and Leg - even though some of the authors either obviously had a beef with the US military or they had to come up with some real stupid behavior to justify the Great Game results (some of what they have the US do is flat out stupid) - there is no way that the US military would just sit there and watch an all out war go on between China and the Soviets and not want to get production ramped up on weapons they were going to need
And Lend Lease wasnt years in planning- we gave them a crap load of old obsolete stuff because that was what we had - lets look at some of what was sent when Lend Lease kicked off
old artillery pieces in storage from WWI
old rifles with 50 rounds a piece stored away since WWI
old WW1 destroyers that the USN didnt need anymore
the vast majority of the aircraft we sent were obsolete planes or older designs
tanks that even the Russians and British really didnt want because they were basically useless in combat against the Germans
the only place the US really lucked out on was the build up of the Navy - if they hadnt laid down the new battleships and the Essex class carriers the Japanese would have run riot in the Pacific until probably late 1944
the US came within a couple of bomb hits of having no carriers left in the Pacific in 1942 - and I would have hated to take a bunch of light carriers and escort carriers against front line carriers in 1943 if they hadn't started the Essex when they did
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