Some 15,000 aircraft were provided from the United States to the Soviet Union during World War Two of which half were flown across the Arctic by unsung heroes.
The Lend Lease Program started nine months before Pearl Harbor (when the United States was at peace) and lasted throughout 1945, providing the “Arsenal of Democracy” to cash strapped pro-US Allies including over $30 billion worth of equipment to Britain (which was finally paid off on December 29, 2006) as well as smaller amounts to France, China and a multitude of other states. Arguably the most important share of the Lend Lease money went in the form of $11 billion to Uncle Joe Stalin's Soviet Union. It was the Soviet Union that held the bulk of the German Army at bay from 1941-45 and was the first into Berlin. This aide to the Soviets included 375,883 trucks, 51, 503 Jeeps, nearly four hundred ships and almost 15,000 aircraft. Almost everything including half of the aircraft were crated and transported across the ocean in the holds of cargo vessels. The other half were flown almost straight into combat. This meant that no less than 7926 airplanes flew under their own power from their US factories to the battle fronts over the skies of the Soviet Union. American pilots brought airplanes from Great Falls, Montana to Fairbanks, Alaska, where Soviet pilots switched crews and ferried them along the Soviet leg of the route to Krasnoyarsk and then to battlefront airstrips.
This little known story is chronicled on the new Lend-Lease section of the airforce.ru website A monument has recently been erected in Fairbanks including a pair of bronze pilots, one Soviet and the other American to commemorate this effort.
