Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "How German Engineering Genius Backfired so Badly: USA's Sherman Tank vs the Tiger Tank:" video.
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@tzenzhongguo data about how much the soviets got from lend lease is widely available.
4100 Sherman tanks were sent, but only 3,000 odd were received. Some were lost with transport ships sunk and the like.
As far as tanks (and also planes, btw) go, the numbers are basically insignificant.
The Soviets built 84,000 t-34's alone. Over 10,000 T26 tanks. Over 5,000 KV Heavy tanks. 7,000 IS heavy tanks. T-50's. T-60, T-70 and T-80 light tanks. The BT series of light tanks. Lots of T-28's too.
Then there's the huge numbers of armoured self propelled guns, which were the mainstays of the German Army too. The soviets built over 13,000 SU-76's. 4600 ISU-152's, 2400 ISU-122's, 4900 SU -100's, 2600 SU-85's, and tens of thousands of others.
People think that the Soviets basically went into battle with one person carrying the ammunition and one the gun. It may have been a good way to put pressure on you in Stalingrad video games but it's hardly a factual representation of the war.
Here's a little factoid that will blow your mind.
The soviets started WW2 with more tanks THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
They finished WW2 with more tanks THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
Don't get me wrong, Lend Lease was important, but NOT for what you think. It mattered for trucks to transport goods, and also for food shipments, as with so many tens of millions of Russian men serving and dying in their armed forces they didn't have the labour for the farms they had pre-war.
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How?
The main reason was the carnage of the Eastern front, and the German fear (rightly) of being captured by the soviets. A substantially larger volume of equipment and manpower was sent to the Ostfront to try and keep the soviets at bay long enough to get more favourable occupation conditions under US/British/French control than soviet control.
The T-34-85 changed matters on the Ostfront too. The T-34 (F-34) was not a massive upgrade on the original L-11 gun, but the D-5T and then the ZIS-S-53 changed things. Not bringing parity with the Tiger, far from it, but they had better ergonomics for the crew with the larger turret ring, and a far more powerful round which could penetrate the Tiger 1 from a kilometre away, a luxury the Americans would not have until very very late in the war.
Compared to the T-34-85, the Sherman, was inferior in direct combat in basically every way - mobility, armour, firepower. But the heavy losses the Russians were taking and inflicting in the east meant that America had far more ease in maintaining numerical superiority.
The other main advantages of the Sherman were far more to do with doctrine and logistics. The were much easier to operate, more reliable, and had better logistics supplies, air support, and better communications to coordinate.
The US eventually recognized that the Sherman could not easily go toe to toe with the Tiger, but delaying the Normandy invasion to develop a new variant with a better gun or even retrofitting (like the British did with a small number of "Firefly" Shermans) was not really an option. American doctrine had the M10, and as the war went on the M18 and M36 to deal with those threats.
Given that Tigers were few and far between and Panzer III, IV and StuG's were in far greater numbers it made sense not to complicate the logistics and give each type of armour specific goals.
Post war, the lessons of the limitations of the M4, and indeed the T-34 could be heeded. But until then, like the soviets realised, quantity had a quality all of its own.
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@tzenzhongguo They did receive those as well.
But if you ask the German pilots who served upon both the western front and the Ost front which was the most dangerous plane of the war and you might get a big surprise when they rank the Yak 3 right up there.
"During 431 sorties, 20 Luftwaffe fighters and three Junkers Ju 87s were shot down while Soviet losses amounted to two Yak-3s shot down."
When you're talking in excess of 10:1 that's pretty good kill ratios there against stuff like BF-109's. BF-109's were a pretty even match to the Spitfire right through the war, by the way, so the soviets were once again doing something right.
In a war, any extra hardware is good. Even if you don't rate it highly you can at least use it for training or reserve units to at least create "paper" divisions for defence, shows of force to other nations that might try and take advantage of your current situation, and quelling insurrection.
Even better, it's probably better than some of the weaker equipment still getting churned out at some of your less important/less upgraded factories.
P40's were far more of a thing for China. They really weren't ever up to the standard of European warfare.
P-51's were kind of useless for Russia for most of the war, too. They were more suited as a bomber escort designed for long range activity. Too heavy for the kind of combat seen over the ostfront, and Russia was short of large, long range bombers for most of the war so it couldn't really assist with escort or long range interception.
The Airacobra was "kind of" a good thing, for the Russians and the Free French, but had critical weaknesses, particularly an underpowered engine with a bad ceiling. This is why it was the French and Russians who used it, since it was effectively obsolete for the Americans and British - it couldn't fly high enough fast enough for supporting their bombing nor interception needs.
Which means, mostly, what you're explaining is America expecting kudos for sending their inferior/outdated equipment for other people to get killed in.
But for lower altitude dogfights this was not an issue, which is why both the free French and Russians got good use out of them..
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