US parts in German aircraft?

That would seem to explain that then. I have to say I was somewhat surprised to see the word DUNLOP, on one of Mr. H. Goring’s aircraft!!

Old Towzer.

I understand during the 1930s and throughout WW2 Dunlop had a facility in Germany producing aircraft tyres.

Not sure if this relevant, but many years ago, back in the early 80s. I was hand digging the crash site of a Dornier 17. Anyway, I found a large lump of main wheel tyre. There emblazoned on the tyre wall was the word DUNLOP!! Sadly, I parted with the relic a long time ago. Like all these things I wish I still had it! Ooh well happy days…….

Old Towzer.

Lockheed Hydraulic Brake of Leamington Spa produced automotive components for cars, lorries and buses. Mercedes were a customer during the 1930s.

Lockheed Hydraulic Brake of Leamington Spa, United Kingdom (owned by AP Company of London), manufactured hydraulic components for the European market in the 1930s. There may have been a UK ban from 1937 of exports to Germany of military-sensitive items that would prevent a UK component being  found on a German JU-88 or BF-110. Is that true? Such a ban certainly would have included, for example, design specs for the Hurricane.  Would the ban have encompassed hydraulic brake or other seemingly non-military items?   Even if so, arms dealers have way of  routing material through “Neutral” countries to those that seek it.   As someone here has said, how to explain the appearance of a many 1941-vintage German Leicas that later ended up in Royal Navy hands. I would be very interested in knowing the identity of the German Aircraft found at UK crash sites.  This is a minor issue which somehow intrigues me.

At the risk of a little thread drift, there’s always the mystery of the Royal Navy’s Leica cameras. Britain had a reasonable supply of Leicas in 1939, thanks to the seizure of the UK importer’s stock, and a trickle of captured cameras. But that doesn’t explain the appearance of a whole batch of 1941-vintage Leicas that ended up in Royal Navy hands. Possibly – probably even – bought via an intermediary in Sweden or Switzerland, but who really knows?

For the economics of Nazi Germany I can strongly recommend Adam Tooze’s “The Wages of Destruction”. David Edgerton’s “Britain’s War Machine” is an interesting read but not in the same class.

I’m very interested in the economic warfare aspect of World War Two. Certainly ‘hard currency’ was still important; Russian gold was recovered from the sunken wreck of HMS Edinburgh and the British made efforts to ‘evacuate’ diamonds from Amsterdam before the Germans arrived. And Polish and French gold was moved to safety ahead of the German invasions…

…but wasn’t the ‘gold standard’ abandoned during World War One and wasn’t this what allowed the fighting to go on as long as it did (I’m sure I heard that recently)?

With ‘globalisation’ economic warfare is more important: because all our economies are intrinsically linked. Modern governments borrow across borders and if a nation’s credit rating goes down or if a nation cannot borrow money then can it continue to fight a war? How many of the Allies were underwritten by the United States in 1939-1945?

The United Kingdom has only just paid back all the money that it borrowed in World War Two…

…but then some of the ‘enemy’ were given free aid post-war by the United States!

I think the V2 expenditure versus NASA moonshot ‘fact’ is a little hard to believe; maybe as a proportion of total government expenditure but surely not in absolute terms?

Surely the alcohol fuel didn’t need to be imported? You can make ‘alcohol’ from virtually anything (and very quickly); you only need to import the ‘aged’ stuff if you want to drink it!

Nazi Germany had no export trade between 1939 and 1945, well, negligible anyway; the Royal Navy very effectively blockaded Germany, as they had in the First World War. The only nations that Germany could trade with, that Germany hadn’t conquered, were Switzerland and Sweden; as for the conquered nations…

…well, Nazi Germany just stole whatever they needed and didn’t pay the labour they enslaved!

I’m not sure the U-Boats ‘held back’ from torpedoing US merchant shipping either; if it was afloat in the Atlantic it was fair game.

As for German sea-trade there were a few merchant-ship blockade-runners and U-Boats attempted to bring essential raw-materials back from the Japanese held Far East.

CD I am with you on the expropriation of assets and enslavement of labour but I figure the game had to be more sophisticated than that. I am reading about the V2 program at the moment and the budget exceeded NASAs for the moon shot. Slave labour was 5%, alcohol for fuel had to be traded with other nations as a product of private enterprise. All of the continent of Europe was in a defacto EU, much as modern ASEAN was within the Japanese Co Prosperity Theatre after 1942. The Australian government was in fact in negotiations to trade aircraft for minerals until 1941; no one has really written anything on economic warfare in WW2, even though it seems to be such a paramount feature of modern strategy, eg Russia and the Ukraine. I still feel uncomfortable seeing a Mercedes tristar on a DB engine, mixing the mink with machine guns. These same undercurrents will be the oatmeal of future conflict, it would be good to understand them in all their detail and subtlety.

