⚜ | Ungrateful or Insignificant? - Western Planes in the Soviet Air Force
The Soviet Union called it insignificant. Enough reason to take a closer look!
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⚜ Sources ⚜
A. G. Lovelace, Amnesia: How Russian History Has Viewed Lend-Lease,
B. Sokolov, The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts 1941-1945,
S. Gribonov, The role of US Lend-Lease aircraft in Russia in World War 2,
V. Kotelnikov, Lend-Lease and Soviet Aviation in the Second World War,
Book shown at start is: Ministry of Defense USSR, The Soviet Air Force in World War II, Translated by L. Fetzer, Edited by R. Wagner
Website with some information: lend-lease.airforce.ru/english...
⚜ Planes sent to the Soviet Union ⚜
(Keep in mind, these numbers are approximate and not final)
Hurricane: ~3000
Spitfire: ~1350
P-40: ~2150
P-39: ~5000
P-63 ~2400
P-47: ~200
P-51: ~10
Typhoon: 1
A-20: ~2800
B-25: ~850
Hampden: ~20
Mosquito: 1
PBY Catalina: ~160
Short Stirling: 1
O-52 Owl: ~20
Kingfisher: ~20
C-47: ~700 (or 900?)
C-46: 1
Albemarle: ~20(?)
AT-6: ~80
Aircraft that arrived 'by chance' (i.e landed in Soviet territory) :
P-38 / B-17 / B-24 / B-29 / PV-1 / Lancaster / Walrus
⚜ Music ⚜
Music and Sfx from Epidemic Sound
#SovietAirForce #RussianAirForce #LendLease
Hope you guys enjoyed this episode! Tell me what you think about Lend-Lease and the Soviet Air Force. *Also, share this video to qualify for a virtual Order of the Red Merlin!*
what is the virtual Order of the Red Merlin?
Great video, very informative even liked the somewhat corny intro. As it was stated many of the aircraft were cast offs or slightly obsolescent; P39s, A20s. Many Soviet P39 Pilots became Aces while the US found them not suitable in Europe, and a stop gap in the Pacific. Regarding future Aviation episodes; German night Fighters, British night bombers, the whole night airwar is a subject that could use more ilumination.
The entire Soviet air force, as large as it was, was 'insignificant'. If USAAF hadn't killed Luftwaffe...
Red merlin?
Interesting analysis. Timing counts. How many of the aircraft supplied by the allies arrived into the theatre before USSR production spooled up? Valid points about acceptance and application to the mission. I have one format suggestion. Pop the attributes for the quotes at the start of the page. It helps some of us keep up and understand who / what the source material is. Nice job on the video and the story.
I remember touring a Soviet museum in then East Berlin. As the young comrade told us how the USA did very little to aid the USSR I looked down to see the photo of one of their aces standing next to a P-39.
A good pilot with a good plane!!
Politicians will forever be politicians. Scum of the universe, all of them. No exception.
@@Pdor_figlio_di_Kmer What does this have to do with politicians
Are the mention of politicians reminds me very simply this whole mess would not have been necessary if it wasn't for the stalling wanting what he wanted... I really think if it were not for the molotov ribbentrop pact that Hitler would have had no confidence to invade Poland and then Mother Russia need not have bled so badly...
@@rogersheddy.8497 Forgetting the Winter War and the Purges. The Soviet Military was still unprepared by the time the Germans invaded.
That is a significant introduction.
I see what you did there...!
Video:posted 16mins ago Comment on video: 15hrs ago KZhead you're drunk,go home
1:00 is that some new kind of google search engine? Looks all vintage-ey, totes kewl.
Military Aviation History Was that Jericho trumpet from “In The Flesh?” by Pink Floyd?
Why do you think you never see Sherman tanks in old WWII Soviet photos? Control. Someday the censored photos will be released. I can't wait!
My father was one of the runway lighting electricians on Ladd Field in Fairbanks Alaska during ww2. His sister worked for the US Attorney's office during those years of the lendlease ,she was privy to the manifests of all the cargo that was either flown up from the lower 48,or loaded on the cargo planes in Fairbanks.I remember her telling me that many of the local store shelves would be empty,caviar and silk stockings were some of the things loaded in Fairbanks,going to Russia. P-39's and other transport/cargo aircraft were flown up from Montana thru Canada to Fairbanks. American pilots trained the Russian flight crews how to fly our aircraft,then they painted big red stars on the aircraft and off they would go to Russia. Several years ago they erected a statue in Fairbanks commemorating Russian/American cooperation during the war.
If only USA and Russia could put aside their differences
Amen
@@cuhgaming4943 Hey is your cannon 85mm?
Some of the Red Star Aircraft were painted on at the factory
@@thesmuggest6680 Our 76 tank round was a very close equal to the 85mm T34, just do some research about the Koren war where it knocked out plenty of T34's.
Soviet ace Pokryshkin flew Bell p39 aerocobra from 1941 till 1944. When stalin decided to put all Soviet airforce into domestic aircraft, pokryshkin even wrote stalin an angry protest letter
I think the blokes on the arctic convoys ought to have been told that their efforts were 'insignificant'.
OH THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN PISSED, Could you imagine how quickly the US and UK navies would stop supplying them if they were told what they are doing is "insignificant"
It took more than 40 years for the Godless Communists to make any recognition at all of the contribution of western convoys.
Yeah, true.
what service had the highest casualties Merchant Navy
@@kinglear5952 Bible basher over here...
I've never considered the front-line combat machines (tanks/aircraft) to be the significant portion of lend lease contribution, yet thats what everyone seems to focus on. I'm sure it helped, but it wasn't what the Soviets needed most. The millions of tons of raw materials (including aluminum), locomotives, machine tools, food, clothes, explosives, radios and electronics, and perhaps most significant: nearly half a million of some of the best trucks in the world were the real contribution. This latter point is serious. Soviet truck production during the war was actually pretty pathetic at under 200,000. In fact German truck production was nearly double. That's right...the Germans produced FAR more trucks than did the Soviet Union, a country significantly smaller and still desperately short of trucks. To top it off, a large chunk of that Commie truck production was inferior prewar models based on old Ford designs. They were reliable, but had limited cargo and off road capacity. So why were the Soviets so well mechanized for their massive offensive drives in the second half of the war? Again, deliveries of 6-wheeled reliable offroad trucks that did everything the Russians needed them to, and in quantities that represented far more than either Russian or German truck production for the entire war. All these contributions allowed the Russian to concentrate on the bare essentials of massed attritional ground warfare and do what they did best. If you ask me, this was a war-winning formula, and partially explains why the Soviets were able to go from barely not losing in the first half of the war, to actively winning in the second half.
Plus the Germans forgot that Winter is coming...
Appreciating only Americans for the winning of USSR in WW2 is wrong. Don't forget about 20 million people who layed down their lives to protect USSR Also in the first half Germans had complicated high quality weapons like Panzerkampfwagen6 Tiger, Heinkel He.177, Junker Ju87 Stuka, and other Weapons but these were unable to resist the gigantous number of T34s, KV2s, KV1s, Il2s, etc. Americans did HELP Soviets to win but USSR does not owe america some sort of.......DEBT.
@Charles DuBois I dunno, the Battle of Moscow was pretty close run, and quite a lot of the tanks the Soviets fielded there were lend-lease, on top of other lend-lease vehicles deployed to other fronts which freed up Soviet equipment for the defence of Moscow, and all the other bits and pieces they had received by the end of 1941. Whether the Germans actually had the necessary power to capture Moscow even if no lend-lease equipment had been sent also remains a bit of an open question, though. Had the Germans actually captured Moscow in 1941, that would have been the end of the USSR. The Communist party would definitely have fallen, and a new government would have inherited the whole mess. What might happen in that case is anyone's guess, since so much would depend on who took over, how fast they could gain control of the Army, at what point the Axis might have been inclined to accept peace, if ever
@@uddeshyaagrawal3841 No one said, "appreciate only Americans for the winning of USSR." You are engaging in a strawman argument. It makes you obviously foolish.
