How do you get rid of Surplus Equipment in 1945? (PIC HEAVY)

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2008-04-19 03:57am

Easy!

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2008-04-19 04:09am

My "favorite" if you can call it that; war scrap story has to do with Lend Lease Hellcats, Avengers, and Corsairs that we gave to the Royal Navy.

At the end of the war, we had to take them back, since Lend Lease contract stipulated "return at end of war"; so what we did was IIRC a CVE would go meet a British Carrier, the Lend Lease aircraft would be loaded onboard the CVE; which would promptly then sail to within a couple miles off shore and then in full sight of everyone, promptly begin shoving the aircraft over the side.

Cecelia5578 · Post by **Cecelia5578** » 2008-04-19 01:22pm

MKSheppard wrote:My "favorite" if you can call it that; war scrap story has to do with Lend Lease Hellcats, Avengers, and Corsairs that we gave to the Royal Navy.

At the end of the war, we had to take them back, since Lend Lease contract stipulated "return at end of war"; so what we did was IIRC a CVE would go meet a British Carrier, the Lend Lease aircraft would be loaded onboard the CVE; which would promptly then sail to within a couple miles off shore and then in full sight of everyone, promptly begin shoving the aircraft over the side.

That seems like a waste. Its not as if the British couldn't use them, and we had plenty of planes to go around for a rapidly shrinking carrier fleet.

Dark Flame · Post by **Dark Flame** » 2008-04-19 04:50pm

I really don't get the point of scrapping all of those planes... Maybe it's my packrat side showing, but it seems that something productive could have been done with that many functional aircraft.

Soontir C'boath · Post by **Soontir C'boath** » 2008-04-19 04:54pm

I want to cry looking at these photos. The P-38 was the reason why I am so enamored about flying.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2008-04-19 06:12pm

What's more to the point, why not simple remove the guns and sell the bastards? You know a few hundred pilots would have bought them if they had been cheap enough. It's like the Wily's jeep and GMC, why not just give the suckers away to civilians who hauled them away rather than dump them in the ocean?

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-04-19 06:27pm

I think post war, no one was in the mood to buy anything.

However, I am surprised no attempts to deweaponise the planes before "blowing" them up.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2008-04-19 06:41pm

I have to agree, just bombing the shit out of these things is a waste: even if no one wanted to buy them at the time, they could have been gutted and recycled. I am pretty sure their weapons and motor and all the other shit can be used for something, spare parts if nothing else.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-04-19 07:26pm

Zixinus wrote:I have to agree, just bombing the shit out of these things is a waste: even if no one wanted to buy them at the time, they could have been gutted and recycled. I am pretty sure their weapons and motor and all the other shit can be used for something, spare parts if nothing else.

The person ordered to dispose of them likely didn't have the authority or inclination to worry about such things. They were told to get rid of them and they did so in the easiest manner possible. A general directive to 'find ways to reuse everything and recover some money where possible' would have to come from the top, and at the time all the people at the top had more pressing concerns. For aircraft stranded in the middle of the pacific, I'm not sure the cost of shipping/flying them home, stripping them and finding buyers would be worth the sale price in the glutted post-WWII market. Finally I'm sure the aircraft manufacturers lobbied against this, as it would inevitably hit their sales hard (at a time when they were already struggling to cope with the sudden drop in government orders).

Post by **Simplicius** » 2008-04-19 11:07pm

I'm not sure just how authoritative this information is, but as a museum website it's probably not total rubbish:

The Wings That Carried Them to Victory wrote:America produced some 294,000 aircraft for WWII. Of that number, 21,583 (7.34%) were lost in the United States in test flights, ferrying, training accidents, etc., and 43,581 were lost en route to the war and in overseas operations.

By 1944 the U.S. Foreign Economic Administration began a program to scrap certain obsolete, damaged and surplus military aircraft overseas.

Following the war, estimates of the number of excess surplus airplanes ran as high as 150,000. Consideration was given to storing a substantial number of these.

