Our Canadian Military:
An Impressive Historical Look Back
If you think our armed forces need some beefing up now, you have have seen them back in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War 2.
In those days our three armed services together had a grand total of 10,200 personnel, 29 machine guns, 23 anti-tank rifles, and 5 three-inch mortars.
But by 1945, the army had swelled to 700,000 men and had fought so well in northwest Europe and Italy that military experts rated it one of the best in the world.
The navy, with its 480 vessels and 100,000 sailors, became the third largest in the world.
During those perilous years when Britain stood alone against the Hun, our navy escorted 180 million tons of supplies across the Atlantic to keep her in business.
The air force ballooned from 4000 men to 250,000, and they trained 130,000 other Commonwealth air crew - four out of five. We had 48 bomber and fighter squadrons based in England and - get this - 25% of flight crew i the British air force was Canadian!
At the start of the War the total Canadian government budget was about half a billion dollars; at the end, we were spending $19 billion just on defense.
One out of every 11 people in Canada was in uniform, and a million more were working on the home front to produce the tanks, planes, guns, and ships for our fighting men overseas.
And Canada was the only Allied country not to accept US aid; in fact, we actually donated $4 billion to Britain during the course hostilities.
Not to shabby for a nation of 11 million at the time, eh?
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This glimpse brought you by a proud Canadian, EchoAngel :)
GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS... ALL OF THEM XX
