Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

Discussions on the economic history of the nations taking part in WW2, from the recovery after the depression until the economy at war.
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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#106

Post by LWD » 03 Jan 2012, 21:58

ljadw wrote:This is the document;I know,in it self,its reliability could be questioned(use of may,about),but,it is going in the direction of the sources provided by M.Kenny and P.Atreides,thus,we have 4 sources saying (roughly) the same,(there is the Russian source involuntaryly provided by Politician).and,NOT ONE source saying that there were only 8000 loc's in june 1941,and that 15000 loc's were destroyed during the war .Thus,we shall have to make shift with it (for the moment):
Who said there were only 8,000 locomotives in June of 41? As for there being 4 sources the question is are they independent sources? They also don't really tell us how many operational locomotives the Soviets had in say 43.
... the losses were limited,
Well in one sense yes but limited to what? Certainly they were very significant.
... the conclusion is that the claim " the importance of the LL loc's was immense" is wrong .Not more,not less .
That has certainly not been proven.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#107

Post by LWD » 03 Jan 2012, 22:12

ljadw wrote:To return to the OP(the impact of LL on the Russian railways)IMHO,the impact of the LL loc's was very limited,considering the numbers :7 % of the 1941 trucks,8 % of the 1945 trucks,.
You jump to coclusions with insufficient data. In order to asses the impact you need to know what the demand was and what the capabiities of the Soviet railroads were without LL. Then you need to know the capabilities supplied by the LL equipment. That's not just numbers and hauling capabilities but reliability factors and such as well. Even with the numbers you have if the railroads were without LL were only able to meet 95% of the demand then the addtional 7% would have a considerable and argueably "immense" impact.
considering also the fact that already in 1942,a German victory was very improbable (Bock was writing in 1942 that the Ostheer was incapable of long ranging objectives)and that the LL loc's did arrive from 1943 only .
That does not mean that the German's couldn't win although it suggest that it wasn't likely but even more so it doesn't mean that the Soviets will "win" especially if by "win" you mean the Red Army taking Berlin.
Could the SU have won (=being in Berlin in may 1945) without the LL loc's :yes .
Possibly. I don't think it likely though. Of course if you add in without LL rail cars and LL rail it becomes even less likely and if you go on to add all the other LL supplies then it becomes extremely unlikely that the Soviets are in Berlin in May of 45. Indeed it becomes problematic if they reach Berlin at all.
The whole question has been exaggerated by people with more chauvinist ignorance/ignorant chauvinism than knowledge.
That problem exists on both sides of the question as you so ably demonstrate.


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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#108

Post by ljadw » 03 Jan 2012, 23:08

LWD wrote:
ljadw wrote:This is the document;I know,in it self,its reliability could be questioned(use of may,about),but,it is going in the direction of the sources provided by M.Kenny and P.Atreides,thus,we have 4 sources saying (roughly) the same,(there is the Russian source involuntaryly provided by Politician).and,NOT ONE source saying that there were only 8000 loc's in june 1941,and that 15000 loc's were destroyed during the war .Thus,we shall have to make shift with it (for the moment):
Who said there were only 8,000 locomotives in June of 41? As for there being 4 sources the question is are they independent sources? They also don't really tell us how many operational locomotives the Soviets had in say 43.
... the losses were limited,
Well in one sense yes but limited to what? Certainly they were very significant.
... the conclusion is that the claim " the importance of the LL loc's was immense" is wrong .Not more,not less .
That has certainly not been proven.
1)who said there were only 8000 locomotives in june 1941?
On P 5 of this thread :post of Politician on 29 december :.......if you count all the locomotives produced from 1920-1949,you get around 8000.......It makes LJadws unsupported claim of 28000 very doubtfull .
2)Certainly they were very significant :why would a loss of 4000 loc's(=15%) be significant ?
3)They also don't really tell us how many operational locomotives the Soviets had in may 1943 :they also don't tell us how many of the LL locomotives were operational in say may 1945
4)this had not been proven :without the LL loc's,the SU had 23000 loc's in may 1945,with the LL loc's,25000.This is a difference of 2000( some 8 %),saying that the importance of 8 % was immense,is,IMHO,totally wrong ,unless there are indications that,without these extra 8 % the Red Army would collaps/would be unable to launch big offensives as Bagration .The SU survived 1941 and 1942,WITHOUT the 2000 LL loc's,thus,the importance of these loc's was not immense in 1941/1942,why would the importance be immense after 1942,when the Germans were weaker,and the Soviets stronger ?