@@talltroll7092 Ignoring that the communist party has retreat plans and Soviet generals are quoted to continue the fight if Moscow falls. Stalingrad is the better candidate as it would heavily strained the supply problems as the Soviets would almost lose their oil lines.
If you cut almost 20% out of any military fighting force and look at the figures it is a game changer there's no way 19% of the total aircraft is insignificant
it depends on when those numbers are. 20% throughout the war is not a helpful statistic. its more important to look at 1941/42 numbers, as the soviet airforce was essentially unopposed in 43 onwards especially in 44/45. if the bulk of lendlease is 43+ then you could say its insignificant. but is its more evenly distributed or the balk is 1942 then its not insignificant and even very significant.
The biggest and most important parts of Lend-Lease were ammunition, fuel, uniforms, trucks, and other items less glamorous than completed tanks, guns, and planes, but every bit as important.
@@Balmung60 also food. People tend to forget food, even though it`s one of the most important things.
I find it funny that so many Russians are arguing about how "little" the USA contributed to the Russian war effort. 20% is a big deal. The larger deal is how much would that have been without the machining equipment that was sent from the USA? That machining equipment was used not only for building the aircraft, but also used to build Russian machining equipment. Without the USA machining equipment the percentages would have been much different. I feel for the Russians killed by the Nazis. Especially the civilians. The Nazis were animals. Then I must look at Stalin. How many Poles did he kill in coordination with the Nazis? How many Russian prisoners did he send to the front line without guns to fight the Nazis? What was the ratio of soldiers to guns? Bet more soldiers than guns. Translation, cannon fodder. How many Russian soldiers were killed in the "forgotten winter war" against Finland? I believe about one million. That is more than the USA lost in WWII total. Against Germany AND Japan. In conclusion, Stalin was an animal. He used bodies instead of brains. Had Hitler not been fighting the USA and Brittan,. Had the USA and Britain not been supplying equipment and supplies. Had the USA not been fighting the Japanese, Russia would have lost the war.
@Рамис Карама I can not argue the 4 to 5% of the Russian equipment was from Lend lease. That may or may not be true. I just do not have those facts in front of me. I do know that the lend lease helped Russia produce much of the equipment that they did need. What did help was machining equipment, raw materials and food. Without that Russia would have been in a world of hurt. We will not even talk about the bombing raids on Germany. Had Germany been able to maintain equipment and fuel production, Russia would have been in a world of hurt. Had Germany not been fighting the Allies in Africa and the middle east, Russia would have been in a world of hurt. Please stop acting like Russia alone took down the Nazis. That is full of hubris. BTW, Nazis were animals. That and Stalin use people as cannon fodder. I am sick of hearing how many Russians were killed. The USA lost half a million fighting on TWO fronts. The Japs and Germany. The Japs were as, if not more so, ruthless than the Germans.
Fascinating video, thanks!
You are responsible for many of those yourself! Big fan of your work, thanks!
??
Oh, wow! I would have never expected to see you here. I suppose you're a fan of the 37 mm canon's penetration?
My house just turned into a factory producing T-34s after than intro, Bismarck, how exactly do I deal with this?
Overstate the number rolling out of your garage by about 30% so your commanders don't send you to the gulag.
brian watford no need to overstate comrade simply make stronk tank in 5 minutes with great Soviet might
Seize the means of production!
Ah. That's a tricky one. They tend to expand very quickly. Suggest you develop Panzerkampfwagens with sufficient offensive capabilities ASAP or you'll have an infestation on your hands.
I recommend sending a few Kommissars in to stem the infestation
How did you get your hands on such sekrit documents
He works with stalin and flies TU4
Stronk intelligence.
I know the truth: Bismarck raided Gaijin's sekrit dokument vault and got away with the top sekrit files.
because bias, komrade! xaxaxaxa)))))
Learn how to spell correctly before posting anything.
Alexander Pokryshkin, the top Soviet ace with 43-94 kills (depending on the source of the estimate) flew mostly Aircobra, which he and his squadron loved and US pilots hated. The reason being is that Aircobras did very well at low altitudes where most of Eastern Front fighter battles took place.
Your lead-in (introduction) was excellent - I caught myself still smiling well afterwards. Nicely done. The entire video hit the nail right on the head. Thank You!
"published by the ministry of defense of the ussr" other totally unbiasd stories: "why we were the good guys, published by Hermann Göhring"
Hah
Also those are so un bias :)
thecursed01 What are you trying to say? Are you trying to say that statistical information is biased? Not sure what you want then, nobody else is going to publish statistics.
You can mis-represent statistics very easily.
Have you read any Churchill books? Black kettles there.
That last quote sums it all the best. It's hard to measure exactly how much of help lend-lease was. It's hard to define exactly what "significant" or "insignificant" would actually mean. It was help, it helped, and I bet it was nice to have all these planes in the end to dissect and study to further their own aviation... and to know their weak and strong sides in case US and Brits we're like "You know what Soviets? We ain't giving you Poland just like that. Let's fight!"
Nobody cared that the USSR occupied poland because the government had stopped existing at that point, for the allies it was good becaues germany didn't get that part of poland.
+Living Lifeform I think he's referring to Poland in 1945 not 1939
Living Lifeform The Deal was that these Countries Occupied by the Soviets would have Democratic Government's, The Soviets responded by naming them the Democratic Republic of Poland, ect. This took care of the Political Requirements. After being Invaded and going through a bloody war with the loss of Twenty Million people, the Soviet Government and People wanted a buffer zone between them and Europe. This was a Political Reality and understood by both the American and British Government's. Russia and Stalin had reasons to be a bit Paranoid and after Stalin aquired Atomic Bombs, we had reasons to be a bit Paranoid as well. Actually, it served Political Agendas of both Russia and the United States to Demonize each other, Government's love useing fear to maintain their power. Nothing new there, Athens and Sparta did the same thing as did the British and French more recently.
It is enough to say that UK acquired about three times as much of Lend Lease materials as USSR despite the fact that they did not suffer from invasion of millions of German soldiers. "Not significant" wouldn't even start to describe the situation. It is a common mistake to call joint operations and material supplies to USSR "help". This is entirely misleading. They are not. Help is something you get to carry out on your own volition and without demanding anything back. What Allies did provide is a trade - sometimes for gold, sometimes for military success, most of the time because it was really important for USSR to continue fighting Germany while US and UK can leisurely prepare for war (i.e. mercilessly beat the living crap out of what's left in that pile of rubble) in relative safety overseas. What can be considered as help in proper meaning of the word is what you might google as "Russia War Relief" - and it's activity isn't widely advertised for several specific reasons.
Soviet fighter of WW II vintage remind me of model planes built from many kits. Front of one, tail of another. All foreign designs.
The P39 Airacobra one of the nicest looking and severely underatted aircraft of WW2
As always, love the video....educational, informative, entertaining as one has come to expect! 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻
While the analysis is interesting, it leaves an important open question: when was the Lend-Lease aid received and how did it figure into Red Army air operations at the time? 19% is a small number of aircraft across the entire war, however, Soviet production levels increased dramatically as the war continued. If the information is available, it would be interesting to compare Lend-Lease deliveries against Soviet aircraft production on a year-by-year basis and against aircraft losses by type. This could possibly identify which aircraft were being used when and the composition of squadrons changing as the war progressed. I think it is important to remember that the weapons that are available are the weapons that can be used and that is/was dynamic, due to innovation, production, and attrition.
^ This
What would also be interesting would be a breakdown of the introduction of new models of soviet aircraft and the dates of the introduction of new models into the lend-lease program and there delivery.. Also when the aircraft was delivered lat war would indeed be irreverent however the same aircraft delivered a month into war would represent a massive chunk of operational aircraft.
