Lend-Lease Armored Fighting Vehicles

The Soviets have always denigrated the quality of the tanks sent through Lend-Lease with the exception of the Sherman. In the case of most British tanks this is appropriate, but they did refuse the British offers of more modern Cromwell tanks in favor of continued deliveries of obsolescent Valentines. The British wished to discontinue production of the Valentine, but kept the lines going strictly for the benefit of the Soviets.

Another point often ignored by the Soviets is the proportion of Allied production represented by the Lend-Lease tanks. Britain sent some 14% of its total tank production to the USSR, much of it in 1941 and 1942, when its own forces in the Middle East desperately needed tanks. Virtually all of Canada's AFV production ended up in the Soviet Union. Many of these vehicles arrived in the first year and a half of the war when they were sorely needed to supplement Soviet production which was still gearing up.

One characteristic of Western AFVs that is little discussed by the Soviets was that the reliability of Western tanks allowed them to drive on long past the time that Soviet tanks had to be returned to the factory for a total mechanical rebuild. Soviet vehicles were purposely designed with short mechanical lifetimes. In combat this mattered little when the life expectancy of a tank was measured in days. But in training units the reliability of Western tanks was a godsend since they needed far less maintenance than Soviet tanks. Even in combat units this characteristic was useful; why else would 1st Guards Mechanized Corps convert from the T-34-85 to the Sherman, a tank with a smaller gun and thinner armor?

Many of the lighter Western tanks, such as Valentines and Stuarts, equipped units in lieu of the Soviet's own light tanks. This allowed them to discontinue production of light tanks in the autumn of 1943.

Soviet Tank Factories
Factory	Name	Location	Evacuated to:	Products on June 22, 1941
-	Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory	Chelyabinsk	-	Gearing up for KV series
-	Izhorskiy Factory	Leningrad	Chelyabinsk	Armored cars
-	Stalingrad Tractor Works	Stalingrad	-	T-34
-	Vykunskiy Factory	Vyksha (2A:3706)	-	Armored cars
Nr. 1	Gorkiy Automotive Wks	Gorkiy	-	Trucks
Nr. 9	Stalin	Sverdlovsk	-	Artillery
Nr. 37	-	Moscow	partially	T-40, tractors
Nr. 38	Kolomenskiy Locomotive Wks	Kolomna	Kirov	-
Nr. 40	-	Moscow	-	-
Nr. 75	Kharkov Diesel Factory	Kharkov	Chelyabinsk	Tank engines
Nr. 100	Kirovskiy Works	Leningrad	Chelyabinsk	KV series
Nr. 112	Krasnoye Sormovo Works	Gorkiy	-	-
Nr. 174	Voroshilov	Leningrad	Omsk	?
Nr. 183	Kharkov Locomotive Works	Kharkov	Nizhni Tagil	T-34
Nr. 185	Kirov	Leningrad	-	KV series?

Lend-Lease AFV Deliveries
Type	Shipped	Sunk	Arrived
M3A1 Light	1676	443	1233
M3A3 Medium	1386	?	?
M17 MGMC	1000	?	?
T48 GMC	650	?	?
M10 GMC	52	-	52
Bren Carrier	2560	224	2336
Halftracks	1178	?	?
M3A1 Scout Car	3340	228	3092
M4A2 (75mm)	2007	?	?
M4A2 (76mm)	2095	?	?
Matilda II	1084	252	832
Valentine	3807	320	3487
Churchill	301	43	258
M15A1 MGMC	100	?	?

Abbreviations: GMC, Gun Motor Carriage (tank destroyers), MGMC, Multiple Gun Motor Carriage (motorized AA guns on halftrack chassis).
Notes: 417 US medium tanks and 54 half tracks were lost en route, but a detailed breakdown is not available.

Motor Transport

Even more important than AFVs were the jeeps and trucks supplied by the West. Soviet trucks were copies of U.S. 1930era designs and lacked the cross-country abilities of the modern vehicles given by the Americans. The U.S. alone gave some 151,000 1 1/2 ton and 201,000 2 1/2 ton trucks. The table below compares Soviet truck production with Lend-Lease deliveries.

Trucks production and lend-lease

1941: 62.0
1942: 35.0
1943: 49.2
1944: 60.6
1945: 74.7
Total: 281.5
Allied Deliveries: 409.5
Total: 691.0
Allied Proportion: 59.3%

Note: Figures for 1941 are for the second half of the year only.

On May 1, 1945 Lend-Lease vehicles comprised 32.8% of the Red Army's vehicle park. 9.1% were captured vehicles and 58.1% were domestically built. I can only explain the disparity between the Lend-Lease deliveries and the figures for May 1945 by suggesting that most of the Allied trucks were sent to the front where they were lost to enemy action while the Soviet trucks spent their time relatively safe in the rear because of their poor cross­country abilities.

These trucks enabled the Soviets to mount the offensives that evicted the Nazis from their territory and took Berlin. Without them they would have had to divert tank production to the manufacture of trucks. Undoubtedly this would have prolonged the war in the East, but not changed the outcome.

More Soviet Armaments Factories

Introduction
Tube Artillery
Lend Lease Artillery, Mortars, and Rocket Artillery
Ammunition, Lend Lease Ammunition and Explosives
Armor, Armored Fighting Vehicles and Tank Factories
Lend Lease Armored Fighting Vehicles and Motor Transport
Soviet Factories and Europa