Soviet artillery question - was Lend Lease essential for Soviet artillery effectiveness?

[Trevayne]

I recently saw a youtube video The Red God of War. It made some very interesting claims and was wondering if they have been checked out. If this has already been discussed here, could someone please provide a link?

Specifically, it states that Soviet Artillery was crippled during the war by the lack of trained personnel and ammunition production, specifically explosives production. In particular, it cites a claim that Lend Lease provided about 55% of the explosives used by the Soviets between 1941 and 1944. This was due to the Soviets losing about 2/3rds of their chemical industry in 1941 in Ukraine.

It also states that the Germans actually had an artillery advantage for most of the war. Specifically, although the Soviets fired more shells and had more artillery guns, the majority of shells they fired were from their 76mm divisional guns, which were significantly lighter than the German 105mm howitzers. As a result, while the Soviets fired more shells and had more artillery tubes, because most of them were 75mm, the weight of shells fired was significantly less.

-------------Tons of shells fired
Year-------Soviet---------German

1942------446,114-------709,957 (159%)
1943------828,193------1,121,545 (135%)
1944------1,000,962----1,540,933 (154%)

The sources mentioned were a data set produced by on German and Soviet ammunition production during the war by a Russian historian Alexei Isaev and an article Explosives Production in the USSR by Andrej Balysh in the RUDN Journal of Russaian History. The latter article provided the figure of 55% of Soviet explosives coming from lend-lease and is particularly interesting.

If true, it suggests that Lend Lease really was decisive because the Soviets would not have been able to win without it. They might have had lots of men, tanks, and guns, but if most of them can't shoot because they lack ammunition, they are going to lose. They certainly aren't going to push the Germans back without it.

Edit: I think this is the article mentioned, but it is in Russian.

Explosives Production in USSR in 1930s and Its Lend-Lease Supplies During Great Patriotic War - Balysh - RUDN Journal of Russian History

 

[Sekhmet_D]

Lend Lease was essential for Soviet everything. Stalin admitted that the war would have been lost without it.

 

[Trevayne]

Lend Lease was essential for Soviet everything. Stalin admitted that the war would have been lost without it.

Yes and no. For one example, the US and British gave the Russians several thousand tanks, but they had more than enough T-34s and KVs. If they had not provided the Shermans and Churchills, the Soviets would have probably taken more casualties, but still probably won. If they had provided the tanks, but not the 55% of explosives (assuming that number is correct), the Soviets would probably not have regained European Russia, much less gotten to Berlin.

Edit: As I understand it, the key elements provided by Lend-Lease were as follows:

- explosives
- trucks
- aluminum

Everything else varied from very useful (locomotives) to nice to have (P-39s) to WTF (one single M1 rifle), but without the explosives, the Soviets didn't have nearly enough ammunition, without the trucks they can't move, and without the aluminum they can't build enough planes.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Specifically, it states that Soviet Artillery was crippled during the war by the lack of trained personnel and ammunition production, specifically explosives production. In particular, it cites a claim that Lend Lease provided about 55% of the explosives used by the Soviets between 1941 and 1944. This was due to the Soviets losing about 2/3rds of their chemical industry in 1941 in Ukraine.

The issue here as always is actual distribution of the Lend-lease supplies during this period if 1941 to 1944. The thing that about 50% of the Soviet explosive production was made out of the Lend-lease supplied components and materials is true. But if explosives transfer follow the pattern of all other things that US and British supplied to the USSR than dominant majority of that happened in 1944 and later when Soviets were winning already.

So yeah, I know for a fact that Isaev and few other Russian historians said and/or wrote such numbers. I myself have a tiny input of popularizing their work on that matter in the English section of the Net. But to my knowledge they never claimed that it was in any way decisive to the overall outcome of the war because it was mostly decided by the end of 1942.

So what effect would have reduced or non-existant Lend-lease supplies of explosives? Well, it would reduce the Soviets to continue the trend of mauling the Germans in a series of set-piece battles as they did in 1942 and first half of 1943 instead of more sweeping and wide front advances of 1944 and later. When Kursk happened Germans still had artillery superiority over the Soviets which was compensated with careful preparation and accumulation of ammunition stocks.