Its also important to consider how the Soviet would of adapted its air force if there was no lend-lease. If we just remove lend-lease, then things would turn out worse because we are currently assuming the Soviets would not make any changes.That would obviously not be the case. We should compare likely results based on how the soviets might of acted without support versus historical results. But of course that's a very hard thing to speculate about.
If there was no land lease, soviets wouldn't have gas to run those tanks and planes.
That's an outright exaggeration since there are natural resources native to the Soviets.
I appreciate that the walrus stamp picture was from the USSR
Years ago, I read an article about the "Spam" museum. Yes, there is/was a museum highlighting that canned spiced ham product that I so dearly love and which later gave its name to junk email. The museum proudly displayed a quote for Nikita Kruschchev in which he reportedly said that "Spam saved the Soviet Union" during WW II. Indeed, an army does march (or an air squadron flies) on it stomach!!!!
It would be interesting to know the Luftwaffe estimate of the situation. How many British and American planes did they see, and did they have any effect on strategy and tactics?
Unfortunately for the Germans, as Soviet fighter pilots put it: the Luftwaffe was an operational joke on the Eastern front - the "free hunts" (aka flights for glory, kill counts, flying missionless looking for any targets), Ace packs (7 worthless fighters covering the Ace to get him the 300+ kills) and quite inefficient Bomber/Attacker protection in escorting missions (probably for the same kill hunts reason). Soviet fighters were on the other hand mission-oriented because mission failure was bad for life afterwards. Since the P-40s, P-39/63s were optimized for lower/mid altitude it didn't change the effect much as it was used on par with the Soviet fighters (maybe a little faster, but La-series was faster at sea level). Soviet fighters had very good acceleration in the 200-400 km/h speed range (meaning they were more forgiving), while P-47s were used in ground support role anyway. Enemies were shot at very close range, so the armament wasn't a factor either (except for heavier targets). Medium bombers had probably the most visible contribution. Since high-octane fuel was a problem, the western engines didn't perform optimally (some P-40s were even re-engined with local engines). The only real difference is that with Lend-Lease there were more fighters available in general, meaning the Soviet Air Force could cover a greater area, since the Luftwaffe was very, very good at relocating the air assets to achieve local superiority - recipe for success for fast and well-armed fighters. Had the fight move to higher altitude and use higher-octane fuel then history would have been more fair towards the western fighters. Another thing often disregarded was that the average lifespan of a typical soviet engine was much lower than western ones due to a combination of lower manufacturing quality and greater abuse by the pilots. So Soviets pilots would naturally push the limits of the engines as usual, while parts and proper fuel/oil was not readily available, which made the situation even worse. PS. Pro western allies' writer here.
As far as I know, Luftwaffe pilots most commonly met soviet fighters in the skies, so of course meeting any UK or US fighter was an outstanding memory just because of the surprise. Overall most known Lend-lease aircraft are ones related to famous aces, P-39 being tied to Pokryshkin and P-40 to Safonov respectively. Surely Pokryshkin is a figure of his own, coming to innovative for soviet air force strategies relying on high patrolling speeds and correct pairs' placement to assure complete control over the view, cover and handling of the squad. A good example might be Helmut Lipfert, describing a squad of Airacobra fighters not even letting him get to an attacking position and forcing him to retreat as the first battle ever where he didn't even stand a chance. Overall strategy described in that exact battle is spot-on Pokryshkin's concept of altitude/distance separation of pairs. Overall P-39 didn't affect the strategy Pokryshkin was making up since the beginning of the war in summer 1941, same can be said about Safonov and P-40. Both planes were no more than tools fit for people using them. Same can be said from the german perspective, their strategies remained the same and only adapted to *how* the soviets fought, not in what planes they fought.
@@solomonarbc thanks for the very informative reply
@@MDzmitry Thanks for providing lots of detailed information. Did Pokryshkin's tactics get fanned out to others, or was it just his unit that used them?
@@glypnir His changes regarding new fighter units and their placement quickly became common for entire soviet VVS. A good example will be Evgeniy Savitskiy, commander of the 3rd IAK, whose first battle as a regiment commander happened to be Kuban. Right after moving to the front he got to meet Pokryshkin. Judging by Pokryshkin's memoirs, Savitskiy seemed to be right out of a fight ready to report, yet he started asking Pokryshkin about his regiment's strategies. Edit: I want to add that 5th GIAP at Kursk started using the same strategy of high-speed patrolling. The time difference is literally a couple of months starting from the period Pokryshkin began to introduce his strategies at Kuban.
Here's something to consider: if Lend-Lease was not needed/significant/the Soviets thought the equipment was inferior... *_Why the hell did they keep ordering it and, even more importantly, paying for it?_* Even the Soviets admit that the defense of the motherland in the Great Patriot War didn't do swimmingly at first. So if they didn't need or didn't want or couldn't utilize foreign assets buying it and transporting it would be an absolute waste of resources that would make an NVKD officer twitch with fury..
matchesburn matchesburn 1. Beggars can't be choosers since the air force was decimated in the first week and their industry had to rely on building wooden planes for a while. It's also not like the allies never gave them the worst stuff on purpose. The British and Americans quite famously dump the P-39 Areocobra on the USSR because they didn't like the plane. 2. It's not like they always disliked the planes they got. As the video stated they loved the Douglas and American Bombers. They also liked the P-39 and when they were in a position to be more selective as the war continued (liked mention again in the video) they were able to make changes to the planes they received. Like the upgraded P-39 in the Supercobra where the Soviets managed to find and fix the cause of the flat spin (by moving the cannon forward).
matchesburn because when help did come, it was not really needed. But when help WAS needed (in 1941 and '42) the USSR got little to none. This is why Russians say that lend-lease was insignificant, because of poor timing by allies - intentional or not.
sgg read my previous comment pls. Its not the amount but THE TIMING of it. A little help when it is most needed goes a long way. A lot of help when unnecessary can be hardly considered help at all.
Yea.. Most of the "industry moving east" part was actually not at all industry moving. Most of the industry was destroyed, the industry in the ural mountans was mostly new made in box industry in the lend lease program. It worth noting that the box leaned lease industry was also used in the US. A lot of the Califonia industry expansion was made this way as well as the B17 and B29 plants in washington state. They actually used the exact same equipment as the USSR got.
+Illya Lypyak _"Beggars can't be choosers"_ By the Soviet governments own account during the war, as seen in this video, Lend-Lease was "insignificant." Meaning that from their point of view, in that report, that it was not useful. So therefore paying money for assets that didn't help would *_actually help them lose the war._* Context matters. _"The British and Americans quite famously dump the P-39 Areocobra to the USSR because they didn't like the plane."_ ...And the Soviet pilots that flew them, quite famously, loved the living hell out of the aircraft - which confused anyone outside of the Eastern Front because literally no one else wanted it. The benefit was that the Aira/King Cobra fit the parameters of the Eastern Front and it had a hell of a 37mm cannon for killing bombers and attack aircraft. ...But then why order them if they were "insignificant." Context matters. Words matter. _"They also liked the P-39 and when they were in a position to be more choose as the war continued (liked mention again in the video) they were able to make changes to the planes they received. Like the upgraded P-39 in the Supercobra they managed to find and fix the cause of the flat spin (by moving the cannon forward)."_ But, again: *_Context matters._* By basing what we see here from the Soviet government's own mouth... any positive effects or any effective aircraft is a moot point since the ENTIRE Lend-Lease effort for the Soviet air force was insignificant. It's like multiplication. 0 times 10 is still zero. It doesn't matter if you increase it by another ten. It's still zero. The fact remains that the Soviets claimed Lend-Lease support was "insignificant." If it was, why the hell were they ordering the aircraft? The fact that they liked them wouldn't matter. The fact that they were effective wouldn't matter. Because we have the Soviets telling us right here that it was insignificant, regardless. Again. Context matters. But I think you missed my original point: the claim by the Soviet government that Lend-Lease support was "insignificant" is horseshit by the very nature that they continued ordering, using, paying for and liking the aircraft that they got. Whether you want to label it propaganda or what have you, that's up for debate. But, sorry but no, you don't continue ordering thousands of airframes and paying for them *_if they actually aren't helping you win a war._* Hence why this is a lie.
