Comments by "Gort" (@gort8203) on "Why Did Britain Sell Jet Engines to the Soviet Union?" video.

Don't confuse Lend-Lease with the postwar loan the U.S. made to help Britain recover. That was the 2% interest loan mentioned in the video. That loan was eventually repaid, but Lend-Lease was never intended to be repaid -- it was a cost the U.S. was able and willing to bear in support of the allied war effort.
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@ibex485 And the equipment they wanted to keep, which was minimal, was discounted at 10% of cost. It was expected that most of the equipment and supplies would be consumed by the war and would never need to be returned. Lend-lease was a huge transfer of wealth from the U.S. to Britain and Russia.
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Good points.
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@ibex485 The equipment delivered after the the war was paid for at the 10% rate because the British government wanted to keep it for post-war use and did not intend to return it. I'm sure most of the equipment shipped out during the war was 'destroyed' in one way or another. The cost of shipping it to back likely exceeded its value. We've all heard the story of why there were so many U.S. jeeps left behind in the Philippines after the war. The distributor caps were removed from the engines so they could be logged as disabled.
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And yours is the thanks they get for a 2% interest long-term loan to keep the country afloat. And let's just forget lend-lease, which was not a loan but a gift. The naval bases were traded for destroyers. Where do you think Britain would be without all this assistance.
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@markhepworth I see we are now bored with facts so it's time to play 'let's distract with hypothetical questions'. Okay: Do you think Britain would have lasted for those 2 years with support from America? Where do you think the world would be if America never got involved? Do you actually believe Britain have prevailed if Japan had not attacked and forced the American public into a war for which it had no appetite? (Winston Churchill breathed a massive sigh of relief when Hitler declared war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor.)
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@ivancho5854 "Without US assistance the UK probably would have made peace with the Third Reich." Exactly. That is nearly certain, and that's as far into the hypothetical I'm willing to go in this crowd. Nations always act in the own perceived interest. No one here has tried to claim sentiment as the purpose behind these events, so propping up that straw man to be slayed is just another distraction.
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It wasn't a shock. It was an escalation. The U.S. had the F-86 in service but didn't see the need to deploy it to what was being called a police action until the communists upped the ante.
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@nickdanger3802 "Tripartite Pact was a mutual defense pact, Germany and Italy had no obligation to defend Japan." Huh??? Who even mentioned the Tripartite Pact in relation to anything here?
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@nickdanger3802 I've done that before myself, no problem.
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@TyrannoJoris_Rex Yeah, as if professional fighter pilots were unaware that swept wing fighters existed. It was simply unexpected to see them in what was hoped would be a limited war in Korea. It was an escalation in weaponry that didn't take long to match.
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