Cobras and Shermans: Did the USSR help American Lend-Lease?

Today, when some Western powers consider it possible to not invite the President of the Russian Federation to the anniversary of the celebration of the landing of troops in Normandy, the question again arises about the size of the contribution of each member of the anti-Hitler coalition to the defeat of the Third Reich. It is customary to point to the famous Lend-Lease, which was supported by the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War.





After the signing of the Moscow Protocol on October 1, 1941, tanks, planes, guns, automobiles, explosives, foodstuffs and much more began to arrive in the USSR from abroad. American Studebakers and stew have long been a legend. In parallel, by the way, there was a “reverse Lend-Lease”: allies of the war received Soviet manganese and chrome ore, platinum, gold and wood.

The Kremlin tried to maximally compensate for the weaknesses of domestic industry, in which the war dealt a heavy blow. For example, the volumes of deliveries of foreign army automobiles were one and a half times higher than the amount produced on their own. The same can be said about rolling stock. A large role was played by imported explosives. That is, underestimate the contribution of Lend-Lease to the construction of a mobilization military economics and victory on the battlefield is not worth it.

However, arms supplied from the United States and Great Britain were evaluated differently by the Red Army men. Something in our realities proved to be good, but something not very. For example, the famous Soviet aces Alexander Pokryshkin and Grigory Rechkalov achieved the greatest success in air battles with the Nazis on the American fighter R-39 "Cobra" ("Aero Cobra"). These aircraft and their continuation P-63 (“King Cobra”) had high speed and good armament, however, after firing all the ammunition, their alignment was broken and they could fall into a tailspin. The USSR received Lend-Lease 4423 R-39 "Cobra" and 2397 R-63 from the United States.

But the British Hurricanes did not impress the Soviet leadership. According to the recollections of the environment, I.V. Stalin complained:



The aircraft were inferior to the German in speed, aerodynamics and armament. London “shoved” such machines into the Soviet Union 3082. However, at the beginning of the war, and British fighters were used at the front. More modern Spitfires were delivered reluctantly and in limited quantities.

As for the tanks, everything here looked much less unambiguous. The light and medium British tanks “Valentine” and “Matilda” were poorly adapted to our conditions and the confrontation with German troops, therefore they suffered heavy losses. High, bulky and insufficiently protected M3 tanks "General Lee" from the USA, Soviet tankers bitterly dubbed the "mass grave". Almost one thousand were handed over to us. American "Shermans" looked incomparably better against their background, they were delivered to us over 3600 pieces. The British Churchilli were even more impressive in terms of performance, but the British were greedy, giving only three hundred.

Thus, the contribution of the Allies to the victory over the Third Reich cannot be denied, cannot be exaggerated, nor can be minimized. Historians evaluate the Lend-Lease program differently. It would be fair to say that the USSR could do without these supplies and ultimately defeat Nazi Germany, but the price of such a victory would be higher than what had to be paid.