U.S. & U.K. Lend Lease efforts and Soviet success in the Great Patriotic War

[ReluctantSamurai]

By the battle of Moscow, 30-40% of the Russian armour were British tanks.

One can place this comment in the same context as another famous myth about the Battle of Moscow...that it was the Siberian forces that won the battle. At any rate, I'd be real curious to see the source for that piece of information, because it's not even remotely close to the truth. Look here (OOB's on this site are from official unit histories):

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaw...ftankstaff.htm

Now if you cross reference the numbers given here, with those from the second link below, you'll see that someone moved a decimal point where it shouldn't be. The only tanks that had any chance of participating in the battle for Moscow were the 20 Matildas delivered to Archangel on 11 Oct by PQ1 convoy (the 200 tanks on PQ3 didn't arrive in Archangel until 22 Nov and by the time they would get off-loaded from the ships and then loaded onto rail cars and shipped south, would not arrive in time to participate). Now considering the Soviet armor available for battle on 28 Oct was 441 tanks, that's 4% not 40% LL tanks.

However, in terms of the enitre war effort as a whole, the landlease was a drop in the ocean, we are looking at it only accounting for 4%.

If you repeat something often enough, regardless whether it is true or not, it becomes accepted as the truth. In this case, Soviet propaganda post-war has succeed in convincing people (including economists) that this statement is truth. It is not.

As for the Americans.. well. They put their supplies on the ships, Pearl harbour happened, "Screw the Russians", took the supplies off the ships and redeployed them to the Pacific, leaving the credit to the British for the only significant thumbsup it offered.

I really hope this is a tongue-in-cheek comment. But just for s!@#$ and giggles, the actual $ amount with a British pounds-to-dollars exchange was: US aid to USSR (1941-1945)---10.67 billion dollars; UK aid to USSR (1941-1945) 1.26 billion.

Landlease taken as a whole was only a minor help to the Russians and the Russians would have still won the war without it, it was no 'saviour'.

Again, repeat something enough times and it becomes the truth whether it is or not. Of course this is where most LL discussions fall down because what is "minor" to one person is "major" to another and so on and so forth.

Rather than launch into any kind of diatribe, I thought I'd post up a few of my favs in the linkie-link department.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...hip/index.html
A rather long and boring list to paw through but....it lists nearly to the last nut and bolt what was shipped and when.

http://www.o5m6.de/Routes.html
The Cliff Notes version of the first linky. Be sure to click on each of the various shipping routes for convoy info.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/BigL/BigL-5.html
Another Cliff Notes version with some additional minor details.

http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/index.htm
A rather interesting read. It covers the experiences and opinions of VVS pilots who flew LL aircraft. I had one covering Soviet tankers who used LL AFV's, but for the life of me, I can't seem to find it.

Anyways.....enjoy