The Persian Corridor and the echo after

1942 — 1975

Assembled in Iran, driven north by Soviet drivers: The road to Russia was itself an American operation. Trucks went by rail to the Pacific ports, by ship around Africa to the Persian Gulf, and then through Iran — where many arrived cased and partly knocked down and were made whole at the Army's truck assembly plants, TAP I at Andimeshk and TAP II at Khorramshahr, built and first run by General Motors Overseas and taken over by the U.S. Army on 1 July 1943. The Army's official history of the corridor, T. H. Vail Motter's The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia, records the flow at the level of the individual make: when the British-run plant at Rafadiyah stopped work in August and September 1944, the cause entered in the record is its "change-over from Studebakers to Chevrolets," and the deficit had to be made up at Andimeshk and Khorramshahr.

Assembled, the trucks "were driven away, as before, by Soviet drivers" over the mountain road north to Tehran and the Soviet receiving points; by December 1944 the Khorramshahr plant alone was turning out 5,000 imported trucks a month, on the British official record. More than four million tons of Lend-Lease material reached the Soviet Union through the corridor. What the men at the top of that army thought of the cargo is on record three times over. Stalin, toasting at Tehran on 30 November 1943 in the minutes of his interpreter Bohlen, said: "The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war." Marshal Zhukov, in conversation with the writer Konstantin Simonov, was specific about the make: "Without American Studebakers, we'd have had nothing to tow our artillery with.

They essentially provided the bulk of our frontline transport." And Khrushchev's memoirs recount Stalin saying privately, more than once, that without American help the Soviet Union would have lost. The echo lasted longer than the alliance: the marque record names the US6 as the basis of the Soviet GAZ-51 truck, built until 1975, and military-vehicle histories trace the postwar ZiS/ZiL-151 and 157 family, built into the 1960s, to the US6 pattern — South Bend's wartime export, copied into the truck fleet of the country that received it.

Sources:

1. T. H. Vail Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia (U.S. Army Center of Military History), chapter XIV — the truck assembly plants at Andimeshk and Khorramshahr, the Army's takeover of 1 July 1943, Soviet drivers driving the assembled trucks north, and the Rafadiyah stoppage caused by its change-over from Studebakers to Chevrolets.
2. British official despatches from Persia, December 1944 (Qatar Digital Library) — the Khorramshahr plant's output raised to 5,000 imported trucks a month.
3. The Persian Gulf Command record (Army Historical Foundation) — more than 4 million tons of Lend-Lease material through the corridor.
4. Stalin's Tehran toast of 30 November 1943, from Bohlen's minutes as published; Zhukov's remark to Konstantin Simonov and Khrushchev's memoir account, as collected in The Insider's documentary review (2025) of the Zhukov, Khrushchev and Stalin statements.
5. The marque record of the Studebaker US6 — the type as basis of the GAZ-51 (built to 1975); Classic Military Vehicle magazine's US6 history — the ZiS/ZiL 151 and 157 family descended from the type, built until 1966.