Absolutely great coverage of a contentious subject, and your intro was a hoot! One thing, however, in future videos, could you print your sources in larger type and keep them onscreen for longer? That would help us with portable devices and/or vision problems. Thanks for your superb, always thoughtful content.
Thank you for all of your efforts! They are appreciated!
Great Video! Really Helpful! Much Appreciated!
I had several relatives that worked in war plants in the Detroit area. I remember one uncle who worked for one of the car manufacturers and was so vital to the effort, he was ordered to stay in place. He would describe in many of his recollections of the great amount of parts that were boxed in his plant with destination Russia.
The true impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet Aviation (and the Soviet war effort itself) was food and trucks. The food was especially important since Germany had taken over most of the Soviet Union's bread basket in the Ukraine.
Bri Twokay Lend-Lease only supplied 25% of total Soviet food stuff.
@@kingnevermore25 Only ? , try working or fighting with 25% less food in your belly .
Edward Corran If you are regularly eating your food which represents 100% and i come along and start supplying you with 25% more of your original quantity of food, will it impact your abilities if i after some time all of a sudden stop giving you this 25%? No it wont. You will just return to your normal diet that you had previously.
@@kingnevermore25 Damn so we were actually hindering the Soviet war effort by making them fat.....
Edward Corran Thats not what i said my point was just that the Soviets would have easily endured the war without the US food aid.
Excellent! Best short history of this important topic! You do good work.
Absolutely great videos. Thank you for your work!
I just found your channel and have been binge watching. I've been into WWII aviation my whole life. Most everything I see is just rehashing well known info. Many videos on KZhead talk about one plane and slip a totally different plane's footage in, they can't even get that right. At that point they are totally discredited and I'm thoroughly disgusted. With your material I'm actually learning something! I'm glad I found this channel!
Matt Shellback
My uncle lived in Edmonton Alberta Canada during ww2. He worked at Edmonton munti airport and saw a very large volume of u.s. aircraft with red stars being fixed or flown through at Edmonton on the way to Russia. This was in the thousands of aircraft.
A beautiful introduction to this session! Love the idea.
Thank you for this video. The objectivity with which you presented the information is a tribute to you and the relevance of the statement that history is often remembered as only the historians that write it.
3 out of 5 top Soviet aces was flying western Lend-Lease fighters.
Source: Dude trust me
XD
Alexander Pokryshkin: Started with the MiG 3 but got bulk of kills with P-39. Rejected the Yak-3 as undergunned and the La-7 after Alexander Klubov died in a landing accident due to hydraulics failure. Ivan Kozhedub: Primarily La-5 and La-7. Top ace by means of personal kills in the Allies during WWII. Grigoriy Rechkalov: Bulk of kills in P-39. Also flew I-153, I-16, Yak-1, and other Soviet aircraft. Nikolai Gulayev: Started in Yak-1 and later transitioned to P-39. Kirill Yevstigneyev: Primarily La-5 and La-7. Do that's at least 2/5 and easily argued as 3/5.
Worth Noting that the La-5, La-7 and the I-16 (as well as the I153, but that was mostly produced prior to the lend lease) was made with US imported engines or with equipment imported fromt he US (converted to metric). It was not even a copy, it was just the same engine. Yak-1 was made with Klimov M-105 that was a sligtly modified M-100 that was a licensed Hispano-Suiza. They did receve quite a lot of those int he lend lease program to.
A few good aces does not mean the plane is good. I can find 50 more pilots with as good scores in native planes.
Very interesting. Thank you for all your work on this topic.
This video is exceptionally well crafted. Visually stimulating as well as informative. More in this style please.
Chuck Yeager loved the P39 and I'm sure the Russians were happy to have them. If one of your top combat pilots was happy with a plane and would be willing to fly it in combat that's good enough for me.
It was a mediocre plane that often fought in lower altitudes and was negligible in close combat. The Soviets did indeed like using it as it took very little effort for them to take down Luftwaffe aircrafts.
It had absolutely NO legs, impossible spin recovery and took forever to get to 15K feet. The 37mm was slow to fire and a jamomatic. In short... it was a pos.
@@fawnlliebowitz1772 that pos as you state was very nasty on the deck and could hold its own . Just ask the Soviet pilots who loved her on the Eastern Front ❤️. Perhaps a little more research on your part before you make a statement like that.
@@davegeisler7802 Research would obviously do you well. The Russians were also flying shit like biplanes and I-16's as fighters. They downed some slow moving bombers by RAMMING them. Even a P39 would be an upgrade. Try and recover from a flat spin, couldn't be done. It was a pos, small wonder we gave them away.
@@fawnlliebowitz1772 we gave the P39 away because they were outclassed at high altitude due to lack of a supercharger , now down low on the deck a total and I repeat total different story , listen now because im gonna hit you with some facts !!! they could outurn a BF109E and were faster at sea level, please do some research before you tell me things that arent true !
Ooo synced upload! Nice :D 10/10 german precision
Nice work here. just found you the other day. the pearl harbor lae-salamua raid. I love ww2 aviation and have read most of those books you have shown. I love the graphics and the commentary. A decade or so, when the wall fell, i found some research on the russian fighter aces of the korean war. might be a good subject, since few people know of that. continue the outstanding job. Thanks.
I knew a P-51 pilot that was stationed in Alaska during the war and he told me that one of there most active missions was to fly to the Russia boarder and wait for the the Japanese naval ships to leave port and waters and then attack the ships. The Russians would get lend lease goods in at these ports and then turn around and resell the goods to Japan. I was told that on more than one mission that USA aircraft where damaged but the pilots would make a landing at the Russian airport and where seen waving at there wing man to indicate that they where ok but later on told by the Russians that the pilots where killed attempting to make a landing and that there was no way to return the bodies because they where so badly burned.
Sound like B.S
@@dmitrizorkin3851 it true the man was Avery good pilot after the war he had plane that would fly people to the hospital it wasn’t a Medevac plane but could hold a stretcher and a medical person flew that till the mid 1980’s and had a heart attack while flying some one to the cities to the hospital the FFA let him keep his license since there wasn’t anyone else to do the job he stopped that once a Medevac helicopter was available from the cities then he flew for the DNR tracking wolfs till he had another heart attack and died while flying tracking wolfs. He radioed in just before he died and the Air Force sent a plane to find him and track him they followed the plane till it crashed. He was a very good man and very honorable and the story I told you about his time as a P-51 pilot is very true he never stop trying to find out about his buddy he was in contact with the state department and the Russian government till his death to find out what happened and his case wasn’t the only one the same thing happened to several B-29 crews and that is verified by the United States government. And everything I told you is true we live in a very rural area where the nearest hospital that can handle trauma patients is over 2 hour away by air even today and over 5 hours by car. I’ve seen some of the pictures when I was young of his time in WW2 as my grandfather was a good friends with him and they are incredible to look at and know the things they did to protect us in Alaska during the war.
Sounds like fuddlore....
@@georgewhitworth9742 it may sound like bull but it is all true we live in a very rural area and the nearest trauma center is 5 hours by ambulance. So some rule where sometimes bent back in the 1980’s. When he died from a heart attack they think they lost radio contact and there was a air force jet in the area found the piper cub that he was flying and they just circled his airplane till it ran out of fuel and then called in the wreck location it still took two days on the ground to get to it and there was a bonus on the way there they found a aircraft that was missing since the 1950’s. As for the B-29’s the Air Force tried to get them back and one was torn apart and backward engineered and the other two where used for training Russia crews for use on the Tupolev TU-4’s which where a copy of the B-29 the Russians made over 800 of these aircraft
It would also be interesting to see a time-wise breakdown of imports vs domestic aircraft... So plotting imports and domestic production for each month of the war as it may well be the case that the relative importance of imports changed throughout the war.
