Lend Lease, how accurate is this?

I personally find it a bit funny that Stalin blamed many generals/troops for defeatism as they wanted to retreat but transferring all the factories behind the Urals was not defeatism and who decided on that....

 

On lend lease food....

As far as I know only about 10% found it's way to the military, as naturally they were already being looked after first by the Soviet government, and the civilians had to suffer, lend lease would have no doubt saved many civilians an empty stomach.


On aluminium....


In this timeframe, Alcoa (US aluminium company) had a near-monopoly on aluminium production in the world due to lack of bauxite deposit discoveries in the rest of the world. So yes, aluminium was in short supply everywhere, and so USSR used to buy aluminium from the States for hard currency and would continue to do the same without lend-lease. In 1941 USA actually was behind on deliveries of materials ordered by USSR before the war. USSR did not have a lot of hard currency, but it had enough to buy strategic materials. Without lend-lease, USSR likely would have to raise some more currency ie by selling its gold reserves. Tough, but not devastating.

The main use of aluminium is in aircraft production, USSR partially fought aluminium shortages by designing equipment which used it in minimum amount. So most of USSR fighters were made mostly of wood (which is not necessarily bad - so was Mosquito - but it limited their tactical capabilities). So aluminium shipments were important - but not to the point where there were absolutely no alternatives to imported aluminium.

 

Anzac, could you kindly rephrase your paragraph on food? The way it stands it seems somewhat contradictory...

As for aluminium in the Soviet aircraft industry, of course it was awfully important and the use of wood products was a second best choice, at the price of durability. This might be considered secondary as planes become obsolete quickly, and had a tendency to meet the ground faster than the pilot intended thus putting a premature end to its service life.

Many planes were designed to use a lot of veneer+phenolic resin plywood in surface and structural members, there even being the well-known joke that LaGG really meant Guaranteed Varnished Coffins. But anyway there was no substitute for the real McCoy.

 

Not sure what you mean Za, contradictory in what way?

 

"only about 10% found it's way to the military, as naturally they were already being looked after first "

If they were looked after first, 10% doesn't seem much, does it

 

Stanford Tuck had a Spam, onion, & potato soup served to him by a Russian soldier when he escaped late in the war.

 

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If they were looked after first, 10% doesn't seem much, does it
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I think I see what you mean Za.

That figure of 10% applies "only" to lend lease food going to the Soviet military, Russia could comfortably feed the Red army from their own resources for as long as the war lasted.

In other words lend lease food, although the numbers look very impressive, [and were impressive] was in no way vital for the Red army.

 

About aluminium, it's true that USSR found a way to make planes using the smaller quantity of aluminium possible, the program which gave birth to the Lagg-3 was clearly oriented toward this objective, but it was nevertheless an issue for the Soviet warplane industry, I believe.

For example, the Pe-2 medium bomber/attack plane/dive bomber production suffered some delays and had to be reconsidered, the Tu-2 could not be mass built until Soviets were supplied with enough aluminium from their allies, and as soon as sufficient amount of aluminium flowed in, it replaced "plywood" whenever possible in plane construction (I believe the last Yak generations were all metal for example, but I'll check this).

The impregnated wood used by Soviet was a very good material though, but as Za said, it was a second choice.

I'll post some sources later on, but I really think the aluminium supplies were more important than the food supplies for the Red Army

Edit : here's the text

"Vladimir Gorbunocv was chief of one of the departments of the People's Commissariat of the Aircraft Industry (...). Hi concept, forwarded in 1939, was an aircraft having an all-wood structure, realising the necessity of greatly increasing the output of combat fighters asap, and the limitations that might be imposed on this process by lack of aluminiuù. 'Even if only one small grove of trees is left in Russia' thought Gorbunov,'even then we shall be able to build fighters'."

