Dear visitors to our site,
We are
launching a new project dedicated to Lend-Lease.
First of
all, we will concentrate on Lend-Lease to the
Soviet Union.
However this doesn’t mean that other countries or recipients will be
neglected.
We are
starting with the publication of a number of historical documents, one
of which addresses the Quantities of Lend-Lease Shipments. A summary of
the report by the War Department during World War II, “Important Items
Furnished to Foreign Governments”, will be published here, for the first
time anywhere, on this site. Until now, a very limited number of
researchers had access to this rare document. We are glad that we have
an opportunity to publish it due to the kind assistance of Dr. Von
Hardesty, a well-known historian and curator of the National Air and
Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington,
D.C.
We hope
that this document will stimulate research activities and publications
from historical community around the World.
We are
planning to publish photographs of military equipment supplied via
Lend-Lease. We hope that these photographs will be of interest to
modelers and all those who are interested in military hardware.
We also
hope that our readers will submit photographs from their family albums:
many of their grandparents fought on Lend-Lease tanks, aircraft, and
ships. We would welcome memoirs of veterans with their evaluation of the
Lend-Lease weapons, equipment, and materiel.
We would
like to create a site that will be not only an informational resource,
but one that is academic in quality. We plan to publish scholarly
papers, which will be peer-reviewed. We have established an editorial
board to provide such reviews. At this time Dr. Von Hardesty from USA
(the author of Red Phoenix) and Carl-Fredric Geust from Finland (the
author of the Red Stars series of books) kindly agreed to participate in
the board activities. We plan to invite other reputable historians to
the editorial board. We are confident that in establishing an academic
quality to the site we will be able to attract many interesting
scholarly publications.
A few
words about Lend-Lease to the USSR. This topic is debated on the pages
of many different publications, including Internet sites. Many different
opinions, often contradictory ones, are expressed. We think that it is
impossible to look at the history of Lend-Lease in black and white
colors: everything was much more complicated than this, and not every
aspect of Lend-Lease could be measured in tons, dollars, or feet. Some
of the questions requiring discussion and research include the following
aspects:
-
How Lend-Lease influenced the technological culture of
the recipient countries
-
The influence of Lend-Lease equipment on the changes in
combat tactics (e.g. mass utilization of radios in aircraft)
-
Very little is known about “reverse” Lend-Lease;
specifically, shipments of rare ores and other material from the
USSR to the US
-
The influence of the combat and technical experience
gained by the Red Army with Lend-Lease equipment on weapons design,
manufacturing, and tactical development in the United States
-
Legal issues of using
US
equipment against Finland with whom the United States had diplomatic
relations
When the
number of airplanes supplied to the USSR is discussed, many publications
compare this number with the total production of the aircraft in the
Soviet Union. However, it should be noted that the total of almost 5000
Aircobras is comparable to the total production of 4560 Yak-3s, or 5661
Yak-7s (the list could be continued). This number, therefore, is
equivalent to a large aircraft factory, one which would have been
designed, constructed and supplied with manufacturing equipment and a
trained workforce, as well as state-of-the art technologies.
We hope
that our authors will raise these and other issues.
However,
with Lend-Lease or without it, soldiers on the battlefields of WW2
decided the fate of the war, and we are grateful to them for everything
they did for us.
We would
gladly appreciate it if our readers take time to submit constructive
suggestions on the structure, content, and design of our site.
Thank
you and welcome!
