American Weapons in Russian Army

During World War 2 America helped Soviet Russia a lot with different weapons. Trucks, jeeps, military and cargo planes - all sorts of technical equipment was sent to Russia.

In this post we’ll have some unique photos from WW2 by Russian soldier who participated in such missions to America for this help. He was a pilot and their squad was taking American planes to Russia during the war. According to his son’s stories this visits to USA left a big impression upon minds of Russian soldiers, but they were desperate to help their country to win the war and none of the decided to seek a refuge in States.

They usually were taking B-25 heavy bomber planes and P-53 “King Cobras” lighter fighters. It’s interesting that the Red Stars, the emblems of Soviet Russian Army were printed on the planes right in the US and they were flying those Red Star marked planes above USA freely on their way to Russia. Those were the only times I guess when Russian military planes were above the States. Though those Red Star logos were afterwards wiped out in Russia because they were paintedon a white circle, according USAAF standards and were not exactly what Stalin and other Russian chief commanders wanted to see on Russian planes.

It were not only the military planes of American origin that can be seen on those photos. For example on the photo #14 there is an American “Flying Boat Catalina” parked somewhere in Siberia at Russian river Lena - it was also a part of technical help from USA. Also there were a lot of Willis jeeps during WW2 in Russia, they were the real hit among Russian soldiers for their durability and exterior look. When the war has ended many Russian army commanders wanted to leave them for themselves but they couldn’t because according to the terms on which this help was shipped to Russian army they had to return or destroy all the remains of the technical equipment that was left. People tell stories how thousands of those Willis jeeps were brought to Murmansk and other Russian ports and there they were smashed by large press machines into a useless steel pads under the strict supervision of American observers. Oh what a pity.

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