No one can deny that the Soviets did the heavy lifting in ww2. But no one should under estimate the contribution of foreign aid. The Soviets got to Berlin riding on the backs of donated Studabaker trucks. Also remember the resources used to make the ships that had to go thousands of miles to Northern Russia. Russia could shift all of its resources toward ground warfare. It didn’t need aircraft carriers, intercontinental bombers, amphibious landing craft, or fleets of submarines. Also USSR never had to fight on more than one front. USA had to deploy across oceans to fight in Africa Italy Europe and The Pacific. UK had to fight those fronts plus the home front. Ww2 was a global conflict. Hopefully we all learn from it
Sos mate we will never learn
Frank yes they did have the heaviest fighting against Germany, but the US had a 2 front war to fight. Why does everyone forget that there was a big Naval operation going on in the Pacific. As if fighting the Japanese was a cake walk.
The USSR surley did the heaviest of the bleeding but that in part is due to proximity and having a command economy and a military highly resistant to fluidity and dynamism.
Well that's just it, for the UK and USA it was a global conflict, spreading their combat forces and resources all over the planet to fight on opposite sides of the globe and to help allies all over the globe. For the USSR it was a regional conflict, with all of their combat and logistics focused on their (admittedly large) homeland and against one (admittedly large) front. The same thing that made the war so costly for them also made the war much simpler to prosecute.
That's not entirely true, they did fight the Japanese in the east as well
Great video as always bis!
As a Librarian, I greatly appreciate your citations and source analysis.
I'm glad they so appreciated the "insignificant" help from the UK, which was getting the shit bombed out of it, and whose merchant ships braved the twin enemies of extreme cold and the Kriegsmarine's U-boats to get to the USSR, when we needed those tanks, guns, aircraft and munitions badly ourselves.
Aha, because a rival state during a height of Cold War should have acknowledged its shortcomings or help that it was provided in the past by its current geopolitical rival. How many positive western publications about Soviet WW2 war efforts from same time period did you saw?
I’ve just had to order that book you looked at ‘Soviet Air Force in WWII’ thank you.
Great Video. You did an excellent job
Great vid!!! Cheers
when discussing the earlier delivered aircraft as being viewed by the Soviets as poor compared to later variants, you mentioned earlier in your video about domestic fuel and it's effects on foreign aircraft. This may very well have played a part in their view of the aircraft as opposed to the later versions since better fuels that were then available.
Most of the interviews of Soviet combatants I've seen show that they generally liked and appreciated the Lend Lease equipment they used. There were some exceptions of course and some contributions were much more significant than others. I wouldn't put much stock into what the Soviet Govt. says after the fact.
thats alittle biased, considering the soviet government openly stated lend lease was important for trucks and fuel (and less openly food). if we trust them on that why not trust them on other things? as for soviet combatants, german combatants like and appreciated captured allied stuff but we know such captured equipment made little to no effect on their war effort for the most part. lend lease combat equipment could (and from what information that speaks of the bigger picture indicate is) like this.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 Yes, I AM biased against the former Soviet Govt. and modern revisionists who defend them. No, I do not trust either.
Post war Soviet combat footage was carefully edited to eliminate scenes showing LL equipment! The first time I saw footage of US/UK LL equipment was a Burt Lancaster narrated documentary series on the "Great Patriotic War" made in the early or mid 90's. One of their top aces flew P-39's and loved it. He was also extremely proud of his USAAF DFC!
there is a saying in my country - after the fight everyone is smart
Old Red Amy vet once told me that without american canned food they would probably starve to death. Also every time he mentions wheeled trucks, it`s always Studebaker, rather than some domestic soviet trucks. Not that it`s surprising, considering that IIRC US supplied ~2 times more wheeled vehicles than USSR produced during the war. Also people usually forget that despite numbers of, for example, tanks, were low, those tanks were provided early in the war, when SU was unable to produce those in large numbers. Obviously those numbers are overshadowed by numbers of tanks produced by the soviets later, but the problem is that there might not have been enough time to transport and set up factories to produce them, if it wasnt for lend-lease tanks that were used to hold off germans. Aslo a lot of equipment that was used to produce tanks also came to SU via Lend Lease, though people tend to forget about it.
Thanks for informative vid !!!
In terms of reverse engineering it was priceless.
You mean copying american designs.
@@boyanrushkov1755 yes that's precisely what reverse engineering means
Well making your own based on an older design.
@@jonnymoka if by older you're talking about the state of the art american b29
@@AsbestosMuffins They reverse-engineered one that force-landed on Soviet soil and produced it as the Tu-4.
Very interesting and informative, on a side note the picture of all the P-63's on the air strip was taken very rear my house at the Bell plant in Niagara Falls New York. And all the P-40's where also built near me in Buffalo New York. There is a Russian P-39 that was found and is now being restored in Niagara Falls. I need to go see sometime. Great work.
4:39 Some Soviet production numbers to give context: Polikarpov I-16 (produced between 1935 and 1940): ~10000 units built. LaGG-1 (1940 prototypes): ~100. LaGG-3 (1941-1944): ~6000. La-5 (1942): ~10000. MiG-3 (1940-1941): ~3500. Yak-1 (1940-1944): ~8500. Yak-3: (1944-1946): ~5000. Yak-7 (1940-1943): ~6000. Yak-9 (1942-????): ~16000. So yeah, big numbers but in Russia big numbers are what often shows up.
great video mate!
Thanks for this video. I believe you have presented a very fair, factual, view of Lend Lease.
Great video, but next time please use accurate borders for Finland in WW2, and not the 1947 ones. This mistake with Finland is extremely common in historical maps, documentaries and videos alike.
Do people even know what that looks like anymore lol?
Russia should return it to Finland...Karelia and so on
After fixing road surface's, Asphalt roads has more potholes than teenager has pimples. and some of the backroads remind's of Mudrunner/Snowrunner's roads
So too are the ones showing Kuwait in WW II maps!
From all of my reading on the subject, lend lease played a significant role early on in the Soviet Union’s fight with Germany. During the time when Soviet factories were being packed up and moved beyond the Urals, production was almost nothing. Lend lease planes and tanks helped keep the German advance from being more of a free for all than it already was. The Soviets also benefited from lend lease when in the technology they pilfered from the equipment they received. There were certain pieces of equipment the soviets loved and couldn’t get enough of. Duce and a half trucks, jeeps, P39’s and P63’s were very well liked and in high demand. On a somewhat related note was the efforts of the Soviets to reverse engineer a B29 which had crash landed in Siberia after a bombing raid on Japan. This aircraft became the TU-4.
From all of my reading of subject land lease was method of fighting Germany without American blood. The real question is: could the USA be victorious over Germany without help of Soviets?
@@bobandaklu7213 Manhattan Project. Enough said? The German Volk narrowly missed out on the fireworks.
@@HAL-nt6vy It is very questionable if Manhattan Project could be completed in case that SU capitulated in 1941. Uranium ore for Manhattan Project was delivered from Belgian Congo, that already in 1942 would be in German hands. Do you realize that if SU capitulated Britain would have no chance to survive, so American B-17 and B-29 would have no base for operations against Germany? How about technology transfer from Germany to Japan, e.g. submarines? HAL (one letter back from IBM), my boy, Roosevelt was not an idiot, but very clever man.
@@bobandaklu7213 What about that Uranium in the US that Hillary and Bill sold to Russia? The Manhattan Project had some smart people. A Lot of people. I bet they could have found it or solved any such obstacles in some way. The basic factor was the enormous advantage the USA had in industrial production and natural resources. Germany and Japan relied on shock and awe. The war was won by statistics, a brave stubborn Anglosphere, and a brave Russian populace with plentiful acreage.