The question in that kind of topics is always kinda wrong. It should not be 'can Soviets win without X', it should be instead 'can Germans not loose?'. And the answer to the latter would almost always be 'no' because Germans lost the advantage that allowed them to defeat the Soviets by the end of 1941. High tempo wide front operations were winning the war for the Germans and they were unable to sustain that after 1941 Lend-lease or not.

Everything else varied from very useful (locomotives)...

Locomotives btw is a very good indicator of the Lend-lease discussions. To quote myself from another place:

First American-made locomotives (model S160) were delivered to USSR in 1943. 194 of them (out of 200 ordered) were delivered successfully till the end of the year. The reason was that Soviet Union at the time lacked transports big enough to efficiently carry heavier 100-tonnes locomotives, so smaller S160 were ordered to be delivered first.

First Soviet transport ships capable of carrying EA and EM locomotives (USSR ordered ~2000 of both types in total) were ready in May 1944. A modified timber transport 'Clara Zetkin' carrying 18 locomotives sailed to Vladivostok at May 15 for the first time. 4 timber transports were modified that way in the US shipyards at that point (I have no information if any more were modified afterwards). So each ship had to make 25+ trips across the Pacific to carry all 2000 locomotives. So by October 1, 1945, 1981 locomotives were delivered to the Soviets. Or about 130 per month on average. So it would be very hard to American locomotives to notably affect Soviet logistics in 1944 because practically none of them arrived at that point. And even by 1945, only about 800-1000 of them were in the USSR.

Also, these locomotives were modified versions of old EL model which was supplied to Russian Empire during the First World war, so I would not claim their 'state of the art nature'.

So how many locomotives USSR had? Model FD - ~3200, Model SO - ~4000. Model Sch - 2000. Model AE - ~9000. Model OV - up to 4000, so let's be conservative and count half - 2000. Model S - around 3000. So total number is around 24 thousand locomotives, vast majority of which were working from the very first days of the war. While American ones arrived in significant numbers in late 1944.

Trucks in that regard were rather obviously more impactful but still the distribution was very heavy towards the 1944:

USSR got about 25-26 thousand trucks via lend-lease before June 1943, about 35 thousand in the second half of 1943 and remaining ~400 thousands in 1944-45. Also lend-lease trucks suffered from lower readiness rates (15-20% lower on average) in comparison with the soviet vehicles because of maintenance issues and sensitivity to the fuel quality, as the result lend-lease trucks were redelegated to specialized units (like Guards Mortar regiments with Katyushas that you mentioned, 50% of them were mounted on American trucks) for the majority of the war.

 

[Trevayne]

The issue here as always is actual distribution of the Lend-lease supplies during this period if 1941 to 1944. The thing that about 50% of the Soviet explosive production was made out of the Lend-lease supplied components and materials is true. But if explosives transfer follow the pattern of all other things that US and British supplied to the USSR than dominant majority of that happened in 1944 and later when Soviets were winning already.

So yeah, I know for a fact that Isaev and few other Russian historians said and/or wrote such numbers. I myself have a tiny input of popularizing their work on that matter in the English section of the Net. But to my knowledge they never claimed that it was in any way decisive to the overall outcome of the war because it was mostly decided by the end of 1942.

So what effect would have reduced or non-existant Lend-lease supplies of explosives? Well, it would reduce the Soviets to continue the trend of mauling the Germans in a series of set-piece battles as they did in 1942 and first half of 1943 instead of more sweeping and wide front advances of 1944 and later. When Kursk happened Germans still had artillery superiority over the Soviets which was compensated with careful preparation and accumulation of ammunition stocks.

The question in that kind of topics is always kinda wrong. It should not be 'can Soviets win without X', it should be instead 'can Germans not loose?'. And the answer to the latter would almost always be 'no' because Germans lost the advantage that allowed them to defeat the Soviets by the end of 1941. High tempo wide front operations were winning the war for the Germans and they were unable to sustain that after 1941 Lend-lease or not.