Nazi Germany had no export trade between 1939 and 1945, well, negligible anyway; the Royal Navy very effectively blockaded Germany, as they had in the First World War. The only nations that Germany could trade with, that Germany hadn’t conquered, were Switzerland and Sweden; as for the conquered nations…

…well, Nazi Germany just stole whatever they needed and didn’t pay the labour they enslaved!

I’m not sure the U-Boats ‘held back’ from torpedoing US merchant shipping either; if it was afloat in the Atlantic it was fair game.

As for German sea-trade there were a few merchant-ship blockade-runners and U-Boats attempted to bring essential raw-materials back from the Japanese held Far East.

Subsidiaries of United States companies would have operated in Germany before World War Two and would have continued to do so once the war had started, often under their original name. For example Ford produced trucks in German factories for the German forces throughout the war.

Commercial relationships worked both ways – the UK affiliate of Germany’s Magnesium Elektron carried on, and apparently there was a gentleman’s agreement that these facilities, in either country, would not be bombed, and they were not. Until December 1941, two years after the start of WW2, the United States and Germany were not at war, so it is entirely feasible that US products would be used in Germany. In the face of Lend Lease arrangements between the UK and USA, involving the supply of a multitude of armaments to the UK, it is a wonder that German U Boats held back from torpedoing US ships, unless a certain percentage also held German trade.

It would be interesting to understand where Nazi Germany earned foreign exchange between 1939 and 1945 – how was the massive cost of the war funded and from what forms of export.

There has always been a cold, pragmatic and subterranean trade between belligerents. What got Hitler’s goat about WW1 was Basil Zaharoff, the armaments trader in effective control of Germany’s Krupps and England’s Vickers, who it was said would have been knighted by whatever side had won.

I’ve also got a bearing from a BMW801 which says ‘Made in Germany’ in German, English…

…and French?

While we are on the subject; I was told this was from a Do215 that was shot-down in 1940.

It is an American windscreen de-icing fluid pump…..still works too!

Personally, I have my doubts but could it possibly be true?

(Damn iPad, ‘just drag and drop image’…..HOW? Something’s going to get dragged and dropped in a minute!!!)

OT, but Coca-Cola Germany was cut off from getting the Coke syrup in 1941 due to the war embargo, so they invented Fanta for the German market.

Nutella was invented in Italy during the war because the Italians couldn’t get cocoa beans for chocolate.

Interesting question. I first looked at ford was not sure what type of brakes they used.

While Ford acknowledged there was a need for brakes, he didn’t think there was a need for anything fancy. The Model T, which arrived in 1908, had service brakes applied to a drum inside the transmission—and Ford used these mechanical brakes through 1938. Ford was, in fact, the last auto manufacturer to switch to hydraulics.
so discarded that the idea Ford was supplying the pipes.

I then found this

Automotive Products, commonly abbreviated to AP, was an automotive industry components company set up in 1920 by Edward Boughton, Willie Emmott and Denis Brock, to import and sell American-made components to service the fleet of ex-military trucks left behind in Europe after World War I.

In 1928, they obtained a licence for the manufacture and sale of the Lockheed Hydraulic Braking System for the British Isles and Continental Europe,[1] and in the following year they acquired a controlling interest in Zephyr Carburetors Limited which had premises in Clemens Street, Leamington Spa. A subsidiary company named the Lockheed Hydraulic Brake Company Ltd was formed and brake component manufacture began.

So would assume by 1935, Germany would have companies manufacturing Lockheed pipes or plenty of pipe in stock.

OT, but Coca-Cola Germany was cut off from getting the Coke syrup in 1941 due to the war embargo, so they invented Fanta for the German market.

Messerschmitts had Good Year tyres if I remember correctly..

Hello! Sweden produced bearrings that can be found on german aircraft parts and mooseskin was exported also to be around the fueltanks. etc. ” There is no business like war! ”

On a JU 88 retrived here there was a US made part in the cockpit! check it out on JU 88 net.

best Jabba

Subsidiaries of United States companies would have operated in Germany before World War Two and would have continued to do so once the war had started, often under their original name. For example Ford produced trucks in German factories for the German forces throughout the war.