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"Americans" in RussiaIn total, during the war, the Soviet Union received 14,126 American-made aircraft (namely, American-made, since both the Americans and the British supplied them). Is it a lot or a little? Most publications indicate that during the war years, the Soviet Union produced 136,800 aircraft. The share of American technology in this case is slightly more than 10% (for the British Air Force this figure is much higher — 22%). True, in this case, when calculating domestic production, 1941 and 1945 were taken into account in full, so that the real percentage will slightly increase. But still it is not much. Now let's look at the ratio by aircraft class. Most of the imported aircraft were fighters. 9,690 American fighters arrived (and you can add about a hundred A-20s, which have been converted into night fighters in our country). Over the years of the war, we have produced more than 57 thousand of our cars of this class. As a result, every sixth fighter in our aviation was American. Due to the specific features of overseas vehicles, their share in air defense and naval aviation was much higher than in the air force. If we perform similar calculations for bombers, we get 19%. those. every fifth bomber received by our armed forces was manufactured in the United States. In the mine and torpedo aviation of the western fleets (Baltic, Black Sea and Northern) by the end of the war there were more American A-20s converted into torpedo bombers than Russian Il-4s. For some categories, this ratio is even higher, for example, in transport or seaplane. But we built 37 thousand attack aircraft and did not import a single one from abroad. All these indicators are average. The supply of equipment from the United States has been very uneven over the years. During the period of validity of the very first delivery protocol (from October 1, 1941 to July 1, 1942), called Moscow, the Soviet Union received 267 bombers and 278 fighters from America, which is respectively 30% and 31% of the figures recorded in it. By the middle of 1943, about 4,300 American aircraft arrived in our country, and over the next two years, about twice as many. By the beginning of the Battle of Moscow, less than 1% of foreign aircraft were at the front. Further, its share increased steadily. The rate of supplies from abroad outstripped the growth of domestic production. The increase in the production of combat aircraft in the USSR in 1943 relative to 1942 was approximately 1.3 times, and the increase in deliveries from SITA was approximately 2.5 times. |
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