Beginning in 1944, domestic aircraft declared surplus were turned over to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RFC established depots around the country to store and sell surplus aircraft. By the summer of 1945, at least 30 sales-storage depots and 23 sales centers were in operation. In November 1945, it was estimated a total of 117,210 aircraft would be transferred as surplus.

Between 1945 and June 1947, the RFC, War Assets Corporation and the War Assets Administration (disposal function of the RFC was transferred to WAC on January 15, 1946, and to the WAA in March of 1946) processed approximately 61,600 WWII aircraft, of which 34,700 were sold for flyable purposes and 26,900, primarily combat types, were sold for scrapping.

Most of the transports and trainers could be used in the civilian fleet, and trainers were sold for $875 to $2,400. The fighters and bombers were of little peacetime use, although some were sold. Typical prices for surplus aircraft were:

BT-13, $450
P-38, $1,250
AT-6, $1,500
A-26, $ 2,000
P-51, $3,500
B-25, $8,250
B-17, $13,750
B-24, $13,750
B-32, $32,500
Many aircraft were transferred to schools for educational purposes, and to communities for memorial use for a minimal fee. One source reported a Boy Scout Troop bought a B-17 for $350.

A Walnut Ridge hometown institution, Southern Baptist College, purchased two of the aircraft stored at Walnut Ridge, a C-47 and a C-46. The exact purchase price for these is unknown, but is believed to have been around $600 to $800 each.

Also, the P-38 was a pre-war design, and was likely to be of only limited utility - as a ground attack aircraft, it was inferior to the P-47 and A-26, and as a pure fighter it would not have been competitive with the new jets. Other pre-war designs didn't fare so well in the drawdown either.

That said, I shed a manly tear at these photos.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2008-04-22 05:45am

[Luke Skywalker Bespin mode] Nooooooooooo.....noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!![/Luke Skywalker Bespin mode]

You know, this is pretty ironic. Back in the day probably nobody cared about a bunch of obsolete fighters. Even if they were P-38's.

But right there are people that would gladly donate their livers if they could get ahold on a P38 in a working, pre-scrap condition. Very sad.

As a great enthusiast of classic cars and other vintage machines, I can only weep at those photos. Thanks for posting them though, because, they are still awesome.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2008-04-24 07:07pm

MKSheppard wrote:My "favorite" if you can call it that; war scrap story has to do with Lend Lease Hellcats, Avengers, and Corsairs that we gave to the Royal Navy.

At the end of the war, we had to take them back, since Lend Lease contract stipulated "return at end of war"; so what we did was IIRC a CVE would go meet a British Carrier, the Lend Lease aircraft would be loaded onboard the CVE; which would promptly then sail to within a couple miles off shore and then in full sight of everyone, promptly begin shoving the aircraft over the side.

In most cases we simply told the RN dump the aircraft into the ocean themselves; IIRC the British had to ask for special exceptions for certain aircraft on certain ships because they still needed them in the Far East to oversea the reparation of Japanese forces back to Japan.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2008-04-25 12:18am

What I found depressing was not the 'front end' things like fighter but the logistics stuff like bulldozers, cranes, tool spare engines of all types etc that got dumped especially in in those new or soon to be new natiotons that could have used the stuff for development. Saw lots of dumped gear of that nature in Vanuatu when I was there in the early 90's, rusting away just of beaches, all fused together..and lots of bloody jellyfish to.

clone1051 · Post by **clone1051** » 2008-04-25 03:44pm

I hate seeing all those beautiful planes just destroyed like that, even if it was the most economical way to get rid of them.

I once read in a book a brief story of a former B-26 pilot who saw a newsreel of B-26s being destroyed. It was already sad for him, but it got worse when the camera zoomed in on one plane and he recognized the nose art. His wife was apparently annoyed at the fact that he was almost in tears in the theater watching them tear up his own plane.