Thanks Tom for your comments, and Bowser, for your great input and insights too.

A few follow-up remarks and some additional information:

Politically, it was probably impossible for the United States to have remained on the sidelines.

The Lend-Lease issue is a fascinating one. I have repeated some of the conventional opinions about Soviet preferences for their own weapons, but due to Soviet secrecy it's been difficult to get the full picture.

According to this excellent, fact-filled presentation by Jason Long, Forging the Red Star The Soviets dissed all Western armor except the Sherman, but gladly accepted most of the rest, especially light tanks, which allowed the Russians to focus production on their medium and heavy tanks.

Mr. Long notes: "One characteristic of Western AFVs that is little discussed by the Soviets was that the reliability of Western tanks allowed them to drive on long past the time that Soviet tanks had to be returned to the factory for a total mechanical rebuild. Soviet vehicles were purposely designed with short mechanical lifetimes. In combat this mattered little when the life expectancy of a tank was measured in days. But in training units the reliability of Western tanks was a godsend since they needed far less maintenance than Soviet tanks. Even in combat units this characteristic was useful; why else would 1st Guards Mechanized Corps convert from the T-34-85 to the Sherman, a tank with a smaller gun and thinner armor?"

For all its shortcomings, the Sherman was fast and reliable. Those assets alone would make it very valuable to an elite unite like the 1st Guards, which would probably have been used to exploit breakthroughs and seize key objectives.

The History Channel occasionally runs a piece on the Sherman which exposes some of the less favorable aspects of this tank - how easy it was to hole and how quick it was to burn. Royal tankers called it "the Ronson." It is said that it took 5 Shermans to defeat a Tiger, with its wicked 88mm gun.

In the air, two Soviet aces Pokryshkin and Rechkalov with 117 combined kills, recorded 92 of those while flying the American Bell P-39 Airacobra. Almost 5,000 of the nearly 10,000 built were shipped to the Soviet Union through Iran, via the Trans-Siberian Railway, and North Cape convoys.

Elsewhere in Mr. Longs article, you'll note that the Germans actually outproduced the Soviets in some weapons, and this margin actually widened toward the end of the war even in the face of the intensive Allied bombing. Amazing.

For a good look at WWII armor and other weapons, this site offers a comprehensive perspective, starting with theT-34.

Lend Lease was an interesting chapter in WWII, and the full story has yet to be told.

sp