War salvage in Europe

[Kuno]

A sad thing seeing all these photos - with the eyes of today. But at least as it comes to the aircraft - there was simply neither need nor money to maintain tens of thousands of propeller driven fighters and bombers anymore after the war... and in addition, they were technically obsolete...

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Note: donating the war-surplus material was done after the decision to re-equip the Canadian Army with American-type equipment.

See http://www.nato.int/archives/1st5years/chapters/12.htm:

"Canadian aid

The Canadian mutual aid programme began in 1950, in conjunction with the decision of the Canadian Government to re-equip its land forces with American-type equipment. The British-type equipment with which their forces had hitherto been supplied, or which was being kept in reserve stock, was made available to NATO.

From the beginning, Canadian aid has been made available on the basis of multilateral offering to NATO countries. It is transferred to individual European recipients in accordance with Canadian acceptance of allocations recommended either by the Standing Group or by the NATO Secretariat. In this way, the early phases of the Canadian aid programme provided the basic infantry and artillery weapons, motor vehicles, other equipment and ammunition to supply three European ground divisions (one Belgian, one Dutch and one Italian). Much additional equipment, ammunition and explosives have been donated, and every European member nation except Iceland (which has no armed forces) has been the beneficiary of Canadian military assistance."

Also see e.g. http://www.nato.int/archives/1st5years/chapters/12.htm on MDAP

[Ed Landstrom]

There were industries founded not only on scrapping or modifying military equipment and selling either vehicles or parts, but on manufacturing new equipment from left over bits.

One example was Ferrucio Lamborghini who got his start by manufacturing tractors out of US surplus parts. The sports cars came later.

A less "sexy" example in Canada were the "army wagons" built from leftover CMP parts. They used to be common here in Ontario and one still occasionally turns up at a farm auction.

It probably wouldn't take much digging to turn up hundreds of companies set up to re-use surplus parts. As the supply of parts dried up, some of them called it a day, while others moved on to other manufacturing.

[Mike Cecil]

" The Canadian mutual aid programme began in 1950 ..." - well, no it didn't, at least the first Canadian Mutual Aid programme didn't: it was a wartime measure for supplying allied countries with equipment and raw materials.

The Canadian Mutual Aid Act became law on 20 May 1943. The Act charged that the Canadian Mutual Aid Board ' contribute, exchange, deliver, transfer to or possession of or otherwise make available, war supplies to any of the [allies] other than Canada.' The purpose was to enable those of the [allies] who are short of Canadian dollars to continue to draw supplies from Canada to meet their essential wartime needs.'

Australia was the happy recipient of a considerable quantity of materiel under the CMA programme, importing goods and materials from Canada to the value of $87M during 1942 (including $9M in freight costs) and an estimated $90M in the period April 1943 to March 1944. (The 1942 payments made before the Act came into force were credited to the CMA account.)

Mike