Lend-lease, Major supplies from the Western Allies to Russia

Lend-Lease to Russia
Major supplies from the United States from 11th March-1 October 1945
Item Quantity/value
Aircraft 14,795( 67% fighters, 26%bombers, 7% misc)
Tanks 7,537
Jeeps 51,537
Motorcycles 35,170
Tractors 8,701
Trucks 375,883
AA guns 8,218
Sub Machine guns 131,633
Explosives 345,735 tons
Locomotives 1,981
Rolling Stock 11,155 units
Rails 540,000 tons
Field Telephone Cable 1,050,000 miles
Food (value) $1,312,000,000
Gasoline/Petrol 2,670,000 tons
Industrial Chemicals 842,000 tons
Tyres 3,786,000
Leather 49,000 tons
Boots(pairs) 15,000,000

Major Supplies from the United Kingdom from 1 October 1941-31 March 1946
Naval Supplies
Battleship 1
Destroyers 9
Submarines 4
Motor minesweepers 5
Minesweeping Trawlers 9
Asdic sets 293
Radar sets 329
Mines 3,206
Paravanes 318
Depth Charges 6,800
Hedgehog Projectiles 2,304
Torpedoes 361

Army supplies
Tanks (various) 5218 (with ammo)
Motor transport 5,053
Bren carriers 2,550
Motor cycles 1,721
AFV and MT spares 4,090 tons
PIAT A/T projectors 1,000 (with ammo)
2pdr A/T guns 636 (with ammo)
6pdr A/T guns 96 (with ammo)
Boys A/T rifles 3,200 (with ammo)
Bren guns 2,487 (with ammo)
Radar sets 1,474 (with back-up equipment)
Radio sets 4,338 (plus spares)

Airforce Supplies
Aircraft (various) 7,411( with spares)
Aircraft engines 976

Petrol , oil and other products 14,146 tons
Aluminium 32,000 tons
Copper 40,000 tons
Industrial Diamonds £1,424,000
Jute 100,435 tons
Rubber 114,539 tons
Graphite 3,300 tons
Tin 28,050 tons
Wool 29,610 tons
foodstuffs £8,210,000
Machine Tools and Associated Eqpt £ 45,616,000
Medical Aid £7,760,000

note, value is at time of sending,not present day

Routes supplies shipped by

route, Amount shipped, Arrived/lost
North Russia, 3,964,000 tons, 93%/7%
Persian Gulf, 4,160,000 tons, 96%/4%
Black Sea, 681,000 tons, 99%/1%
Far East, 8,244,000 tons, 99%/1%
Soviet Artic, 452,000 tons 100%/0%

Totals
Amount shipped 17,501,000 tons
Arrived in USSR 16,587,000 tons
Lost 488,000 tons

Hope this info is of some help

 

WHAT ABOUT SPAM?!?!?!?!

"SPAM saves Russia. That is, it feeds Russian soldiers during World War II, according to Nikita Khrushchev in the book, Krushchev Remembers. Meanwhile, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher calls SPAM 'a war-time delicacy."

www.spam.com

 

"In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, providing aid to Allied forces, and Hormel shifted into wartime production. Soon SPAM Luncheon Meat was traveling to Britain and Russia to help meet quotas of 15 million cans a week.
As the war spread worldwide, so did SPAM Luncheon Meat. The "meat of many uses" soon achieved notoriety as "the ham that didn't pass its physical" and a "meatball without basic training."

Despite the ribbing it took, President Dwight D. Eisenhower set the record straight after the war in a letter to Geo. A. Hormel & Company. He said, "I ate my share of SPAM along with millions of soldiers. I will even confess to a few unkind words about it--uttered during the strain of battle, you understand. But as a former Commander-in-Chief, I believe I can still officially forgive you your only sin: sending us so much of it."

SPAM was a lend-lease staple, sent in such abundance to Allied troops that Nikita Khrushchev later credited it with the survival of the otherwise starving Russian army. In England, where beef was severely rationed, SPAM was the only meat many families ate for weeks. Hawaii, staging ground for the war in the Pacific, fell so in love with SPAM that to this day, Hawaiians eat an average of four cans per person per year, far more than in any other place on earth. Because it was unaffected by meat rationing, SPAM was eaten on the American home front in record quantity too."

