Is there seriously any doubt about this?
When World War II started, America was isolationist and the Soviet Union collaborationist.
The U.S. may have been "isolationist" in terms of formal declarations of war, but there's no question that we were already involved in the war in terms of supplying one side and providing direct military support. I find it hard to take an author seriously when he describes America as "isolationist" before World War II when it was American-made ships carrying American supplies, escorted by American submarines, that kept Great Britain in the game before 1941.
Born and raised in and around Marietta, Georgia from several generations there, I was well aware of the Lockheed Plant (Air Force Plant 6) located there. Today it’s LM where F22s and C-130s are built.
I remember my aunts and uncles who’d worked there during and later after the war call it the Bell Bomber plant. I’ve since found Joe Kirby’s book on it.
Groundbreaking started in March 1942 and it was completed 54 weeks later. At the end of it’s B29 production run in 1946 when the plant was closed it had been pushing out TWO B-29s every day, seven days a week.
The main assembly building (still standing and working today) was large enough to house 20 battleships, 69 submarines and 24 PT boats. It employed 28,000 workers.
If you think about it, this isn’t America’s only unique feat. It was replicated in every state, every urban area and many rural areas. By the end, they were spitting out one liberty ship per DAY. Plants? Thousands of them - millions of workers putting out the largest arsenal this planet has ever seen.
That’s why.
American war production proved astonishing. At the huge Willow Run plant in Michigan, the greatest generation turned out a B-24 heavy bomber every hour. A single shipyard could mass-produce an ocean-going Liberty merchant ship from scratch in a week. ///
It’s almost silly to be able to produce a ship a week. Were it not history, I would not believe it. The rest of the story is even more amazing.
A lot has been made that the Russians fought 120 divisions and we fought 80, and the crack troops went to Russia.
This story puts things in perspective, and gives the impression that Russia was doomed without US aid.
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