Eight Hawker Hurricane unearthed …

[quang]

… in Ukraine. HERE

Just to put history (and reality) back in perspective 

Cheers,

Quang

Edited July 2, 2023 by quang
Syntax

[thierry laurent]

The crazy part is the reason why they have been buried! Why not simply give them back...? 

[quang]

21 minutes ago, thierry laurent said:

The crazy part is the reason why they have been buried! Why not simply give them back...? 

 

The answer is in the article:
 

‘In total, about 3,000 Hurricanes were sent to the USSR between 1941 and 1944 to support the Soviet war effort. Most were either destroyed in combat or dismantled later for parts.

But some Hurricanes were deliberately broken up and buried after the war so the Soviets did not have to pay back the United States. Under the Lend-Lease legislation, the USSR was required to pay for any donated military equipment that remained intact after hostilities ended.

This was the fate of the eight Hurricanes found buried in woodland south of Kyiv - now the capital of independent Ukraine, but until 1991 part of the USSR.’

 

[thierry laurent]

5 hours ago, quang said:

 

The answer is in the article:
 

‘In total, about 3,000 Hurricanes were sent to the USSR between 1941 and 1944 to support the Soviet war effort. Most were either destroyed in combat or dismantled later for parts.

But some Hurricanes were deliberately broken up and buried after the war so the Soviets did not have to pay back the United States. Under the Lend-Lease legislation, the USSR was required to pay for any donated military equipment that remained intact after hostilities ended.

This was the fate of the eight Hurricanes found buried in woodland south of Kyiv - now the capital of independent Ukraine, but until 1991 part of the USSR.’

 

I read it but this does not explain the why. Giving them back was a possibility to avoid paying. Other countries did it. I guess that the mood between western and eastern allies already changed and the Soviets did not want to pay and were reluctant to send back weapons to the west.

[quang]

…

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by quang
Typing error

[quang]

1 hour ago, thierry laurent said:

I read it but this does not explain the why. Giving them back was a possibility to avoid paying. Other countries did it. I guess that the mood between western and eastern allies already changed and the Soviets did not not to pay and were reluctant to send back weapons to the west.

In certain countries, people were taught that the Red Army and the Soviets won the Patriotic War (a.k.a. WWII) by themselves, without any outsiders’ help. Obviously some still believe it! 

[thierry laurent]

1 hour ago, quang said:

In certain countries, people were taught that the Red Army and the Soviets won the Patriotic War (a.k.a. WWII) by themselves, without any outsiders’ help. Obviously some still believe it! 

 

It is a pity as when you look at the amount of the Lend-lease deliveries, you realize how important this actually was for the Soviet army, even for far more trivial details than the 7000 planes , 4500+ tanks, 400.000+ transport vehicles and other weapons!  For instance, close to 14.5 millions of pairs of shoes, 10.000+ locomotives, tractors & bulldozers and 4.5 millions of square meters of psp were also sent to the USSR, notwithstanding a lot of oil and food... So, without the Lend Lease, the human cost of the war for the USSR would have been FAR higher. So it is totally unfair to hide that industrial support.

 

I think one of the extreme postwar cases of history rewriting in Europe was probably Bohemia. In 1945, western Czechia was liberated by Patton's 3rd army 16th armored division, not by the Soviet army. However, very quickly, the Yalta agreements resulted in the need to remove American troops from the area. All pictures taken during the liberation (e.g. in Pilzen) became progressively dangerous evidence contradicting the new history written by the Soviet-supported regime. People were asked for destroying them and the main monument commemorating that event was destroyed and replaced by another one glorifying the red Army intervention! Hopefully, many of such pictures were hidden for decades and reappeared when the iron curtain fell. A big book with hundreds of them (named "Americans in west Bohemia 1945": https://www.amazon.co.uk/Americans-West-Bohemia-Zdenek-Roucka/dp/8023850814) was published in 2000 to help in restoring the historical truth. I still have it somewhere and it is probably one of the best source of pictures of US armored fighting vehicles at the very end of world war two as, for whatever reasons, there were not many pictures taken by US war correspondents at that time. So, such pictures taken by the Czech population are a real testimony of historical events that disappeared from the official history for more than four decades, even in western Europe.