 

Spam Museum??!

Originally called "HORMEL Spiced Ham," Hormel Foods held a contest to create a new name for the product in 1936.
In South Korea, SPAM is considered a gourmet treat.
George A. Hormel's first meat packinghouse was an abandoned creamery.

Virtually every person we showed our pictures of the SPAM Museum to immediately burst into the Monty Python song; most Brits are very familiar with SPAM, as it was popularized Over There during the World War II, when the Hormel folks freely shipped tons of it abroad for U.S. soldiers and Allied troops. Sure enough, the entire three-minute Monty Python sketch runs on a continuous loop on a big video screen in the museum, complete with props, and the unending "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spamity-spam" refrain.

http://www.evalu8.org/staticpage?page=review&siteid=271

 

I assume this should be March 11, 1941 until 1945.

Russias net imports (which included the aid received by the U.S. under the lend-lease act) was 49,7 billion 1937 rubles during 1942-44.

USSR's GNP during the same time was 572,5 billion 1937 rubles.

So it's fair to say that lend-lease in 1942-44 amounted to around 8 % of the entire Soviet GNP during that time.

Which doesn't mean that that help was not welcomed or unnecessary.

Cheers,

[ 07. December 2002, 09:09 AM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

My God! They did give Russia everything...

ATOMIC MATERIALS

Beryllium metals
Cadmium alloys
Cadmium metals
Cobalt ore & concentrate
Cobalt metal & Cobalt bearing scrap
Uranium metal Aluminun tubes (for reactors)
Graphite, nat., flake, lump or chip
Beryllium salts & compounds Cadmium oxide
Cadmium salts & compounds, n.e.s. Cadmium sulfate
Cadmium sulfide
Cobalt
Cobalt salts & compounds, n.e.s.
Cobaltic and cobaltous
Deuterium oxide (heavy water)
Uranium nitrate
Uranium nitrate (U02)
Uranium oxide
Uranium, urano-uranic oxide (U308)
--------

Symmary:

MUNITIONS $4,651,582,000 NON-MUNITIONS 4,826,084,000 ---------------- Total 9,477,666,000 Note: the figure of $11 billion includes services as well as goods furnished.

The U.S. Government has never released detailed reports on what was sent in Lend-Lease, so Major Jordan's data, gleaned from the Russians' own manifests, is the only public record. More than one-third of Lend-Lease sent was illegal under the terms of the act which specifically prohibited "goods furnished for relief and rehabilitation purposes."

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html

Early in the war the lend lease did matter:

"Russian historian Alexander S. Orlov
acknowledges that supplies received during 1941 and 1942 amounted to closer
to 90 percent of what some front line units had to fight with."

http://www.wetheliving.com/pipermail/boston/2002-March/000076.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq59-23.htm

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/wwii/jb_wwii_lendleas_1.html
-----

By the way are we talking about the lend lease to all of it or juts USSR part? With March 1941 you take "all of Europe " ( Britain ) but USSR came later into the picture!
"..The program for USSR started 3 months after the German invasion of USSR in June, 1941."

http://uboat.net/allies/documents/lend-lease.htm

 

the supplies I've mentioned are just for Russia, sent under the Lend-Lease act
11th March 1941-1st October is the period that Lend-Lease was in force, but deliverys to Russia did not start until August
Sorry for the confusion

 

Actually I'm highly sceptical on this statement: 90 % of all Red Army's front line supply in 1941 and 1942 was of L-L origin? This is in complete contradiction to all existing statistics, may it been of Soviets or U.S. origin.

Soviet net imports and GNP (in 1937 rubles):

1941: imports 0.3 billion; GNP 218.7 billion
1942: imports 7.8 billion; GNP 166.8 billion

Note thst this are all imports.

