Considering that Merlins were "no good" for low-level work, the Hurribombers and ground-attack Spits sure did a decent-enough job on the German railroad rolling-stock and on locomotives especially. We had a fellow in this town who specialised in locomotives, got more than a dozen. When I was in Koln, almost 30 years after the War, the roof over the loading platform at the Bahnhof still was shot all to blazes. The tin on top was new but the support struts, the uprights, looked as if the mice had been at them. They had all the holes below about 12 feet chalked for welding at that time, but you still could tell what had made the hole: .30-cal, .50-cal, 20mm or whatever.
Arguably the best ground-attack single-seater in the early part of the War was the much-maligned Bell Airacobra. A mid-engine design, it was the Warthog of its day: the whole front end of the bird was gun. The Russians got close to three-quarters of total production, after rebuilds on these, mostly in Canada for delivery up the Alaska by our guys and then across the Straits and along the Trans-Siberia by the Russian girls: a 15,000-mile trip before a shot was fired. The air museum in Tikkakoski is restoring one now.
As far as the Russians not liking American or British equipment, that was mainly because they didn't know how to make it. SOVIET equipment was great because it was a victory of The People over the international capitalist class.... not matter what its origin might be. The standard Russian light-duty military car was the GAZ-A: a modded Model A Ford. Their light-duty truck was the GAZ-AA, which was a Ford AA 3/4-tonner and their ton-and-a-half was the GAZ-AAA, still basically a Ford, made in Gorky in the German Ford plant that Henry sold to Russia in the '30s. Russia copied the Sherman, once they got their hands on a few, and Stalin referred to the Studebaker heavy truck as the best in the world. So much for them not liking our equipment..... once it had a Russian name. They copied Chevrolet and Packard cars, too, but Comrade Stalin, who never carried money, smoked a Dunhill pipe and was driven in a REAL Packard.... which just happened to be the American equivalent of a Rolls-Royce, should you be into older cars.
On a lot of equipment made for Russia, they specified the markings, even when the equipment was being given to them. Check out 'Russian' equipment carefully. You can find tires on light/medium artillery and on vehicles with English-language American markings facing the inside of the chassis; the outside said "SOVIET RUBBER TRUST"...... in Russian, of course. On our Fireflies, the Number 19 Sets (radios) were made in Canada by Northern Electric (iirc) but the controls all were in Russian first and then English.
Funny, but the Russians didn't like the Harley-Davidson 45-cubic-inch motorcycle, even though it was good enough for the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Japan to use through the War and for countries such as Greece to use into the 1970s. Even Fritz used the ones he captured! Russia did, though, manufacture a modded copy (Ural) of the German BMW R75M up into at least the 1980s, likely because you could put a machine-gun onto the side-car!
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