@@HAL-nt6vy Hillary and Bill bought 500 tons of uranium from Russia. They didn't sell nothing but false promises. US would probably solve problem with uranium, but would it be in time? After Nagasaki bombing US didn't have any other bomb to drop. It would take months to build the fourth one. Uranium on US soil was found later. If the USSR had capitulated in 1941 Hitler would have immense resources, so he would be able to fight war for several years. Even worse, very soon he could defeat British in Africa and Britannia itself, then India, then China. Of course, together with Japanese. Then, Latin America. At the end of 1948 only USA and Canada would remain free. And then....
Well done! Great video.
Even if one uses the Soviets own numbers One in six of the aircraft the Soviets had during the war was foreign made. But there is much more, the Bombing of Germany forced the Germans to Defend their air space, and prevented the production of 15000 more German airplanes. Also as you noted the west supplied the tools and metal to build the improved planes which the Soviets built later in the war. If one Looks a German vs Soviet Aircraft production Numbers, one sees that the Germans are out building the Soviets right up to 1945. Without the continued war in the west, without western war aid, of all types, the war would have been very different for the Soviets.
And without the Soviets, the war would have been very different for the West.
@@SeanMirrsen True, but without the west the Soviets either lose the war or fight a much longer, and yes harder war if they win at all.
@@davidtong2776 That's the same for the west as well though. The massive man power and equipment sucking eastern front ate up insane amounts of resources of the germans, but continued bombing destroying and disrupting their production and infrastructure, not to mention tying down forces in case of invasion, played no small part in the Soviets being able to hold them back as much as they did I'd put doubt on saying it was equal parts West or East that defeated germany, but it's close enough to call it that. precise degrees of credit are overrated anyway The saying about it being " won with American Steel, British Intelligence, and Soviet Blood" is pretty on point. Without any one of them, the others would have faced an immensely more difficult fight.
Very interesting. But Germans constantly asked why the western powers were actively aiding the communists? Who many consider to be the actual and underlying cause of the Second World War. Adolph, although he knew the massive risks, knew his only chance was to beat Stalin to the punch. (In his general's diaries) IT ALL COMES BACK TO THE ROTHSCHILD MONEY OCTOPUS. A certain group wanted Germany busted. It's still going on. Now in 2020 this same lot of commies are causing havoc worldwide under an assortment of guises.
@@Joesolo13 Sadly Russia and China paid the price, for a war which left there people enslaved.
One big factor is, without a doubt, time. The USA started delivering in late 1942, when the situation was already stabilized, while the British started way earlier (but contributed way less). In the worst moments of the war, when the Germans seemed unstoppable, the USSR received little to no help: they were on their own. Yet, they managed to stop them. The lend-lease kicked in when the USSR started the offensives, but that was also the time when the Russian factories were pumping ridiculous amounts of aircraft and equipment. So in my opinion, it contributed mainly in the offensive, and was very useful in that regard, but I still think the key winning factor was managing to stop the Germans in 1941. Also, I'd like to point out that the amount of fuel delivered by the allies throughout the war is very little compared to the Soviet production. But again, we should know when that fuel was delivered, and who delivered it!
The Russian winter stopped the Germans, not the soviet army or airforce. The unheeded warnings that British Intelligence provided to the Russians was worth several soviet divisions. Through incompetence the soviets lost thousands of troops and huge amounts of (poor) equipment. If the winter had not come the Germans would have continued to roll on. How can the soviets have pumped out "ridiculous" amounts of equipment when those numbers were dwarfed compared to what US factories and shipyards 'pumped' out'? How many ships, aircraft carriers and submarines did the soviets produce? The US manufactured several hundred of one destroyer type alone. The soviets could not begin to match that that sort of capacity.
@@blowingfree6928 I think you'll find the winter myth has been completely destroyed in recent times. It was the autumn mud that stopped the germans. The mud halted the advance. Reports from the front were pleased with the real winter as the roads were firm and the advance could (and did continue). As for casualties, the percentage lost to the cold was not significant when you lose 40-50 thousand combat casualties a month anyway. The winter didn't stop the germans.
@@blowingfree6928 no it was not winter, nor mud. German machinery wasn't built for blitzkrieg requiring runs of 1,000 or more miles. Their repair system was anemic compared to the allies. They transformed into an early 1900's army on their journey, with the majority of their vehicles breaking down while receiving little in replacemwnts - except for 750,000 horses, that is. The ww2 German army was ALWAYS a ww1 army with a comparitively tiny mechanized army fighting alongside it. Horses were always a big part of the ww2 German army. By comparison, the US used essentially no horses. Two thousand TYPES of vehicles were used in the attack on the Soviet Union. 96 types of personnel carrier, 111 types of truck, 37 different motorcycles. It was actually IMPOSSIBLE to keep these working for the long run from Poland to Moscow. By November 1941, armored divisions were reporting approximately 12% of their vehicles still functioned. They started the invasion with half their tanks being Panzer 2's and Czech TNHP-38's, but having 12% left of all vehicles as they approached Moscow was certainly even worse. Having transformed into a non-mechanized army, it would have been better for tham if, at that point, they could have magically swapped that army with the 1914 army that invaded france and belgium.
muh winter MUH WINTER. Zhukov has nothing on General Winter of the Red Army. Who wouldna thunk it, the mighty Wehrmacht with the best prussian trained officers straight outta potsdam forgot to bring winter coats! For all the magnificent training they undertook breathing in the legacy of von Clausewitz himself with the ghost of Fredrick the great looking on as they learned about Napoleon's march on Moscow ... they made the rookie mistake. They forgot it got cold in winter, during their invasion into russian in the middle of winter (starting in july, the start of winter)... the famous nonstop winter of 1941 to 1945. Perhaps the coldest winter in human history (the dasterdly russian somehow is unaffected by the cold, all those frozen red army soldiers from the winter war must be finn lies!). Clearly the weather is to blame here!
The Germans were stopped by their own overconfidence and arrogance, and the enormous (and largely unsuspected) resources the USSR possessed.
SOVIET WOMBLE @ 5:20 - 5:28
I KNEW IT!!! Thank you for confirming my supisions
Yup :D
I think his avatar appeared twice in the Military History Visualized too.
O ha now i saw it
I saw that. Lol
Excellent Chris 👌
Once again, another outstanding presentation.
I remember standing next to a p39 at a michigan air show that was warming up, I could see the plane violently shaking side to side from the torque of the engine. Someone was very brave to sit on top of that bronco.
Many soviet aces thanx airacobra for their golden stars. Stalin once said: In red army retreat needs more courage than advance. So for pilots was better to use plane what they get than disobey order. And airacobra was one of the better planes avaible for stalins falcons.
@@user-gn6cf8uc8d the P39 was nasty on the deck ❤️
I spoke with Russian pilots who loved the P39 and had great success with it
@Peter Lorimer All depended on altitude. Lack of a turbo meant the P39 couldn't go high but it could handle itself well up to about 12/15,000 ft. which is why the Russians liked it so much. They took about 5,000 of them along with another 2400 P63's
@@tomhart837 Yes - the nature of the fighting in Russia, with CAS much more important than deep strike or strategic bombing, meant that strikes and interceptions tended to take place at much lower altitudes than in western Europe or (especially) the Pacific.
Great video!
Nicely done sir.
Looks like Soviet Union invasion of Poland in September 1939 went unnoticed...
I think the Soviet Union preferred to portray itself as the great Nazi slayer. If I was Polish it would be very difficult for me to see my former invader then pretend to be my liberator. And then occupy my country. The Poles are held in high regard for their bravery and suffering.
Junior read a book and he won't let you forget it. History made a comic book. The Russians were just about the only ones that appreciated the p39 and strove to make it work. It was a labor of love.
Good story, glad you brought this to light.