Soviet Defense outlays (in 1937 rubles):

1941: 61.8 billion (July-Dec. 41: 44.3)
1942: 101.4 billion

(sources: Mark Harrison: Accounting for War, 1996)

U.S. exports to USSR less Soviet exports to the U.S. (in brackets military goods):

1941: $ 105.3 million [29.5] - $ 29.1 = net $ 76.2 million
1942: $ 1,422.9 million [723.7] - $ 24.7 = net $ 1,398 million

(source: United States Dept. of Commerce, 1945)

Now question: If only RUB 8.1 billion or $ 1,5 billion made up 90% of the military supply in 1941/42, how does this fit to the total Soviet defense outlays of RUB 163.2 billion during that time?

FURTHERMORE, if some $ 2.0 billion western aid was really able to supply the the Red Army ENTIRELY in 1941 and 1942, and the L-L aid between 1943/44 amounted to another $ 7 to 8 billion, why did the Soviets produced anything for war at all?

FURTHERMORE, if $ 1.5 billion of L-L aid given to the USSR supplied the Red Army to 90 %, why wasn't the British Army, receiving almost four time more aid ($ 5.8 billion) during that time able to wipe off the Germans singlehanded back in 1942?

FURTHERMORE, if really some 9 billion rubles are enough to supply the Red Army in those two years, what happened to the other 98 % of GNP produced during that time? Did the Russkies built themselfs golden bathrooms during the war?

FURTHERMORE, if 1.9 to 2.7 million Soviet workers employed in the defense sector (of a total Soviet working population of 72-55 million, including Army), producing a GNP of 163 billion rubles during that time period participated to only 10 % of the Soviet entire defense burden during that time, the entire defense burden would amount to the incredible value of 1,630 billion rubles, with Soviets GNP of 1937 being 212.3 billion!

Basically, Orlov is claiming (without providing any hard data) that some $ 2 billion in aid during 1941/42 was enough to supply the Red Army with munitions. With the numbers available, this statement is ridiculous.

Cheers,

[ 08. December 2002, 07:29 AM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

Hello Andy W
The statement by Alexander.S. Orlov, contains the magic word some.
What he is saying is that a few Russian units were almost totally equipped with Western equipment, not that all of them were.
But I must agree its an odd statement to make

 

Thanx for the figures, Andy!

You sure did a great job, but the words "some" and "to fight with" change the situation that is discussed. Unfortunately the time period is mentioned as vaguely as well and could mean shorter periods than all 1942 included.

I tried to find Orlov´s exact words/article on this but only the sentence previously mentioned came up.

The 90% is a huge percentage and I wonder if it is real, as well. But the fact that Soviet losses were massive and factories still on their way to Siberia or under reconstruction there means that there was for a moment a desperate need for guns, tanks, planes that the lend lease gave them.I hope one day we´ll get real figures.

On Charles Wiichester´s book Ostfront on Russian losses by early 1942:

Soviet losses were astronomical.Every mechanized corps and 177 rifle divisions had been written off. About 1,000 vehicles remained from the pre-war tank fleet of 22,000. The defence of Moscow and the counter-attack that followed had cost nearly a million casualties.Over three million Red Army soldiers were taken prisoners in the headlong German advance of 1941. By February 1942, only about a quarter of a million remained alive.

-------

The lend lease had sent :

By June 30, 1942, the expiry date of the first Aid Protocol hammered out between the new Allies, over 3,000 aircraft, 2,000 tanks, 30,000 other vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel, oil, and other necessities had made their way to Russia.

http://www.islandnet.com/~citizenx/Stalins3.html
-------

October 1941 to June 1942

aircraft 1285

tanks 2249

machine-guns 81287

explosives 59455620 pounds

trucks 36825

field telephones 56445

telephone wire 600000 km

http://peacecountry0.tripod.com/lendlse.htm

PS.Actually with all this equipment one could say that some troops were 100% equipped by lends lease...??

 

LOL, yes. The ol' knucklehead AndyW needs a new pair of glasses, an on-line dictionary and a flatrate connection to the web to read more slowly and without hurry ("The counter's tickin', hurry up, hurry up!")

Thanks guys. In fact there were some Soviet tank brigades at Stalingrad fully equipped with Shermans, so it would make sense to supply them with L-L material.