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#109

Post by ljadw » 03 Jan 2012, 23:26

LWD wrote:
ljadw wrote:To return to the OP(the impact of LL on the Russian railways)IMHO,the impact of the LL loc's was very limited,considering the numbers :7 % of the 1941 trucks,8 % of the 1945 trucks,.
You jump to coclusions with insufficient data. In order to asses the impact you need to know what the demand was and what the capabiities of the Soviet railroads were without LL. Then you need to know the capabilities supplied by the LL equipment. That's not just numbers and hauling capabilities but reliability factors and such as well. Even with the numbers you have if the railroads were without LL were only able to meet 95% of the demand then the addtional 7% would have a considerable and argueably "immense" impact.
considering also the fact that already in 1942,a German victory was very improbable (Bock was writing in 1942 that the Ostheer was incapable of long ranging objectives)and that the LL loc's did arrive from 1943 only .
That does not mean that the German's couldn't win although it suggest that it wasn't likely but even more so it doesn't mean that the Soviets will "win" especially if by "win" you mean the Red Army taking Berlin.
Could the SU have won (=being in Berlin in may 1945) without the LL loc's :yes .
Possibly. I don't think it likely though. Of course if you add in without LL rail cars and LL rail it becomes even less likely and if you go on to add all the other LL supplies then it becomes extremely unlikely that the Soviets are in Berlin in May of 45. Indeed it becomes problematic if they reach Berlin at all.
The whole question has been exaggerated by people with more chauvinist ignorance/ignorant chauvinism than knowledge.
That problem exists on both sides of the question as you so ably demonstrate.
1)to know what the demands are,is irrelevant :in wartime,the demands are boundless ,the only possibility to "prove" that there was not enough supply,is an exemple of an operation that was cancelled ,because of insufficient supplies .
2)the capabilities of the Soviet railways without LL:very simple :93 %,unless one can prove that the 7 % LL loc's were much more worth than 7 % Soviet loc's .
3)that does not mean that the Germans would not win :if von Bock said that the German army in 1942 was incapable of long range objectives (and the facts are proving that he was right),that means that the Germans were in defensive,and that they could thus not win (winning=being at the Ural)

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#110

Post by LWD » 04 Jan 2012, 16:36

ljadw wrote:...
1)who said there were only 8000 locomotives in june 1941?
On P 5 of this thread :post of Politician on 29 december :.......if you count all the locomotives produced from 1920-1949,you get around 8000
That is clearly not the same thing. Now the production number is I'll agree probably off so the conclusions are not well supported but there is a big difference between saying that 8,000 were produced from 1920-1949 and that there were 8,000 in June of 1941.
2)Certainly they were very significant :why would a loss of 4000 loc's(=15%) be significant ?
Why wouldn''t it be?
3)They also don't really tell us how many operational locomotives the Soviets had in may 1943 :they also don't tell us how many of the LL locomotives were operational in say may 1945
4)this had not been proven :without the LL loc's,the SU had 23000 loc's in may 1945,with the LL loc's,25000.This is a difference of 2000( some 8 %),saying that the importance of 8 % was immense,is,IMHO,totally wrong ,unless there are indications that,without these extra 8 % the Red Army would collaps/would be unable to launch big offensives as Bagration .The SU survived 1941 and 1942,WITHOUT the 2000 LL loc's,thus,the importance of these loc's was not immense in 1941/1942,why would the importance be immense after 1942,when the Germans were weaker,and the Soviets stronger ?
Very strange logic there. And again you are making your estimates on questionable data.
ljadw wrote: ...
1)to know what the demands are,is irrelevant :in wartime,the demands are boundless ,the only possibility to "prove" that there was not enough supply,is an exemple of an operation that was cancelled ,because of insufficient supplies .
Not really. For instance one can look at utilization rates and such and find for instance that the US or Britain had a surplus of rail transport capacity and while additional locomotives for instance might have helped some they wouldn't have been critical. However one can look at how the Soviets prepared for operations you can see how important it was. Unlike the Germans the Soviets at least in the latter war didn't launch an operation unless they felt they could support it so they waited until adequate supplies had been built up in the area. Cut the amount of supplies deliverable and operations are launched days or weeks later into stronger defences.
2)the capabilities of the Soviet railways without LL:very simple :93 %,unless one can prove that the 7 % LL loc's were much more worth than 7 % Soviet loc's .
A very questionable assumption. We don't know how many Soviet locomotives were operational at any point in time nor what their capacity was nor what their reliability was. As such numbers such as the above are worthless. It should be pointed out however that a new US built locomotive was almost certainly greater in capacity and more reliable than the average Soviet locomotive.
3)that does not mean that the Germans would not win :if von Bock said that the German army in 1942 was incapable of long range objectives (and the facts are proving that he was right),that means that the Germans were in defensive,and that they could thus not win (winning=being at the Ural)
Just because the Germans can't make it to the Urals doesn't mean that the Soviets make it to Berlin.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#111

