On this Aero forum we must keep a sense of proportion. Ike named 5 utensils as War-winners; none was a weapon: jeep, DUKW landing craft, bulldozer, 2½-ton truck and a variant of a 1932 airliner: DC-3 as C-47: 10,349 built in US (>485 in Japan; >6,000 to 1960 in USSR). (A US Pacific Commander had a similar list). WW2 was won by Ivan and Rosie.

(Then, G/C) Harris scoured US, 4/38 looking for good things to buy. He took Harvard and Hudson, but was widely unimpressed. Remember how new was, say, Northrop, how slim and near-bankrupt was Boeing. US had reverted after WW1 to its natural state as an extractive, primary economy. But in 1940 FDR extracted tax-$ to move to a 2-Ocean Navy, 50,000 aircraft p.a and on, as the arsenal of democracy. Some tools and plant were funded from France/UK’s expiring stash: Gunston, Aero-Engines,1986,P.113: Pratt/Hartford: “1939 business (had) been depressed but the French orders had paid for a plant addition of 280,000 sq.ft. Then “The British Wing”, paid in £, added 425,000sq.ft from June,1940″. Rosie the Riveter came in to do all this and, for me, an unsung key was the notion of “Production Control”, taken from Chevrolet. Sir Roy Fedden visited US in late-1942, wrote this up, and was scorned by his UK industrial colleagues. “Dilution..” no: delivery…yes. UK mobilised female labour, too, and could not have built Munitions in quantity without them.

USSR however did even more than all this. As Barbarossa neared Moscow, much of Soviet-in-Europe industry was put on carts and sledges, pushed and pulled across the Volga and beyond the Urals. Agricultural and rudimentary, inventory came back within months into Ivan’s hands, to be put to very good use.