Cheers,

 

Hey, a quick P.S.:

Why didn't the British, Australians and Russians actually charge back the U.S. with their manpower investment into winning that war?

I mean wasn't that the Grand Coalition? The U.S. was charging the Brits for the Shermans they used in France, but the Brits never charged them back for the tank crew handling those ronsons.
How many highly productive (in terms of GDP per head) U.S. boys would it have needed to kill off Germany and her intact Wehrmacht alone?

I know this sounds very cynic, but in 1940 a U.S. worker was 3.6 times more productive than a Soviet worker and still 1.3 times more productive than a British worker. In a Grand Coalition fighting a total war, it makes perfect sense to let those productive U.S. workers "fight" on the material front (=production) and the less productive workers fight at the "hot" front.

Anybody read Overy " Why the Allied won the war"?

Cheers,

 

From Robin Cross´s book the battle of Kursk:

" Lend lease enabled Stalin´s factories to concetrate almost exclusively in production of battle equipment.Stalin told Churchill that he wanted trucks more than he wanted tanks..."

I think this is a good point. The lend lease gave food, trucks, some ammo, clothes ( I think ). The Russians did tanks where they thought they were the best.

 

Wait a minute:

Year :/ GNP / net imports / defence outlays // def.outlays in % of GNP+imports
1941 :/ 218.7 / 0.3 / 61.8 // 28%
1942 :/ 166.8 / 7.8 / 101.4 // 58%
1943 :/ 185.4 / 19.0 / 113.2 // 55%
1944:/ 220.3 / 22.9 / 117.2 // 48 %
1945:/ 209.1 / 15.1* /106.6* // 47%
TOTAL 41-45: 1,000.3/ 65.1 / 500.2 // 47 %

(informative 1940 :/ 253.9 / 0.0 / 43.9 // 17%)

(all numbers except % are billion rubles of 1937, asteriks (*) are my estimate, Source: Mark harrission; Accounting for War)

So "only" 50% of the Soviet 1941-1945 GNP was utilized for the defense burden, hardly an "almost exclusive" concentration on battle equipment.

Furthermore, net imports (which is basically lend-lease) "only" counted for 6.5 % of the Soviet GNP, hardly decesive.

Cheers,

[ 19. December 2002, 07:20 AM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

Ok, you got the facts by the numbers, I think,Andy!

I don´t mind if the Russians did it all by themselves but let´s see what goods the lend lease brought.And where did the other 50% go to if it did not go to defence? I mean some 2/3 of the Russian industry area was lost in the autumn of 1941 and they still managed to beat the Germans in all areas in the end!

----------

American Spam was very common and it has been calculated that there was enough food sent lend-lease to Russia to feed a 12,000,000 man army 1/2 pound of food per day for the duration of the war.The lend-lease food wouldn't be common until 1943 but many lend-lease staples would be common for the rest of the war. Spam was invariably referred to as the "second front" and egg powder used to be called "Roosevelt's eggs" (yaitsa being the Russian word for both "eggs" and "testicles")
-------------

during world War II the Soviet Union received from the U.S. over 400,000 trucks, 12,000 tanks, 14,000 planes, and an large quantity of other goods, totaling 17.5 million tons. The Soviets themselves built approximately 100,000 tanks, 100,000 aircraft, and 175,000 artillery pieces during war.

-------------

The extent of lend-lease from 01 October 1941 to 31 March 1946 :

1.5 ton trucks 151.053 (US)
2.5 ton trucks 200.662 (US)
Willys Jeeps 77.972 (US)
Bren Gun Carriers - 2.560 (CW)
Boots - 15 million pairs (US)
Communications equipment:
--- Field phones - 380.135 (US)
--- Radios - 40.000 (US)
--- Telephone cable - 1.25 million miles (US)
Cotton cloth - 107 million square yards (US)
Foodstuffs - 4.5 million tons (US)
Leather - 49.000 tons (US)
Motorcycles - 35.170 (US)
Locomotives - 1.981 units (US)
Rolling stock - 11.155 units (US)
Tanks - 5.218 (CW) + 7.537 (US) = 12.755
Tractors - 8.701 (US)
Trucks - 4.020 (CW) + 357.883 (US) = 361.903

The Soviet Union ended the Second World War by having over 650.000 trucks available for use. Of those, 58% were Soviet in origin, 33% British or U.S. and the remaining percentage captured from the Germans.