Thanks for the information. I guess the next question is to try to find the deliveries by year for explosives. I will start looking.

Although as a counter, I would speculate that deliveries in 41-43 were very important because the Soviets lost most of their explosives production capability in the Ukraine.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

I recently saw a youtube video The Red God of War. It made some very interesting claims and was wondering if they have been checked out. If this has already been discussed here, could someone please provide a link?

Specifically, it states that Soviet Artillery was crippled during the war by the lack of trained personnel and ammunition production, specifically explosives production. In particular, it cites a claim that Lend Lease provided about 55% of the explosives used by the Soviets between 1941 and 1944. This was due to the Soviets losing about 2/3rds of their chemical industry in 1941 in Ukraine.

It also states that the Germans actually had an artillery advantage for most of the war. Specifically, although the Soviets fired more shells and had more artillery guns, the majority of shells they fired were from their 76mm divisional guns, which were significantly lighter than the German 105mm howitzers. As a result, while the Soviets fired more shells and had more artillery tubes, because most of them were 75mm, the weight of shells fired was significantly less.

-------------Tons of shells fired
Year-------Soviet---------German

1942------446,114-------709,957 (159%)
1943------828,193------1,121,545 (135%)
1944------1,000,962----1,540,933 (154%)

The sources mentioned were a data set produced by on German and Soviet ammunition production during the war by a Russian historian Alexei Isaev and an article Explosives Production in the USSR by Andrej Balysh in the RUDN Journal of Russaian History. The latter article provided the figure of 55% of Soviet explosives coming from lend-lease and is particularly interesting.

If true, it suggests that Lend Lease really was decisive because the Soviets would not have been able to win without it. They might have had lots of men, tanks, and guns, but if most of them can't shoot because they lack ammunition, they are going to lose. They certainly aren't going to push the Germans back without it.

Edit: I think this is the article mentioned, but it is in Russian.

Explosives Production in USSR in 1930s and Its Lend-Lease Supplies During Great Patriotic War - Balysh - RUDN Journal of Russian History

In 1941-1944, Soviet troops received 403 350 tons of explosives, of which 384 572 tons or 95.3 % were TNT. There were 88 526tons or 23 % of imported TNT. In addition, during the indicated period, the USA delivered 65 400 tons of toluene to the USSR. This amount of toluene was enough for the manufacture of 125 769 tons of TNT, which gives another 32.7 % (consumption coefficientof toluene is 0.52, that is, approximately 1.9 tons of TNT are obtained from a ton of toluene). Thus, during the years of Second World War, the Red Army's firepower was more than half ensured thanks to the supply of toluene and TNT from the USA to the USSR (55.7 % of the TNT received by Soviet army had the foreign origin) (Leytman, 1947). Without these supplies, successful combat operations of the Red Army against Nazi German forces would have become impossible, which would lead to a delay in hostilities and a sharp increase in casualties. During the Second World War, the USSR lost about 26.6 million people. However, these losses wouldhave been even higher if it had not been for USA assistance to the Soviet Union in the supply of explosived.

View of Raw materials for the production of trotyl in the context of the development problems of the soviet oil industry in the 1920-1940s

 

[BeardedHoplite]

Like all lend-lease, it was appreciated, but the majority of it arrived after the crisis days of 41-42. It would only delay the Soviet victory, not stop it if LL was not given.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Thanks for the information. I guess the next question is to try to find the deliveries by year for explosives. I will start looking.

Although as a counter, I would speculate that deliveries in 41-43 were very important because the Soviets lost most of their explosives production capability in the Ukraine.

In 1941-1944, Soviet troops received 403 350 tons of explosives, of which 384 572 tons or 95.3 % were TNT.

