Lend-Lease Tanks

Did he Soviets and British return all the lend lease anks after the war? I doubt that all the tanks were returned, sepecially the ones the soviets had. Any info on this?

 

Don't know about the Soviets..but literally thousands of "Lend Lease" tanks,half-tracks, motor vehicles etc. were sold by the British as surplus to Belgian scrap dealers at the port of Antwerp.A large number of Shermans/Sherman "Firefly", T.16 carriers, half-tracks as well as seveal thousand Canadian and US-built motor vehicles were in turn sold by these Belgian scrap dealers to Argentina in 1947 .

 

I believe post-war that a lot of Lend-lease equipment was declared surplus by the US and rather than deal with the problems of disposing of it themselves they simply allowed the recieving countries to deal with it as they saw fit, some was scrapped, others simply bull-dozed into ditches or in the case of the RAN's Lend-lease carrier planes just thrown overboard!

To me this seems like such a criminal waste now, but then I'm looking back with the benefits of sixty years of hindsight on what would now be considered at the very least valuable historical pieces, but at the time was considered just so much scrap metal that simply wasn't even financially worth melting down for the alloy.

 

Quite right..although one could argue that at least the trucks and other moor vehicles might have been employd in the economic reconstruction of Europe-(but, as you say, this is historical hindsight-after all, there was the problem of what to do with the manpower demobilized, and this might have affected automotive production in some countries ) In the Pacific, an enormous amount of equipment was simply left behind, and hundreds of thousand of tons of ammo etc. dumped on the sea. as were combat aircraft that were part of the compliment uf USN carriers ..However, when the Argentine State purhasing agency began negotiations with the Belgian dealers for another 700 tanks, the State Dept. intertevened. The he US military attache in Brussels travelled to Antwerp and inspected the tanks, which he found in good condition and declared they could be useful for the Western Allies oor even the US Army and the deal was frustarted. This info comes from the "Armored Vehicles of the argentine Army" (see 'The Library" )

 

but you must remember that alot of equipment was mothballed, for future use, also remember the korean war caught the us with the pants down, they had to search for them after first battles

 

What!!! They threw aircraft overboard????

I apologize but, WHY?? They could have done so much with the planes and ammo. The planes you can donate to civilians for transport and the ammo for extra practice.

 

Well, as Simon pointed out the cost of transprtation was high, particularly from the former Pacific theater...and every bit of space available was reserved for the troops..The planes l was referring to were combat types (F-6Fs, TBM,s SBDs, etc. and on the other hand;there was enough ammo for another World War if necessary. :smok:

P.S. l seem to remember that the British also abandonned some weapon salvage yards in North Africa, with all sorts of equipment; from soup to nuts-and that both Arabs and Israelies helped themselves to a certain extent during the 1948 war...

 

I'm not sure about this "fact": At late -40's normal civillian could buy P-51 Mustangs for few hundred dollars. And those mustangs were in good order (not mint or brand new but airworthy). Nowadays airworthy mustangs cost a million or so dollars.

 

the british dumped all there ammo of the isle of man

 

He might even get it for less. At the Flying Legends Air Show at Duxford in 2002, I was told that one of the participating P-40s was bought from the RNZAF by a bunch of kids, sometime in the early fifties. For their pocket money !

 

The Dutch had Shermans in their armoured forces after the war, and during the two decades that followed. I don't know where they got them, but seeing as the Dutch army was mostly British-CW in outlook and equipment during and after the war I think they must have bought them from Britain after the Lend-Lease deals expired.

 

I cannot confirm this-however, while going through microfilmed newspapers at the main branch, New York Public Library back in August, l saw an article in the "Daily News" (October 1958) there were thousands of WW2-vintage automobiles (Ford, Chevrolets,) which were going for US$50,and aircraft such as the F-4U-5 for as litttle as $450... WW2 Jeeps for $75 etc..

 

I don't believe the USSR returned anything. Not that we expected them to.

Many small arms and probably tanks were issued to the new militaries of the rebuilding countries. I have a Longbranch made Enfield No.4 Mk1 that has Greek markings. Also have one made by Savage under Lend-Lease. It's US Property marked and is in very good condition. These are being sold through many mil-surp suppliers now.

The CMP has many Greek return M1 Garands and M1903's.

I imagine tanks went where the rifles did.

 

The Russians did return some minesweepers and four stackers to the US, the fomer mid- 1955, along with some landing craft-they kept the tanks, trucks and aircraft...

 

Cool. I didn't know that.

 

8)

Last year l went to see some Harold Lloyd films an a cinema located in a loft in Greenwhich village-and the introduction included some old nesreels from the 1930s and 1950s-. which showed precisely that..Also in Pau l notice that the OMaha-class cruiser "Milwaukee" of the SSN ( launched 1921) was turned over to the Ruskis in April 1944 and renamed "Mursmasnk"-the ship was returned on March 1949 and scrapped at Wilmington, Del.l Silverstone's "US Warships of World War I" (IAn Allan,London, 1970) :smok: :smok:

 

I love Harold Lloyd movies.

 

That only shows excellent taste-! Is there a "Turner Classics Movies"channel in your area? In November they played "The Freshman", Cat's Paw", Camera Crazy" and a few others-and in December several of Buster Keaton's classics, including my all-time favorite :" The General


Best Regardsl".

 

The British gave the Russians the battleship ROYAL SOVEREIGN in 1944, IIRC. She was returned after the war, rather the worse for wear. In addition to her age, it seems that the Russian sailors had used the scuppers as toilets. Nor was cleanliness evidently the highest priority of the Soviet Navy of the time.

 

As far as I know, HMS Royal Sovereign (named as Arkhangelsk by soviets) wasn't part of lend-lease program. It was substituting some Italian ship(s) that SU claimed after Italy surrendered.
I think this transfer didn't affect RN much because HMS Royal Sovereign and other 3 surviving R-class ships were worn out and useless. HMS Revenge, HMS Resolution and HMS Ramillies were in reserve as a training ship by late 1944.