Post by ljadw » 04 Jan 2012, 18:04

If,in a discussion about the number of Soviet trucks in june 1941,A is saying that 8000 were build between 1920/1940,and is using this figure to attack the figure of 28000 ,given by B,(saying:it makes LJadw's unsupported claim of 28000 very doubtfull),then,it is obvious that A believes that the right figure for 1941 was 8000.If A didn't believe it,he would not use it,he used this figure as an argument,thus he believed that the figure was exact .

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#112

Post by LWD » 04 Jan 2012, 19:33

[quote="ljadw"]If,in a discussion about the number of Soviet trucks in june 1941,A is saying that 8000 were build between 1920/1940,and is using this figure to attack the figure of 28000 ,given by B,(saying:it makes LJadw's unsupported claim of 28000 very doubtfull),then,it is obvious that A believes that the right figure for 1941 was 8000.quote]
Well first of all are you talking about trucks or locomtives? If only 8,000 were produced during theperiod mentioned it would indeed make it doubtful that there were 28,000 in 1941 but it's not the same thing at all as claiming there were 8,000 in 1941. That would depend on the number made before 1920, the number imported, and the number lost during the period of interest. You are reading more into a statment than was implied or entended.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#113

Post by Jon G. » 04 Jan 2012, 22:06

The '8,000 locomotives built in the 1920-1940 period' seems to be a warping, or mis-understanding, of Grajdanzev figures given by yours truly upthread, according to which the Soviets were planning to build 8,000 locomotives in the period covered by the 1938-1942 [both years inclusive] Five Year Plan.

Five Year Plans - or rather the figures offered therein - are probably not the most reliable historical sources you can come across, and in any case the Third Five Year Plan [the above-mentioned 1938-1942 plan] a/may very well have been revised after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact gave Stalin access to add parts of Eastern Europe to his empire, and b/in any case went completely out the window the moment the Germans attacked, as later figures for rolling stock produced show.

That said, 8,000 locomotives is a very low figure for Soviet state railroads by 1940. I think that 8,000 would be too low to even pull the c. 20 million tons of coal that the Urals industrial region needed, never mind all the other needs expressed by a RR system that pulled c. 258 million ton-kilometers in 1935.

A few more figures, some of them different from figures offered upthread:

By the end of August 1941, German forces had captured c. 1,000 locomotives, of which 500 were ready for service, and 21,000 goods wagons.

The Finns lost about 150 locomotives in the 1939/1940 Winter War, a further 76 locomotives as part of the 1940 peace agreement, and a combined total of c. 3,000 wagons of all types. The Germans were able to offer compensation by giving the Finns some 150 captured Soviet locomotives and 1,750 broad-gauged wagons by 1942.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#114

Post by Michael Kenny » 05 Jan 2012, 00:47

LWD wrote:
[. It should be pointed out however that a new US built locomotive was almost certainly greater in capacity and more reliable than the average Soviet locomotive.
I am not going to start hunting through all the data I collected from when I first disputed the '90% of Soviet Locos were supplied via LL' fable but I do remember reading that the Soviet long haul locos were large and very powerful indeed.
Did someone mention here about Soviet locos being 'old and out of date? I know BR in the UK were still using turn of the century locos into the 1960's.
This constant desire to elevate the impact of LL and downgrade Soviet efforts is becoming tiresome. It is like a hydra. Cut off one head (90% supplied by LL) and another attacks to re-instate the myth.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#115

Post by Jon G. » 05 Jan 2012, 06:33

Some of the locomotives delivered to the Soviets were ultra-modern diesel-electrics. It is not likely that any workshop or factory outside the USA could have built those engines during WW2. However, the Alco diesel-electrics weren't of greater capacity - 1,000 hp/unit is quite modest, and much below contemporary steam engines in power output - but could be used in places where steam engines suffered more, such as long, unventilated tunnels, which were common on the Iranian rail line which carried LL from the Persian Gulf to the USSR.

70 were ordered, but only 58 made it to the USSR. Being 1435-mm-gauged, they would not have been of much use in the Soviet Union proper.