It's not exact, but Engines of the Red Army has a breakdown of lend-lease by period and general category. Explosives are not singled out, but I'd assume they'd fall under the category of "chemicals". Assuming the proportion of explosives shipped in a given period was the same as the proportion of overall chemicals, that'd break down as follows (rounding to the nearest ton):

June 1941-June 1942: 21,343 tons
July 1942-June 1943: 63,706 tons
July 1943-June 1944: 157,489 tons
July 1944-May 1945: 140,339 tons
May 1945-September 1945: 20,307 tons

This calculation is obviously inexact, but it's a start.

I will point out there are two other factors that need to be added to the equation:

First, there's the pre-war stockpiles of Soviet explosives, though I'd imagine most of those would be either lost or used up during the course of 1941 and maybe into early-1942.

Secondly, the use of lend-lease machinery probably also contributed to the reconstruction of Soviet chemical industries later in the war. If we look at Soviet chemical production, most listed items we have quantities for bottom out in 1942 and then recover from 1943 onward.

 

[Belisarius II]

The amount of explosives given in this period would seem to be decisive. After losing Ukraine in 1941 2/3 of the chemical industry was lost. At the end of 1941 artillery ammo stocks were running low. They didn't take those areas back till mid 1943, and it's unlikely those chemical plants were functioning when retaken. To dismiss this with the idea that this was stuff they got in 1944 so it only helped the Soviet advance doesn't hold up. All though the war the Soviets were very specific in what aid they wanted. The Soviets needed strategic metals, aviation fuel, and food. Now added to that are the chemicals for explosives is just another proof of the decisive importance of Lend Lease.

For most of the Cold War the Soviets wanted the world to think they won the war all by themselves. As proof they want the world to look at their casualty figures, but the more we find out the more we see that that is the most superficial understanding of the war. You can't fight a modern war without the supporting industries to make it all work. What good are guns without explosives for the shells, or airplanes without aviation fuel, or even workers without food?

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

Assuming the proportion of explosives shipped in a given period was the same as the proportion of overall chemicals, that'd break down as follows (rounding to the nearest ton):

Read the paper.

 

[Retro_Reaction]

The problem with talking about military logistics, is that while the supplies themselves are easy to quantify, the impact they have is much harder to quantify, because in warfare, sometimes 2 + 2 equals 10, not 4.

Because of poor communications equipment, low literacy rates and a lack of extensive education/training in general, the Soviets relied on stockpiling ammunition for well planned (and absolutely devastating) prepatory bombardments (as well as an emphasis on LOS/Direct fire, the big cat killers such as the 152s were designed to provide fire support that most armies would utilise artillery for). The weight of fire shot by each army, measured in pure weight of shells often favoured the Soviets rather than the Germans during early stages of the offensive until the German ability to continously fire shells would swing the balance in their favour again. The Soviet strategy worked, as the most effective time for fires is in the opening stage of assaults, on a tactical level, it meant that most Soviet infantry officers did not have access to high level fire support if they are not the main thrust of an offensive, which inherently leads to higher casualties, whereas an American/British Lt might call CAS or a German JO might call 105mm howitzer battery, the Soviet Officers were forced to rely on rifles and hand grenades more often than not.

Without chemical supplies for explosives, does the Soviet strategy change? Not really. The average Soviet officer likely has even less heavy fire support to call on as the belt is drawn even tighter to stockpile for offensives. Does this lead to more Soviet casualties, undoubtedly. Are Soviet offensives just as likely to succeed? Possibly, but their offensives have a higher chance of simply running out of shells. Do the Germans have a better chance of winning? I'd say maybe, but ultimately the offensive power of the Germans remains the same, if they had the spare artillery and fuel to create more encirclements than IOTL they would have, their casualties would likely be fewer which helps retain combat power in infantry battalions but it likely means that they can hang onto what they took longer than being able to take even more territory.

 

[Sam R.]

>delay, not prevent Soviet Victory.
>not present during the crisis.

