this plane/tank/gun/ship had been in this scenario or that. But at the end of the day it could be argued that Germany lost the war because it didn't have the economic might to achieve Hitler's ambitions."

This is absolutely the truth, Glider, .... and most of the time we forget it.

MM
 
Didn't Osama bin Laden state his goal was the collapse of the American economy?
Popular culture media seems to overlook this point for the most part.
 
MM, got this off Wiki but I heard it from other sources.

"Large quantities of goods were in Britain or in transit when the United States terminated Lend-Lease when the war ended on 2 September 1945. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post war period. In 1946, a post-war loan Anglo-American loan further indebted the Britain to the U.S. Lend-lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of £1.075 billion for the Lend Lease portion of the post-war loans. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest.[8] The final payment of $83.3 million (£42.5 million), due on 31 December 2006 (repayment having been deferred in the allowed five years), was made on 29 December 2006 (the last working day of the year). After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary, Ed Balls, formally thanked the U.S. for its wartime support."

The total for US goods/finaces given to England during Lend Lease was somewhere around 30-35 billion pounds.

The 10% Nominal Value would easily translate to 3% of List Price. The initial price was probably at full book, same as the US Govt was getting. The reason why Lend Lease was terminated in this manner was to do the essentially the same as the Marshall Plan had done with Western Europe without actually having Britain in the Marshall Plan (Hey, they were a major player on the winning side and the Marshall Plan was for the losers, for the most part). By selling the Lend Lease at scrap and putting a long term loan on it, England essentially got the same benefit as the rest of Europe. But, keep in mind, the Marshall plan even on the Continent, was never more that 15% of the economic output of the countries involved. Same, or less, could probably be said for England.
 
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Nah, no hate. It was the way the world worked out in the 40s. The US took pretty much all the UK had of value in the early part of the war. Gold, Bases, Companies, Technical info and patents, you name it. Almost looted the Brits in the early part of the war. But Roosevelt was no fool. He knew there would come a point when the Brits had nothing left and then it was a case of the US supporting England or going it alone. Politically, the stuff England sent to the US before Lend Lease made it that much more easy to pass the law. Arguement was, "We've taken all they have to give and there's nothing left, if we don't step up now, the Nazis win. You want that?".

Brits did a fair amount of reverse Lend Lease. Aircraft (Spitfire and Mossie), Ships (with crews, ASW Trawlers were working the US East Coast by May/April 1942), Technology (Cavity magnitron was the most famous-always get that mixed up with the Flux Capacitor). Quite often, the Brits came up with an idea, usually technical, and the US mass produced it. Radar is the most obvious.

Ya' know, I have no idea where this thread is going anymore. I'm rambling...
 
stasoid said:
In 42' they were happy to get anything available, except maybe for the Harricanes that they often called "flying coffin".
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Technically, the Russians were happy to get good weapons but were not going to turn away even stuff they considered inferior to their home grown product. One uses what's at hand after all when one's homeland is at stake. The Russians however considered the Airacobra to be an excellent fighter and used them to great effect, being desirous of as many as the US would send them and continued to use the P-39 all the way to Berlin.

I'm not aware of them calling the Hurricane a coffin. True, they had a bit of a learning curve utilizing it due to the prevalence at the time of the I-16 and I-15bis.....planes requiring a very different style of flying.
 
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No wonder, the Russians did not get the P-39D from 1943 but the much improved N/Q versions: more hp, a higher speed, very little speed decrease above 15,000ft and generally more reliable.

With regard to the Hurricane they seem to have understood, the Brits didn´t have a lot to spare themselfs.
 

This could be subjective but I'm hearing this all the time: two worst fighters on the East were Lagg-3 and Hurricane.

I-16 was obsolete in 41' 42', true, but it earned its good reputation earlier in Spanish Civil War and Battle of Khalkin-Gol.

I-15s were used mostly as groung attack ac in 41'.

In case of Pokryshkin, they put transitioning to La-7s on hold in 1944 due to a crash landing accident that killed one of his best friends Klubov (31p+19g kills), so they continued flying Airacobras till the end of the war.
 
stasoid said:
In '42 they were happy to get anything available, except maybe for the Hurricanes that they often called "flying coffin"
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The Hurricane was well and truly obsolete by June 1941, never mind 1942
both the Bf109F and the Fw190A completely outclassed it; the Soviets didn't hold it in high regard, citing it (quite rightly) as too slow and next to useless in the vertical against the latest Luftwaffe machines. I don't recall any mention of them calling it a 'flying coffin'. Kaberov voiced the same opinions given above but the Soviets would have done well to remember that a flying coffin is better than no flying coffin, however marginally; after provoking the Nazis for months, they were fast asleep on the day of Barbarossa, within two weeks they had no airforce and nothing to resupply it.
 
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Thanks for that source timshatz ... , but you forgot Whittle's gas turbine to go along with the rest of the "looting" .

"... The Hurricane was well and truly obsolete by June 1941, never mind 1942". As an interceptor yes, Colin1, but as a ground attack plane with rockets not so much. It did yeoman service in N. Africa and I'm betting that the Russians would have had luck with it in that role but they had Sturmiviks.

MM
 
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