Lend-Lease and Soviet Aviation 1941–1945 Volume 2

The requisitioning of aircraft for the Soviet Union was only the beginning of the operation. Before a Hurricane, Airacobra, Boston or Mitchell could fight over the Eastern Front, it first had to survive an extraordinary journey across oceans, mountains, deserts, Arctic seas or some of the most inhospitable territory on earth.

Volume Two of Lend-Lease and Soviet Aviation in the Second World War tells the remarkable story of how Allied aircraft actually reached their Soviet operators. It follows the great supply arteries that connected British and American factories with the USSR: the perilous Arctic convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk; the long southern route through Iraq and Iran—the famous Persian Corridor; and the immense Alaska-Siberia air route, ALSIB, stretching from the United States through Canada and Alaska, across the Bering Strait and thousands of kilometres of Siberian wilderness to Krasnoyarsk.

Each route presented a different combination of danger and logistical difficulty. Arctic shipping faced U-boats, Luftwaffe attacks, and extreme environments. In the south, aircraft arrived by sea, were assembled and test-flown in Iraq and Iran, and then ferried northwards by Soviet crews. Across ALSIB, pilots confronted extreme temperatures, mountain ranges, primitive airfields, navigation difficulties and immense landscapes in which a forced landing could easily become a catastrophe.

The volume also tackles the sometimes surprisingly complicated question of numbers: how many aircraft were dispatched, how many actually reached Soviet hands, how many were lost en route, and what imported aircraft represented in relation to Soviet wartime production. The familiar headline figures are placed firmly within their operational and logistical context.

Completing the volume are detailed studies of important Lend-Lease aircraft, including the Douglas A-20 Havoc/Boston, Handley Page Hampden, Short Stirling and Douglas C-47 Skytrain.

Combining logistics, aviation history, technical detail and the experiences of the men who flew these dangerous routes, Journeys to Russia is richly illustrated with period photographs and colour aircraft profiles that bring both the aircraft and the vast delivery network vividly to life.