Lend-lease aid amounted to approximately 10-12% of the total Soviet war production effort. While this does not seem like a significant amount, having 10% more key supplies available could make the difference between holding the line to going on the offensive.
-------------

American, British and Canadian Lend-Lease made a significant difference in the progress of the Soviet armies against Hitler's armies. However, the USSR tried to keep this information limited and the role of Lend-Lease is generally not well known although it constituted about 15 per cent of the total equipment used by the USSR, particularly almost one-half million American trucks. It was said that the only thing that moved through the mud towards Germany were the Ukrainian T-34 tanks with their wide tracks and the American Studebaker trucks.

The USA supplied the USSR with 6,430 planes, 3,734 tanks, 104 ships and boats, 210,000 autos, 3,000 anti-aircraft guns, 245,000 field telephones, gasoline, aluminum, copper, zinc, steel and five million tons of food. This was enough to feed an army of 12 million every day of the war. Britain supplied 5,800 planes, 4,292 tanks, and 12 minesweepers. Canada supplied 1,188 tanks, 842 armoured cars, nearly one million shells, and 208,000 tons of wheat and flour. The USSR depended on American trucks for its mobility since 427,000 out of 665,000 motor vehicles (trucks and jeeps) at the end of the war were of western origin.
--------

Soviet historians have typically denigrated the Allied efforts to supply the Soviet Union with war material as paltry in comparison with her own production and that it was not essential to the Soviet victory. In armored fighting vehicles this is somewhat true, in aircraft less true and in raw and semi-finished industrial materials this is a bold-faced lie.

Railroad rails
Allied Proportion 92.7%

Aviation Fuel
Allied Deliveries 59%

Automotive Fuel
Allied Proportion 2.5%

Locomotives
Allied Proportion 81.6%

Rail cars
Allied Proportion 80.7%

Explosives
Allied Proportion 33%

Copper Ore
Allied Proportion 45.2%

Aluminum
Allied Proportion 55.5%

Tires
Allied Proportion 30.1%

Machine Tools
Allied Proportion 27.9%

Sugar
Allied Proportion 29.5%

Meat
Allied Proportion 15.1%

-----------

Well, quite interesting and yet the figures don´t match as well as one should hope. But anyway the total number of deliveries is quite shocking, I think. Opinions?

http://members.tripod.com/~Sturmvogel/SovLendLease.html

http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-09.html

http://www.feldgrau.com/econo.html

http://www.jmu.edu/madison/teach/burson/ww2.htm

http://www.redarmyonline.org/FI_Article_by_Dan_Welch.html

 

That's how the "Grand Alliance" worked: the U.S.A. partially produced what the Brits, Canadians, Australians and Russians needed to fight.

The recipients paid for it (more or less), but never charged something back to the U.S. (the tank crew the infantry batallion, the KIA's, the actual successes in winning battles etc.). They just had to sent their soldiers into death and win the war.

If I'm a race driver and have to buy my race car to make a race, and the last 15 % of the money is missing to buy it: Who's winning the race? Me or the banker loaning me the missing 15%?

Cheers,

 

Some of the cost of the lend-lease program was offset by "reverse lend-lease," under which Allied nations gave U.S. troops stationed abroad about $8 billion worth of aid. Arrangements for the repayments by the recipient nations began shortly after the war ended. Except for the Soviet debt, of which less than one-third was repaid, repayment was virtually complete by the late 1960s. The United States in 1972, accepted an offer by the Soviet Union to pay $722 million in installments through 2001 to settle its indebtedness .

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/Lend_lease/DI117.htm

 

Well, one could say that the Soviet side paid back more than enough by killing off the most parts of the German, all parts of the Hungarian, Romanian an good parts of the Italian land Army.

Leand lease was the best life insurance ever paid for the average GI in the ETO.

Cheers,