Wiki link (but good)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALCO_RSD-1

The Soviets liked the design and built their own copies of the Alco road switcher after the war:
http://alcoworld.railfan.net/plagiate.htm

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#116

Post by Michael Kenny » 05 Jan 2012, 06:50

A 1935 article on Russian railways written by an american



http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r097.html#2

The true giants among Russian locomotives are found in the ranks of the goods engines; especially those which haul the immense coal and mineral trains from the Donetz Basin. The standard post-revolution goods engine for general service is of the 0-10-0 type, and there are hundreds of these, some having been built in Russia and others in Germany and Sweden. But on the heavy mineral trains mentioned above there are still bigger engines of the 2-10-2 and 2-10-4 types, with twelve-wheeled bogie tenders. These are of American origin, having been built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works and the American Locomotive Company respectively. In both types a four-coupled booster is mounted on the leading tender bogie, to assist the engines in getting their colossal loads under way. The weight of the 2-10-2 type is 273 tons, and that of the 2-10-4 is 286 tons.

Succeeding examples of these classes have been built in Russia, but a new type of Russian goods engine is even bigger, for this locomotive has the hitherto unknown 4-14-4 wheel arrangement. This is also intended for the Donetz Basin coal traffic.


the 4-14-4 seems not to have been succesful!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-14-4


http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/ ... ssrefr.htm



More:


http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/russia09.htm

Early Soviet steam
Fortunately for the Soviets after the revolution, two large and useful designs of locomotive were already in service on former Russian railways, the SV class of passenger 2-6-2 and the E class 0-10-0 for freight. These were taken for development and onward mass construction.

The Soviet standard passenger type of the 1920s was developed to become the class SU 2-6-2, a somewhat slender, almost gangly design of basic simplicity and well able to be produced cheaply in large numbers. It is interesting to compare the design parameters of the Soviet SU with the dimensionally similar British LNER class V2 2-6-2, the latter’s attributes being shown here in brackets: weight in working order 86.7t (93t); grate area 4.67m2 (3.8m2); heating surface 188m2 (226m2); superheater surface 89m2 (63m2); cylinders two @ 575x700mm (three @ 470x660mm); driving wheels 1850mm (1880mm); tractive effort 118kN (133kN); power 1177kW (ca. 1200kW). Over 2680 examples of class SU were built between 1925 and 1951. They were the front line express engines until the mid-1930s when the much larger class FDP 2-8-4s began to appear and the SUs took over slightly less demanding duties.

Another basic type inherited from the pre-Soviet era was the E class 0-10-0. After an emergency delivery after the first world war from Sweden and Germany of 1200 examples of class E (bringing that class up to 2724 locomotives) the design was developed into the EU type for mass production in Soviet factories. From 1926 to 1932 about 2200 were built for Soviet Railways. Then from 1931 came the EM with higher boiler pressure with over 2750 being produced. From 1935 to 1936 came a series called ER that had a larger grate area and higher superheat and of which nearly 3000 entered service. The E series eventually totalled over 10,670 locomotives, by far the largest number of a single type ever to run in the world. In addition to all these were several series constructed for industry across the Union. These 0-10-0s proved useful in their later years as heavy shunting locomotives after they had been displaced from the heavier freight duties by 2-10-0s and 2-10-2s. Not surprisingly, several of the 0-10-0s survive today on stationary boiler duties and in the few remaining strategic reserves.

The ER dimensionally is a tough machine delivering 206kN tractive effort from two cylinders of 650x700mm through driving wheels of 1320mm diameter. The locomotive weighs a modest 86 tonnes which supports a grate area of 5.1m2. A E type 0-10-0 is well able to operate for very extended periods under steam.

Bigger things from the 1930s
The success of the E series led to development in 1934 of a 2-10-0 version carrying a bigger boiler. This was classified SO with versions for 17, 18 and 19 tonne axle loads. Thus the lighter version was known as class SO17 and the other two were later rebuilt to this type. The E series’ cylinders and coupled wheels were used but the firebox had a 6m2 grate area and later boilers were pressed at 15 atmospheres (the Es were at 12 or 14atm), giving a tractive effort as high as 223kN and a power rating of 1647kW. In appearance the SOs were tall and chunky machines but were clearly successful as over 4400 were built, as well as some for industrial use.