Sure. And in 1945 the Soviet Union was running close to starting to face internal opposition. So historically the Soviet Union took unnecessary actions (Storming Berlin), and had basically cut the entirety of social fat away. So there's still plenty of "lean" to trim before they hit bone. However, this would almost certainly mean things like a retirement upwards and sideways for Stalin permanently to avoid unnecessary expenditure of precious frontoviks in a restricted environment. It would have meant slow grand tactical battles without telegraph wire, it would have meant slow operations without trucks, and it would have meant slow strategy. It would have also activated the KKE, PCd'I/PCI and PCF. The labourite and industrial unionist peripheries in the UK and USA would have been activated as well.

So it is a very different Soviet Union starving Berlin into surrender years later, a Soviet Union where the party is hanging on by its fingernails and subject to demands greater than the repatriation riots or Cairo and Indian soldiers' parliament and Labour's election. It would be by the teeth, not by the skin of the teeth. And the number of unmarried women would be incomprehensible.

And those other workers' military institutions would be greater because both Britain and the USA would have bled closer to the line.

It is pretty much against all of the historical allied states' interests to not do Lend Lease.

yours,
Sam R.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Because of poor communications equipment, low literacy rates and a lack of extensive education/training in general, the Soviets relied on stockpiling ammunition for well planned (and absolutely devastating) prepatory bombardments (as well as an emphasis on LOS/Direct fire, the big cat killers such as the 152s were designed to provide fire support that most armies would utilise artillery for). The weight of fire shot by each army, measured in pure weight of shells often favoured the Soviets rather than the Germans during early stages of the offensive until the German ability to continously fire shells would swing the balance in their favour again. The Soviet strategy worked, as the most effective time for fires is in the opening stage of assaults, on a tactical level, it meant that most Soviet infantry officers did not have access to high level fire support if they are not the main thrust of an offensive, which inherently leads to higher casualties, whereas an American/British Lt might call CAS or a German JO might call 105mm howitzer battery, the Soviet Officers were forced to rely on rifles and hand grenades more often than not.

It is interesting that you see this start to change around about the end of ‘44, with a really big surge in Soviet artillery expenditures through early-45 that outstrips even what the Americans and British fired in Northwest Europe. During the offensives of these periods, we see Soviet artillery basically firing non-stop throughout entire offensives until targets are simply pushed out of range and the Soviets picking up some very American-esque artillery habits, such as firing off barrages when spotting individual Germans. Fire control remained an issue though. Some non-divisional artillery units could be very good by this point, but those were the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Bellacinos]

I honestly think Soviet lend lease in the artillery and trucks, paid off the most during August Storm where they rolled the Japanese Kwantung Army in like 2 weeks (albeit a very weakened version).

 

[CaptainCalvert]

I honestly think Soviet lend lease in the artillery and trucks, paid off the most during August Storm where they rolled the Japanese Kwantung Army in like 2 weeks (albeit a very weakened version).

Trucks almost certainly helped with the speed of advance, but realistically even BT7s and T26s would probably have torn up the Kwantung army at that stage. T34s would have been near-invulnerable to anything short of a 47mm [1], and whether armed with 76mm or 85mm, it wouldn't take a lot of OT34 flame tanks and SU122 to dig out the stubborn holdouts.

[1] I'm not even sure the Kwantung army had these, and while a good AT gun - roughly as good as the French and Czech ones - it's getting a bit limited against a mid war T34.

 

[Gannt the chartist]

Add to which things like telephone wires and equipment for controlling fire which is from memory almost entirely LL. One of the reasons for the SU series was the inability to control indirect fire. This also plays into the number of trained battery personnel available to do the sums and the data available to them. With time to set up Russian artillery could be reasonably efficient but on a small scale presumably without LL materiel they would be more limited in scale, but that does not always mean less effective where applied.

Ypu also need to remember that German artillery is not that efficient either at least compared to anglo american.

