Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete7
Indeed and whilst I am sure the US contributions including sadly the loss of many lives is greatly appreciated by Europe and the Far East, it was the Russians that brought the Nazi era to an end.
Anyway back to the subject in hand after the above bit of irony.
Pete
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Yes and no. If it had just been them, they would have been rolled right over and it would have ended rather quickly.
It was the fact there there were two fronts, plus to a very great extent the amount of
equipment and munitions that were sent to them by the US that allowed them to prevail.
If your into Military
history at all. You would know that the Russian Military just about didn’t exist at the beginning of hostilities, it had been purged.
Just scroll down this article to see the numbers, over 300,000 cargo trucks alone, and those cargo trucks enabled both moving Soviet Industry and without them their Artillery wouldn’t have moved, etc.
We sent them over 14,000 aircraft, to put that in perspective the Brits fought the Battle of Britain with a little over 1,000 Spitfires, they had Hurricanes and other aircraft too of course.
https://www.rbth.com/defence/2016/03...st-hour_575559
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
However Hitler’s gross incompetence is what
lost them the war, as much as anything else.
However even the Brits would never have made it without US goods and supplies, even the famed Battle of Britain would have been
lost had the US not shown up before the battle with two very important innovations for the Spitfire, high octane aviation
fuel which greatly increased the
power output of the Merlin
engine and gave the spitfire greater speed and climbing ability, but at least important was the controllable
pitch propellor, until the US gifted them the right to build the controllable propellor all Spits flew with fixed
pitch props, which grossly killed performance.
100 Octane
Fuel increased the top speed by 34 MPH, which is a HUGE number, and increased the
service ceiling by 7,000 ft, another HUGE number, but that much more HP greatly increased the maneuverability and climb performance too. It “woke” up the Spitfire, it was American innovations that made the Spit what it was.
https://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/Pre...itfireFuel.asp
Story of the Hamilton Standard propellor and the Spitfire.
http://spitfiresite.com/2010/06/batt...ropellers.html
With the two speed wooden prop and 87 Octane gasoline in a Spitfire, the BF-109 was a far superior airplane and would have reigned supreme.
Even the wonderful Rolls Royce Merlin engine, the Americans made significant improvements in, the Brits allowed Packard to build it under
license, and the Packard built Merlin’s were superior to the Rolls built ones.
Then just as a minor thing, the US took on the Japanese with a lot of help from the Australians pretty much alone, so the US successfully fought a two front war.