 

Pilzen made a fully new museum thanks to private gifts of various evidences: https://www.patton-memorial.cz/en/

 

I'm always amazed when I'm observing that many people are thinking the ETO war stopped when Berlin fell and that Europe was "suddenly" cut into two blocks. This is far from being the truth. The period between the V-day in Europe and 1950 is actually very interesting because the situation in Germany, Austria, Eastern Europe and the Balkan countries evolved progressively, at very different paces and with quite heterogeous results...

[Out2gtcha]

Cool! That will be some great history...

 

Though I didn't read the whole article, the Soviets were required to pay for any remaining aircraft intact at the end of the war.

I assume that would be the reason, so they didn't have to pay the US for those 8 aircraft.

[D Bellis]

6 hours ago, thierry laurent said:

The crazy part is the reason why they have been buried! Why not simply give them back...? 

It wasn't just the Soviets - Brits, French, Chinese and everyone else that was the recipient of American Lend-Lease equipment scrapped it after the war to avoid paying for it, or having to pay to ship it back. 

 

HTH, 

D 

[Learstang]

If the Soviets downplayed or ignored the importance of Lend-Lease in their war effort, the tremendous effort and losses of the Soviet Union and the Red Army have also been downplayed and ignored in the West. Whenever I read that D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Nazis (as if the Germans hadn't been fighting the Soviet Union for three years), I want to throw one of my books (on Soviet WWII aircraft) at my computer screen. Unfortunately, Cold War divisions resulted in both sides denigrating the efforts of the other during the Second World War, and twisting history for political purposes.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

Edited July 2, 2023 by Learstang
Additional comments added.

[thierry laurent]

22 minutes ago, D Bellis said:

It wasn't just the Soviets - Brits, French, Chinese and everyone else that was the recipient of American Lend-Lease equipment scrapped it after the war to avoid paying for it, or having to pay to ship it back. 

 

HTH, 

D 

As far as I know the Brits and French generally played a fair game. And this was not stupid as in more than 90% of the cases, such weapons were already obsolete. So the US simply ASKED their allies for destroying them on their behalf! Indeed, the US government already had too many useless weapons still coming out of factories at the end of the war.

[thierry laurent]

26 minutes ago, Learstang said:

If the Soviets downplayed or ignored the importance of Lend-Lease in their war effort, the tremendous effort and losses of the Soviet Union and the Red Army have also been downplayed and ignored in the West. Whenever I read that D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Nazis (as if the Germans hadn't been fighting the Soviet Union for three years), I want to throw one of my books (on Soviet WWII aircraft) at my computer screen. Unfortunately, Cold War divisions resulted in both sides denigrating the efforts of the other during the Second World War, and twisting history for political purposes.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

Well, I cannot speak for the US but in Europe we are always talking about the second WORLD war. Obviously, there is always some ethnocentrism here and there. For many people the important dates are the invasion (or at least attempt of invasion) and liberation of the country or end of fight of the national army. Nonetheless, we are generally grateful and commemorate the help received from other countries rather than just glorifying our people and downsizing the effort of others... It is possibly because we needed centuries of war to finally understand the benefit to be united rather than fighting against each other.

[Citadelgrad]

6 hours ago, Learstang said:

If the Soviets downplayed or ignored the importance of Lend-Lease in their war effort, the tremendous effort and losses of the Soviet Union and the Red Army have also been downplayed and ignored in the West. Whenever I read that D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Nazis (as if the Germans hadn't been fighting the Soviet Union for three years), I want to throw one of my books (on Soviet WWII aircraft) at my computer screen. Unfortunately, Cold War divisions resulted in both sides denigrating the efforts of the other during the Second World War, and twisting history for political purposes.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

Agreed, but Stalin was SCREAMING for a second front, so even he thought it was important. 
 

ive read a decent amount about the western front, i will say it was a different kind of war, the brutality on both sides was almost bliblical in its savagery.  

[thierry laurent]

To go back to the original topic, I'm wondering what is the mark of such airframes. Mk.II very probably?

 

This surely means that in ten to twenty years we will see a larger number of restored Hurricanes!

[Christa]

I had hoped significant hardware would be available for at least one restoration to airworthy condition, but mention of a single build to static condition might be a gentle hint of the reality of this excavation. These airframes seem to have been thoroughly plundered. Has there been any mention of data plates?