By the mid 1930s the SU 2-6-2s were clearly overstretched as express passenger locomotives. Something was needed that could handle much longer and faster trains. The Kolomna works produced six prototype 2-8-4 express engines from 1932, followed by 650 in a production series from Lugansk. These were known as the IS class (Iosif Stalin), later reclassified FDP when Stalin was no longer communist party flavour of the month. They were displaced by even larger steam locomotives and by modern traction from the 1950s and had all stopped active work by the early 1970s. Surprisingly, only one FDP survives today, standing on what must be the world’s biggest plinth for a locomotive, not far from the main railway station in Kiev, Ukraine. In addition to the passenger 2-8-4s, there were 3222 freight locomotives built in a 2-10-2 version with smaller wheels, classified FD20 and FD21, again based on their maximum axle load. Some of these were later regauged and exported to China

The second world war and after

The progress of the second world war reached a definitive point when the Soviet army succeeded in pushing back the German advance. In the wake of their retreat the Germans had left large numbers of Kriegslok 2-10-0 locomotives, about 2700 remaining in the Union after the war ended. Some of these were standard gauge and used in the Baltic and border republics, and the rest were broad gauge. Their output in terms of tractive effort and power was less than that of the later E series 0-10-0s and the Russians called them “captured E equivalents”, hence the classificaoin TE. Another 2-10-0 type that was delivered in a hurry near the end of the second world war was the YeA and YeM series that came from ALCO and Baldwin in 1944 and 1945. They were based on the American-built class Ye (the Cyrillic alphabet has a single letter character for Ye that looks like the Roman ‘E’). These earlier 2-10-0s had appeared in Russia at the start of the first world war and the 1944-45 group were thus not particularly modern in concept. At 1540kW they were not as powerful as the SO17s, and their 204kN tractive effort was within the range of the standard 0-10-0s. Nonetheless 2117 locomotives were delivered. They met a significant need at the time and spent much of their working lives in Siberia and Kazakhstan.


It seems we have overlooked another 'LL' source of Russian locos, 2700 'Liberated Locomotives' from Germany.
I also saw mentioned that Polish locomotives were taken by the Soviets in 1939..........

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#117

Post by LWD » 05 Jan 2012, 15:58

Michael Kenny wrote:
LWD wrote:
[. It should be pointed out however that a new US built locomotive was almost certainly greater in capacity and more reliable than the average Soviet locomotive.
I am not going to start hunting through all the data I collected from when I first disputed the '90% of Soviet Locos were supplied via LL' fable but I do remember reading that the Soviet long haul locos were large and very powerful indeed.
Did someone mention here about Soviet locos being 'old and out of date? I know BR in the UK were still using turn of the century locos into the 1960's.
In another thread it was pointed out that the Soviets were concentrating on the construction of high end locomotives in the years immediatly preceding WWII. Locomotives produced during that period may even on average have exceeded the capacity of those supplied by the US, probably not though as the production of lower capacity engines would have pulled the average down somewhat. However if we are looking at the average capacity of Soviet Locomotives at any particular point in the war the older engines are almost assuredly going to bring the average capabilty of said locomotives well below that of the US engines supplied by LL. So one simply cannot say that at this point since LL locomotives were X% of those in service in the Soviet Union that they represented X% of the capacity which was my point.
This constant desire to elevate the impact of LL and downgrade Soviet efforts is becoming tiresome. It is like a hydra. Cut off one head (90% supplied by LL) and another attacks to re-instate the myth.
As is the constant desire by some to denigrate the impact of LL.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#118

Post by LWD » 05 Jan 2012, 16:01

Michael Kenny wrote:... It seems we have overlooked another 'LL' source of Russian locos, 2700 'Liberated Locomotives' from Germany.
I also saw mentioned that Polish locomotives were taken by the Soviets in 1939..........
Interestingly the indidual that has argued against the importance of LL the most in this thread has also questioned whether significant numbers of the post war Soviet locomotive park were "liberated" from the axis powers.

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#119

Post by ljadw » 05 Jan 2012, 18:33

1)The fact that the SU used the German loc's does not mean that these were a part of the 25000 Soviet loc's in 1945
2)Using the 2600 German loc's who were shipped to the SU AFTER the war,to increase the % of LL loc's DURING the war,is the typical apples with lemons comparison,indicating that one is losing the discussion . :P :P

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Re: Impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet railways

#120

Post by Michael Kenny » 05 Jan 2012, 19:16

LWD wrote:Interestingly the indidual that has argued against the importance of LL the most in this thread has also questioned whether significant numbers of the post war Soviet locomotive park were "liberated" from the axis powers.

Much more interesting is the fact that 2200 LL locos and 2700 captured locos are considered 'significant' and 25000+ home grown product are not.
Anyway the thread has londg since lost its way and has become just another jingoistic 'we saved your ass so kiss ours' boast.

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