War salvage in Europe

[Bill Murray]

A truly fascinating subject to be sure.

I am not making a political statement here, but this aspect of history really brings out the truly staggering costs of modern warfare.

WWII is a particularly good example of this, where almost the entire GNP of the major combatants was devoted to making things, training troops which meant building bases, transporting said troops and things sometimes halfway around the world which meant a need for trucks, railroad equipment and ships and so on and so on.

And, in the case of the Allies at least, we way over produced these things in the sense that we never truly knew when the war would end and we did not want to get caught short handed.

So, here are some photos I snatched in the last days to illustrate the magnitude of this phenomenon. I should also add to something several others pointed out, in the case of soft skin vehicles, the US manufacturers did lobby fiercely against bringing back said vehicles but there were some clever folks that still managed as I will show in a photo.



First three are a salvage sale in the US in the late 1930's as we were changing to the generation just before the first "real WWII softskins". Second photo is a bike park in the UK selling off conscripted bikes and the third is a salvage yard in Italy postwar.

[Bill Murray]

Next batch are not from the ETO but would be typical of dumps found there.

[Bill Murray]

Switching now to the US and a photo of a breakers yard in Ohio.
This man finagled a way to import surplus vehicles from various SE Pacific countries primarily to break up for parts. The photo is modern unfortunately but in any case they are still in that business.

[Bill Murray]

Next, I am switching to aircraft which I hope is OK on this Forum.
They make for very impressive photos

[Bill Murray]

And, now, what happened to these aircraft.

[Bill Murray]

And lastly, a shot of B-32 bombers awaiting scrapping.

Interesting story here. The B-32 was a backup to the B-29 as a superbomber in case the B-29 didn't work out. It was in development from 1939 to late spring 1945 and only made a couple of photo recon sorties over Japan as the war was ending. It had tremendous teething problems such as a non functioning pressurization system, the tail assembly was changed several times, the remote weapons stations didn't work and several crashed.

In the end, out of about 1200 ordered only 118 ever entered service and every last one of them was scrapped by 1948. Even the one scheduled to be given to the Air Force Museum!!

Hope you enjoy the photos

Bill

[Bill Murray]

Sorry, here is a more dramatic photo of the B-32 graveyard.
Bill