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In total, the US deliveries through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[26] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[27] 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras)[28] and 1.75 million tons of food.[29]
Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.[30][31]
The United States gave to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941 to May 31, 1945 the following: 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil), 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,900 steam locomotives, 66 Diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about eleven billion dollars.[32]
British deliveries to the USSR
In accordance with the Anglo-Soviet Military Supplies Agreement of 27 June 1942, military aid sent from Britain to the Soviet Union during the war was entirely free of charge.[33][34] In June 1941 within weeks of the German invasion of the USSR the first British aid convoy set off along the dangerous Arctic sea routes to Murmansk arriving in September. It was carrying 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. 151 Wing to provide immediate air defence of the port and train Soviet pilots. After escorting Soviet bombers and scoring 14 kills for one loss, and completing the training of pilots and mechanics, No 151 Wing left in November their mission complete.[35] The convoy was the first of many convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk in what became known as the Arctic convoys, the returning ships carried the gold that the USSR was using to pay the US. Between June 1941 and May 1945 3,000+ Hurricanes were delivered to the USSR along with 4,000+ other aircraft, 5,218 tanks, 5,000+ anti-tank guns, 4,020 ambulances and trucks, 323 machinery trucks, 2,560 bren carriers, 1,721 motorcycles, £1.15bn worth of aircraft engines and 15 million pairs of boots in total 4 million tonnes of war materials including food and medical supplies were delivered. The munitions totaled £308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled £120m in 1946 index. Naval assets supplied included a battleship, 9 destroyers, 4 submarines, 5 mine sweepers, 9 trawler minesweepers, over 600 radar and sonar sets, 41 anti submarine batteries, several hundred naval guns and rocket batteries.
Significant numbers of British Churchill and Matilda tanks along with US M3 Lee were shipped to the USSR after becoming obsolete on the African Front. The Churchills, supplied by the arctic convoys, saw action in the siege of St Petersburg and the battle of Kursk.[36][37] while tanks shipped by the Persian route supplied the Caucasian Front. With the USSR giving priority to the defence of Moscow for domestically produced tanks this resulted in 40% of tanks in service on the Caucasian Front being Lend-Lease models.[38]
High octane avgas was important later in the war, but the Soviets had a fair bit of their own lower octane avgas throughout AFAIK.Now I may be fully wrong, but I was under the impression that lend-lease fuel (especially in the early years) was very critical for the VVS in the early year(s) and that without it, the VVS would be grounded in 1942.
High octane avgas was important later in the war, but the Soviets had a fair bit of their own lower octane avgas throughout AFAIK.
A lot of things slop over and you have to be very careful you are comparing apples to apples.
Like this one. "80% of all canned meat....Canned meat accounted for less then 10% of Soviet army food rations." and the reply "i see. for a force of at least 2,500, 000, if it only ate 10% of its rations from LL meat, i guess would have starved pretty fast. good catch there!"
A soldier might get only 8-10 ounces of meat/fish/fat per day and around 2lbs of bread/grain/cereal products. Like many armies, the bulk of the soldiers rations were bread or 'cereal/grain'. Of course trying to stay healthy on a vegetarian diet while living a soldiers life on the Eastern Front takes a bit of doing. Take 80 percent of the canned meat/fish away and the soldier won't starve, he still has the Bread/grain/cereal and vegetables but his "meat" ration is now down to 2-3 ounces a day. Want to try long marches (hundreds of miles) after several months of a low protein diet and while on a low protein diet?
I know we are talking about aviation but it is all to easy to blow off some contributions. Lend-lease supplied 53% of the Russian copper needs/used. Copper being used for electric motors (electric flaps/landing gear), telephone and telegraph wire, Electric motors for factory machinery, Alloy with Zinc for brass or tin for Bronze for cartridge cases and bearings/bushings, etc. The Russian production may have been enough for some areas of use but without lend lease to just produce less of everything or give up on certain things? Some aluminium uses small amounts of copper.
The ripple effect can cover quite a few things. The Soviets may have provided a fair amount of their own oil/gasoline feed stocks but could they supply the Tetraethyl lead to boost the normal feed stock up to 95 octane?
A whole bunch.
For starters, Soviet munition plants were largely constructed with USA machine tools and prefabricated components under the supervision of American engineers.
As for production itself, USA (and Canada) supplied all sorts of critical components such as ball bearings and industrial chemicals. Not to mention about half of steel and most of aluminum. This is obvious when you read Korean War era USA evaluation of captured T-34/85 and see American supplied components incorporated in this late WWII Soviet built equipment.
Might that also possibly be referring to prestone coolant/antifreeze (Ethylene Glycol)?Something else of note is the 558,766 gals. of "Ethyl Fluid". IF this is the Tetraethyl lead for aviation fuel it is a substantial boost for the Russians. Since it is used at about 1cc per 1000cc of fuel. (3-4 cc per US gallon or about 1cc per liter. Again, IF, this was Tetraethyl lead it was enough for around 6.6 million tons of Av gas. The Russians may well have been able to produce small quantities of Tetraethyl lead on their own, but without enough of it you can forget 95 octane gas in ant quantity. The Russians would have been using 70-80 octane gas.
As a thought experiment...
Something else of note is the 558,766 gals. of "Ethyl Fluid". IF this is the Tetraethyl lead for aviation fuel it is a substantial boost for the Russians. .
I'll certainly give you that Soviet Communism was flawed with Lenin's revolution founding government alone, but it got much worse under Stalin ... for 3 decades until Khrushchev finally started to un-do the horrible mess that had been created. (even then it was way too far gone to expect a recovery in any reasonable timescale, especially after the polarization of the cold war was well under way -plus, attempts to dispense with Trofim Lysenko's agriculture policies ended up failing as well, and similar attempted reforms throughout industry ended up bogged down by the existing bureacracy and doctrine -and general incompetence)Anecdotally the Soviet Union was underdeveloped in the sense that it was industrialised in a few big cities but still agrarian in much of the rest.
I am no great respecter of the achievements of communism, economic retardation is always the inevitable result and the prevalence of Russian Hookers in places like Dubai and Bahrain lets you know what it really does to Society. The propaganda around the achievements of 5 year economic plans that are generally swallowed hook line and sinker by far too many sympathetic western academic historians have left a misleading impression that Communism in the Soviet Union had some redeeming postives, some advantage, some progress. Communism and in general socialism is judged not by what it achieves but by what it promises, a propaganda coupe if there ever was one. The Russian's, a talented people, would have been better of with out it.
Much of this was true for nearly ever European Leader during WWI, it was a combined mess of botched pre-war politics and diplomacy as well as miscommunication (the root cause of so many conflicts in history) ... not to get into greater specifics. (Bismark, of course, saw it coming decades earlier, but went largely unheeded)The Tsar had to go, even if just for his incompetence in starting WW1 against advice of his generals (see McKeekin's the Russian origins of WW1, the Tsar had his troops attacking and skirmishing with Austrian forces during the period before mobilisation thus making mobilisation and war inevitable) western 'allies' didn't believe the Austrians but it was true.