[ARC5] Surplus Disposal

[MillerKE6F at aol.com]

Hi
    From a historical and economic standpoint I've  often wondered what the 
impact on our economy would have been if all  the surplus WWII war materiel 
came home to roost.  Would it have been  worth it even from a 
transportation and storage cost viewpoint to bring worn out  or even new vehicles, tanks, 
and other materiel home as technology was moving so  fast in the late 40s 
as to make most of the stuff useless.  Couple this  with the fact that 
production for the "Invasion of Japan" had been going quite  strong with massive 
buildups of prime movers as well as spare parts.  Much  of the electronics 
that was parsed out by the War Materiel Corp (not sure of the  name) came from 
CONUS stockpiles and not from the varous theaters of war.
 
    It's true that a lot of our post war entertainment  equipment 
manufacturers made use of these parts stockpiles and one could find  JAN  6SN7s in 
nearly any TV made in the early 50s Or second  rate JAN tubes that were washed 
and re-branded
 
    From a military standpoint there was not a lot of  use for many of the 
WWII war birds ( there were exceptions) but by 1950 the  piston combat plane 
was an anachronism at best and the avionics associated with  these planes 
were also being superceded by more cost effective solutions.   It's 
impossible to think that the ham population in the late 40s and early 60s  could 
consume even a small fraction of the communications and electronic surplus  that 
survived the war.  Therefore, what is the government to do?  
 
    The original contractors did not want the stuff  flooding the 
marketplace in competition with their post war offerings.  And  keep in mind that a 
lot of the equipment and systems fielded in the war were not  designed to 
last all that long and were made as cheaply as possible to work fine  for a 
short period if not shot out of the sky or taken out by an artillery  shell.  
There is a misconception that a mil spec device or machine is  automatically 
super rugged with the potential for lengthy service.  Most  mil specs 
including JAN spec merely says that the part or unit meets a certain  level of 
performance and quality at a price the military is willing to  pay.  
 
    Bob, KE6F