I read the account of Russian ace Pokryshkin on fighter plane deliveries under lend-lease. He was very fond of P-39 Aerocobra and rather critical of most other planes supplied under lend-lease. He loved P-39 Cobra, he piloted it in 42-44 and it was his weapon of choice, with which he achieved most of his 53 victories.. He said its arrival was very timely. He started on Mig-3. It was a decent plane, on par in speed with German planes but there weren't enough of them and they were hard to pilot, there were few and bad radios, and they BURNED being partially made of wood. P-39 was all metal, faster, more aerodynamic, picked up a lot of speed in a dive, good for high altitudes (oxygen mask), armored chair back, good radio, and a fabulous 30-mm gun - all of which combined was perfect for boom-zoom tactic Pokryshkin employed to score multiple victories. He also didn't like some things about it - prone to stall (very demanding on piloting skills, although not for him), heavy (relatively slow climb, quickly losing energy in maneuvers), too slow by 1944. At the same time Pokryshkin was rather critical and dismissive of most other lend-lease planes: the ones delivered at the start of the war (41-43) were old, underperforming models, inferior to best German or Russian planes, particularly disliked were Hurricanes and Spitfires (no enough speed, climb, carburetor stall on dive, no cannons just machine guns) but they came at the time of desperate need and pilots were happy to have anything. At the time Russia had Mig-3, Yak-1 fighters which were better but there weren't enough of them and there were also I-16 fighters which were worse (slooow). Later (in 44-45) Russian production picked up and the models produced (La-5, La-7, Yak-3) were also far more superior in performance (higher speed, climb, maneuverability, rapid-fire 20-mm cannons) and the imported planes were not relevant any more or significant in numbers and performance. Bottom line, speaking of fighter planes alone, the lend-lease help was not perfect, the allies did not send their best planes, but it was very needed and it came at a critical moment. Later on in the war, Soviet-produced planes made lend-lease fighter deliveries not so relevant in terms of numbers and performance.
Very good editing in this video. I knew that the Soviets used Bostons quite effectively against German shipping but I never knew all the different types of planes they got. Not just crappy early war planes, but typhoons and mosquitoes!
Opinions are like NKVD bullets. That's darker than the basement of the Lubyanaka.
Daniel Hixson Enough nonsense
Well, You can consider opinions of aces since they had more political will to tell what they wanted to tell and ignore the propaganda pressure.
oooooooooooooo !
Excellent work sir
Heel Goed, Goede analyse. Don't stop now, Professor
Soviet pilots had their best results with the Bell P-39. "Five of the 10 highest scoring Soviets aces logged the majority of their kills in P-39s." Wikipedia
First of all, it's 4 out of top 10 aces, 3 of them being Pokryshkin and his "students" (Rechkalov, Glinka), having their first significant success at Kuban. Furthermore, there were far more aces flying P-39, but most of them were from 9 Gv. IAD, being the same division Pokryshkin served in. Sure they came back to the frontline after rearming to P-39 fighters, but more importantly they began to use new strategies at that time regarding patrolling and interception. Making the score look like a fighter's achievement instead of pilot's is a joke. Furthermore, Ivan Kozhedub (soviet #1, 64 kills in La fighters) calls Pokryshkin his mentor, and soviet #5 Kirill Evstigneev was Kozhedub's friend from the same regiment.
@@MDzmitry - Soviet planes were utter garbage compared to other allied planes. Stop trying to twist around facts and statistics to state otherwise.
@@rooh5825 well, I said what I wanted, and you are free to believe whatever you want
Slow moving Stukas and Iron Annies were meat on the table. What was the kill ratios against 109's or 190's?
@@rooh5825 I think what you are calling ‘garbage’ is ONE OF (listen here buckaroo ONE OF,don’t think I am saying it’s the best)fighters and ground attack planes or GAP of the war.Firstly fighters,At first the red airforce had garbage planes,yes but later they developed planes like LA-5,Yak-9,Yak-3 and others.Secondly,The GAP planes were IL-2 and later IL-10,both of which were very good ground attack planes of the eastern front.Thirdly,German pilots were told to NOT engage Yak-9s AT ALL.I think my evidence is well presented,I use no sources or documents,just my own mind.Please read this and say your opinion,thank you.
Ungrateful. Putin's revisionism at its finest. Soviet combat pilots loved the P-39. They were less enthusiastic about the P-63 though. The A-20 Havoc (as the DB-7) served with distinction.
Revisionist! look what is happening to our country now, anything the blacks don't like or reflects poorly on them (as most things should) just disappears.
@@kennethleftwich1939 Wanting traitors to be regarded as such and not celebrated with statues and their names plastered all over military bases, government buildings or schools is not revisionist history, it's what you do with traitors after they're defeated.
@@kennethleftwich1939 Aaaaand now the comments section is on fire. Thanks for bringing contemporary politics into this. Hop in, let's go find out who asked.
@Рамис Карама At the time when P-39s, P-40s and Hurircanes came to Russia, there was no fighter in USSR arsenal that could do anything significant to Luftwaffe. Looking just at raw numbers without timeline is mistake. And I dont understand why you are counting 30mln lives lost as "paid for land-lease". Wouldn't it be more without LL?
Grow up it's the C21st.
Wunderbares Video. Danke.
Excellent. Thank you!
Dat intro though!!!!! :-)
Something about that book made me feel very inspired
I love the use of Pink Floyd
When talking about Soviet lend lease it must be also rembered that the actual Atlantic shipping run Russia was exceptionally hard and dangerous. It was much longer than the standard run to and from Britain and the weather was much worse in that area. Especially before escort carriers were developed the Luftwaffe and U-boats took full advantage of the isolation of these convoys.
also, those convos were Canadian. so the US doesn't get any credit.
@@JeanLucCaptain and british
@@Damo2690 yes! and one of those convoys PQ-17 i think, was completely decimated because the RN pulled all the escorts to go after Terpitz
@@JeanLucCaptain If the RN had not decided to prevent the Tirpitz been allowed to roam far more British and Canadian Merchant Ships would have been lost along with their crews freezing to death.
@@trevorhart545 that's cold comfort to all the helpless merchantmen watching their guards disappear if the horizon.
Interesting, thankyou!
I have something to add. Everyone should know that many famous Soviet fighter aces flew P-39 Airacobra. The most famous of them is colonel Alexander Pokryshkin (about 60 scores). In 1944 he was offered to start flying new La-7 instead of P-39 (and remove all the P-39s in his air division). He refused. He and his pilots flew P-39s since 1943 until the end of the war.
The most important point made was not that we gave them so many planes, but rather supported their domestic production. This was true in almost all sectors of the wartime Soviet economy. They would have lost the capacity for oil production, without American equipment and engineering expertise. They relied heavily on Detroit for truck production, so their motor industry could focus on tank and aircraft engines. Railroad equipment, too was largely American. And this is not to mention the vast stores of food, canvas, uniform material, and medical stores sent by the West. This is what allowed them to empty their towns of men for the front, and focus on combat arms production, at the expense of all else.
The vast majority of those "Detroit" trucks were Studebakers, built in South Bend, Indiana.
They loved the p-39’s 37mm cannon in this plane and, I *think* went to use a derivative in the mig-15.
Nope :) N-37 on MiG-15 is a derivative from NS-37 (Used in Yak-9T and Il-2 from 1943)
@midgetydeath there werent any Shermans before the war.
@@bad74maverick1 that is not true . Sherman , with its stabilizer , 2 .30s and one .50 up top was generally more capable than the average pz4 or its russian counterpart the T-34 . It had a better crew compartment as it was bigger than its counterparts and it was easier to get out of the tank in case of an emergency.
also the hull armour of the sherman was pretty much invincible to the german 50mm which can be found in the panzer 3 and the 76.2mm russian cannon which is the main gun of t34
@@bad74maverick1 keep reading that death traps novel bud
Ace intro. Great content as ever. The world is right.
