Favorite Lend-Lease Cars
We continue to inspect the “bourgeois” equipment, which was supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease during World War II. Today, probably the most recognizable and famous cars are Dodge and Studebaker. The cars are exhibited in the exposition “Parade Crew” of the UMMC Museum of Military Equipment, in the city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma.
The Dodge WC-51 is a kind of “overgrown jeep”, no longer a Willys, but not yet a Studebaker, with a carrying capacity of 750 kilograms, for which it received the nickname “three-quarters”. It is equipped with a 6-cylinder engine with a volume of 3800 cm3 and a power of 92 hp, which allows you to reach speeds of up to 88 km/h. It was supplied to the Red Army from 1942, a total of about 25,000 vehicles were delivered. It was used as an artillery tractor, a reconnaissance vehicle and as a personal transport.
The record holder of Lend-Lease deliveries is the Studebaker US6 truck, about 195 thousand cars were delivered to the USSR! The three-axle truck with a 6×6 and 6×4 wheel arrangement is equipped with a 6-cylinder Hercules engine, with a volume of 5.2 liters, a capacity of 87 hp and a carrying capacity of 2.5 tons, but in fact it transported four. He was loved by drivers for his reliability and endurance.
The car was manufactured both with an all-metal side tilt body and with a wooden-metal body without an awning.
The US6 was also used as a platform for the legendary Katyusha BM-13 or BM-31-12.
After the end of the war, about 100,000 vehicles were returned to the United States under the treaty, they were put under pressure right in the port and exported as scrap metal. But a large number of cars remained in the USSR, let’s remember at least the movie “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed”, so they could be found on the roads of the USSR until the 60s.