From Gordon and Khazanov Soviet Combat Aircraft of the 2nd World War

[ 27. October 2006, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: chocapic ]

 

Nuther interesting angle on this.

http://www.wargamer.com/articles/lldocefx.asp

The Allies supplied 317,000 tons of explosive materials including 22 million shells that was equal to just over half of the total Soviet production of approximately 600,000 tons. Additionally the Allies supplied 103,000 tons of toluene, the primary ingredient of trinitrotoluene (more commonly known as TNT) while Soviet manufacture totaled 116,000 tons. If the Allies had not shipped these amounts of explosive materials, the Soviets undoubtedly would have had even more serious ammunition problems in addition to all their other shortcomings. The Soviet's ammunition shortages, mainly early in the war, caused them to be conservative with artillery shells and reinforced the use of their field guns in direct fire mode. This was done even though it brought greater risk to the artillery crews and their guns.

The Allies shipped, in addition to explosives and ammunition, 991 million miscellaneous shell cartridges to speed up the manufacturing of ammunition.

 

On explosive materials....

This was largely a question of optimal division of labor between Allies. In 1941-42 US industry was not quite ready for war-time production yet - there was little engineering experience in producing tanks and combat aircraft. However, US chemical industry was [with the Germans]the best in the world and production of explosives does not require all that much special expertise. So production of explosives was much easier for US to handle at the time then production of armored vehicles etc. E. Stettinius, writes about it to the tune of "We could not do everything Soviets wanted, but we tried to do what we could".

 

mmmm....don't mess with the freepers

 

Probably true though.

 

I agree to some extend, but I think lend lease program had its stronger impact on the course of operations from the very end of 41 to mid 42, not after 1.5 years of war.

Maybe this guy is talking about lend leased trucks in the great 43 and 44 summer/spring offensives.

 

Chocapic, the problem is that lend lease didn't kick in really until post Stalingrad, if you look at the figures they bear this out. As I posted elsewhere, the RKKA truck park in 1941 stood at 272k, by the end of the year with vehicles taken out of the civilian sector, new production and despite losses this had risen to 318k with 0.4% being imported models. Even on January first 1943 the number of lend lease trucks stood at 6.1% of the total, how could they have had as massive an impact early on as people suggest if this is the case?

 

Yes, that's why I said lend leased trucks had an impact later on, like in 43 and 44.

(BTW I thought that, during the whole war, USSR was delivered more or less as many trucks as it produced on its own.)

But if you consider planes, for example, even if only a few have been delivered in early 42, they were direly needed and in some places of the front (Leningrad area, Murmansk area), they represented a very significant part of the planes available at these time and places, and these lend leased planes were as good if not better than the then widely used polikarpov or migs.

This wasn't true anymore in 1943.

 

Actually if im not mistaken I am pretty sure that there were a few very brave French pilots that flew along with the Russians in the Siege of Leningrad to help reduce the Luftwaffe threat.

 

Nope, by the end of the war 77% of trucks in Soviet service were domestic production, 4% captured and 19% imported.

Aircraft etc I can't find statistics for.

 

@Sloniksp : I think you are refering to the Normandie Niemen squad, I'm not sure they were flying for the VVS as early (I don't know much about their operational history - shame on me)

@ Stefan : according to my source USSR was delivered 470.000 non armored vehicule which represented more than USSR production, but I'm inclined to believe you are knowledgeable on the subject and my source is wrong and you are right.

Have you got the sum numbers for the entire war ?

About plane, my source says 14.000 and 12.000 for tanks, which is supposed to represent about 10% of soviet production, but now you make me doubt of my source (old 1970 strategy and tactics - I was a wargamer in my youth )

 

Chocapic,

I believe they might be the ones I will however try to find more.

 

Take a look over here:

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarticlelendlease.htm

Even provides breakdown by type of truck.

According to another source the soviets got 20,000 AFV's (excluding those lost at sea) and that includes personnel carriers and so on. Data from:

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=5275

Wikipedia agrees with you're source on aircraft, I'll check with Overy and a few other sources when I get home. I'd always be dubious of any book written during the 70's concerning the USSR as the Soviets were very careful what they actually told the west about their wartime production, tactics etc. Most of it comes from German intelligence documents captured by the US at the end of the war, making them dubious at best.

EDIT: Now isn't this interesting, Free French pilots did serve in the USSR:

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmafrenchrussia.htm

[ 11. December 2006, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: Stefan ]