Great intro!! If I were to find that 'insignificant' bit myself, I would promptly throw that book in the dumpster. I grewup in northern Canada and the area is littered with aircraft that didn't make it to the USSR, a fraction of the ones that did on the Lend-Lease route. I have been lucky to attend a few of the crash sites myself, and along with those and the magnitude of the effort put into both the Alaska Highway and the Canol project, the claim that the Americans made an insignificant contribution is pretty ridiculous. Actually, watching the show, I was shocked at how many aircraft the Brits were able to send!
I think Lend-lease was particularly important in the early days of the war, before soviet production had been moved further east and ramped up, had they Germans gained complete air superiority Barbarossa may have had a very different outcome. It's an opinion that i see frequently in WW2 discussions that the US only joined the war after it was already decided, which, if you have any grasp on history, you know is far from the truth. We wouldn't have seen a victory in Kursk or other great battles had the Luftwaffe enjoyed rule of the skies, and i think the Americans that gave their lives on liberty ships delivering factory equipment, ammo, fuel and airplanes deserve a greater deal of respect and credit for their role in a soviet victory over the Germans.
Captain Hecker True, but it wasn't just the Americans that gave their lives in the convoys. There were also Norwegians, Dutch, Icelanders and British.
+Captain Hecker do american pilots, sailors and marines that died in Pacific not deserve respect too? They do! But what's the claim that your own countrymen like to make? Two nuclear bombs won the war:\ There was no different outcome, people just greatly overestimate german war machine(in your case, Luftwaffe). They always had numerical, resource AND technological inferiority to Allies. This claim is just as empty as soviets on their last breath when country was about to collapse from exhaustion going to capture all of Europe after Berlin or, as some people above pointed out, Operation Sea Lion happening. Yes, USA joined the war in the same month germans completely failed to capture Moscow. Was it the last battle of the war? No. Would it matter? Also no. Germany had no resources to continue the war and thus had no resources to take the resources it needed. Just deal with it already. Heck, Britain and Commonwealth alone could have probably eventually won in Europe.
Plus it wasnt just aircraft. Tanks and many many trucks were provided to make the red army truly mechanized.
The US lend lease took affect only after the german army lost their thurst in 1943. I dont know what are you talking about, Luftwaffe had complete air superiority in the not early days but early years of the war. Also you are saying that anyone who thinks that the moment the US joined the war,the war was already decided has no grasp of history,thus saying that anyone who disagrees with you has no grasp on history. Now let me ask you something; Do you have any grasp on history?
Some planes and trucks that the U.S. sold to Russia for profit didn't determine the outcome whatsoever, shame on you for trying to take credit from where credit is due and give it to yourself. When did the U.S. enter the war? when it was over this way they couldn't lose, it would make not one day difference if the U.S. did or did not enter the war the Russians would of still entered Berlin on the day they did.
Good video remember Tactics are for amateurs, Logistics is for professionals. The Air Force without U.S. trucks etc to support it likely would have been mostly grounded.
Underrated comment.
Ingratitude aside, it looks like it was a pretty darned good arrangement for all parties concerned: Western hardware and logistical support for Russian blood, fortified by generous quantities of Hormel SPAM (notorious canned pork meat product). Certainly an unbeatable combination -- just ask Fritz und Hans who were reduced to choking down sawdust and goose fat in 1944-45. One aspect of this subject perhaps not well enough appreciated is how much the Russians owed to Western engine technology from the 1920s and '30s in the development of their own aero-engines used in WWII (sorry, I mean "The Great Patriotic War," if Stalin will forgive me). That is a video I would like to see some day. Bismarck, I've been enjoying your work for several years now; keep up the good work! You and Bo are a laugh riot! Thanks for the humor and enlightenment.
Great video thanks.
It's said that by 1944, every Red Army soldier on the Eastern Front had American rations in their haversacks. That was the greatest contribution we made.
I forget who said it, but, "An army marches on it's stomach."
@@benselectionforcasting4172 That would be Napoleon Bonaparte.
Thank you for your time in making this video. As ever, always interesting. I want to perhaps kick off a discussion point. The focus was on numbers. But lend lease and its effect probably needs to be broken down into a deeper discussion. The numbers matter, but their effect is amplified by the issue of 'when'. By taking end war figures, this hides a certain picture of what and when. The defense of Moscow was arguably greatly helped by British equipment - an example. Getting equipment into the Soviet forces hands when they had little or nothing could prove to be absolutely critical. The numbers tallied at the end may not properly show this. So there may have been particular months where lend-lease equipment was extremely critical - as in the example of defending Moscow, but that this does not get shown in just end war figure tally. The 3000 Hurricane's might be sneered at, but if at some point they provided a backbone, or filled a significant hole in a front or area for an airforce lacking domestic produced planes, then this filled a critical gap until such production got onto its feet. One also has to seriously hold the Russians to account when in the early days they had their pants round their ankles and lost almost their whole airforce caught on the ground. Again, at this point any allied planes offered should have been thankfully received. I personally find what Russia did completely disgusting. Its attitude and statements about Britain remain rotten to the core. Britain while on its knees and staring down its own destruction reached out and sent much equipment it could ill afford to give up, via amazingly challenging transport routes, at huge losses for itself. As for America, American aid to the Soviet Union was absolutely gob smacking in quantity and scale. A note on the pre-barbarrosa back story. The Soviets make very great claims about many sides of the war. Almost all of them gloss over some gigantic disasters created by themselves and where they took active roles in their own part of the sorry story. The invasion of Poland - where they allied up with Germany is often 'forgotten'. The repeated crimes against Poland from here - to the end of the war, and beyond into the cold war are staining the pages of history. They often cite that they were facing 200 German divisions. What they also fail to say, is that until the midnight hour of Barbarrosa - They were sending by express trains enormous amounts of supplies-to-Nazi-Germany. These supplies they would then spend the next years demanding/pleading be supplied by the Allies, and these supplies went a very long way to fueling and supplying in a logistical sense - 'Germany' and thus its 200 divisions. The Russians hoped to feed the hungry crocodile and only face being eaten last. One cannot condone the enormous levels of bankrupt thinking in play. Churchill wrote that the Soviet leaders were the greatest bunglers of the 2 world war. And its with that backdrop that it has to be remembered in terms of their terrible losses, their disaster on the first days where they lost almost their entire airforce and much of their army meant that LL filled terrible gaps, and they should forever be grateful for the help they got. But you will rarely ever see that from them.
Red Air Force veterans interviewed by an American in the early 90s stated that the Aira Cobra P-39 was well loved by Soviet pilots. It was not good for high altitude operations but below 8K ft where most of the combat on the Eastern front happened it worked well. The single cannon where the engine would normally be made it good at shooting down Stukas.
Alot of Soviet aces including Alexander Pokryshkin, Grigory Rechkalov and Nikolai Gulayev (all 50+ aces) called the Bell P-39 Airacobra and Bell P-63 Kingcobra their favorite fighters. They liked that 37mm cannon that was great on tanks and the heavy armor to protect them from ground fire.
To be fair, the Soviets did do a good portion of the work in the war, hell they even helped start it by co-invading Poland with Germany.
Lets not forget conquering 4 other sovereign countries.
Bill Dauterive get out of here western spy you lost 400k men we lost 28.5 million you did nothing remember that the only reason we are not denouncing you is that their is nothing to denounce
@@yeeterdeleter6306 Did nothing? Saved millions of Soviet lives with the food we provided.
@@yeeterdeleter6306 Literally millions of tons of food, ammunition, steel, coal, gasoline, oil, 15 million boots, 12k tanks and another 18-20k airplanes. But we did nothing. Also don't forget 50 billion dollars spent on domestic war production alone. Which is more than the Soviets could afford.
Ahmed Hasan have you heard of the pacific theater?
The history of the war would almost certainly have been different without lend lease, but to what extent is impossible to say
great research
LOVE THE MUSICAL INTRO - Hillarious