 

[Trevayne]

Thanks everyone for the information and giving me ideas for where to look next. In particular, it looks like trying to determine just how much of Soviet ammunition production each year was made possible by lend lease explosives and the proportion. If, for example, the West supplied 40% in 1942, that suggests without it the Germans might well have won at Stalingrad.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

-------------Tons of shells fired
Year-------Soviet---------German

1942------446,114-------709,957 (159%)
1943------828,193------1,121,545 (135%)
1944------1,000,962----1,540,933 (154%)

The sources mentioned were a data set produced by on German and Soviet ammunition production during the war by a Russian historian Alexei Isaev and an article Explosives Production in the USSR by Andrej Balysh in the RUDN Journal of Russian History. The latter article provided the figure of 55% of Soviet explosives coming from lend-lease and is particularly interesting.

But there is a big side note to be considered. Not all German shells fired were fired on the Eastern Front. Some went to Africa, Italy, and France-Belgium. And I have read somewhere that about 1/3 of German munitions were fired up. (IYKWIM.)

 

[Hastings]

So basically in terms of artillery then, looks like the Soviets could probably roughly maintain their level of artillery use from early in the war without land-lease and it wouldn't effect the early stages *too* much. However, shifting toward an offensive attitude will be extremely challenging. That won't be good for the USSR, they were running low on manpower, etc, I think the line between a death spiral and the OTL victory spiral is a lot finer than people think. But this particular one I doubt saves the Nazis. Maybe they win Kursk or Soviets can't do followup attacks, casualty ratios are worse given a bigger firepower gap and without successes, Soviet army starts hollowing out a lot faster than OTL. But the thing is it is just a year to D-Day and Germans are seriously degraded themselves, I really doubt they can knock the Russians out or free up meaningful power. They will transfer more West than OTL, which will eventually let Russians advance regardless, but sometime in spring or summer 1945, Allies will break through Rhine defenses into German heartland. Soviets might not be far beyond their 1939 borders though with places like Romania, or Yugoslavia essentially self-liberating or flipping by default when Berlin falls.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Thanks everyone for the information and giving me ideas for where to look next. In particular, it looks like trying to determine just how much of Soviet ammunition production each year was made possible by lend lease explosives and the proportion. If, for example, the West supplied 40% in 1942, that suggests without it the Germans might well have won at Stalingrad.

According to the table cited above Soviets received 20 thousand tons of TNT and explosive components in 1942. How much is that?

One 76,2mm high explosive shell contains around 1,6 to 1,8 kilograms of explosive material between ~1 kg of propellant charge and the rest being explosive filler depending on the particular model of the shell. Soviets fired 10 million 76,2 mm shells in 1942 (actually closer to 15 million but it would include regimental low-velocity howitzers and mountain guns, so we do not count them here) . It is difficult to separate armor piercing rounds from that number, but let's adjust the explosive weight to 1,4 kilos per shell to account for that. It is 14 thousand tons of explosives used by 76,2 mm divisional artillery and tanks alone.

So let's add other common Soviet artillery calibers - 122 mm divisional howitzers and 152 mm corps level guns. Soviets fired 2,2 million shells for the latter and 5 million shells for the former. Each 152 mm shell consists of 1 to 2 kilogram charge and between 5 to 8 kilogram of filler. So let's average it to 8 kilos of explosives per shell. It will amount to 17 thousand tons of explosives. Each 122 mm shell consists of 0,7 to 1 kilogram charge and between 3,6 to 4,5 kilos of filler. Let's average it to about 5 kilos per shell. 25 thousand kilos of explosives for 122 mm ammunition.

So rough estimate of explosive consumption by three main Red Army artillery calibers in 1942 would be 56 thousand tons.

And this is just main guns. They also fired about 6 million 45 mm shells, 20 million 82 and 120 mm mortar rounds, 3 million 76 and 85 mm flak rounds and 2 million rockets. And a bunch of smaller or less common stuff. So you cannot realistically get anywhere close to 40%. Even 20% would be a big stretch.

And proportion kinda maintains for 1943 too. While Lend-lease supply increased by two times, Soviets also threw about twice as much munitions downrange. So domestic production was clearly expanding/recovering alongside with the Lend-lease increase. While 1944 increase in amount of shells fired was much more modest, 20% or so.