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Great care should be taken in claiming too much credit for the Allies
supply efforts to the USSR. While the Murmansk Run did supply a fair
number of trucks and some aircraft, most of the combat equipment
(including tanks) used by the Soviets was made in the USSR. Taking
nothing away from the heroism of the men who manned the ships, much of
the value of the Murmansk Run was psychological. While it did not
provide a great deal in the way of supplies, it did bolster Soviet
morale and may well have kept them in the war. A considerable amount of
material was also supplied through Iran.
And as Paul has pointed out while the M4 Sherman may not have been the
best tank, it was dependable and could be produced in vast quantities.
The US was not alone in deciding to stick with a tried and true piece
of equipment. The PkwV Panther was clearly superior to the PkwIII and
PkwIV, yet the Germans continued to produce them. The one thing the
Germans found especially disturbing about the Sherman was that every
time you knocked one out, it was replaced by two more.
On Aug 2, 2004, at 7:05 PM, paul courtney wrote:
> As we are allowed to discuss WWII- I have heard Russians say in TV
> interviews say they weren't too keen on receiving the Shermans as part
> of
> the arms shipments. Of course the Brits called the Sherman the Ronson
> (after the cigarette lighter) while the Germans called it the Tommy
> Cooker-
> for its tendency to burst into flames. The great thing about the
> Sherman was
> they were produced in huge numbers and were cheap and reliable. Allied
> aircraft notably typhoons increasingly took out any German armour that
> moved
> as in the carnage of the Falaise pocket. I admire the bravery of the
> many
> allied tank crews who took on a Panther or even worse a Tiger tank in a
> Sherman- most didn't live to tell the tale. The shells normally
> bounced off
> unless they hit them accurately from the side at close quarters -
> that's if
> they could get that close. One of the lucky breaks of the Normandy
> landing
> was Hitler insisted on keeping his best armour well in reserve. One of
> the
> reasons German and Russian tanks were advanced was because they
> actually
> co-operated on tank development in the 1930s when the Germans were not
> supposed to have any. One of Stalin's nice tricks like in his pact days
> handing over the exiled German communist party cadres to the SS for
> disposal
> in the concentration camps.
>
> paul courtney
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ron May" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 11:00 PM
> Subject: Re: history films
>
>
>> Ian,
>>
>> More than paid for all those Russian arms, we also shipped hundreds of
> tons
>> of material to Russia. A late friend's husband was in the merchant
>> marine
> and
>> got a medal from Russia for surviving the Murmansk Run, in which a
>> great
> many
>> American ships were sunk by Nazi u-boats. A lot of those "superior"
>> tanks
> were
>> American Shermans with red stars painted on the turret.
>>
>> Ron May
>> Legacy 106, Inc.
>
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