The 1942 - 1944 landrover examine successful for the U.S. Army in World War II struggle . Yet jeep had proven their worth in battle all across the ball even before theJapanese attacked Pearl Harboron December 7 , 1941 .
The speed and informality with which German troops were able to sweep through the low countries – Belgium , Holland , Luxembourg – and on into northerly France was a stunning blow to the Allies . Commencing on May 10 , 1940 , the Nazi forces travel so apace that within 16 days British and French troops had been driven almost into the sea .
Jeep Image Gallery
Had it not been for the singular emptying at Dunkirk , thousands of Allied troop would have sure been capture . On June 14 , the Germans occupy Paris ; eight days later France fell . For all intent and purposes , Britain stood alone , facing the promote Nazi war simple machine .
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was more acutely cognizant than most Americans of the gravity of the berth – specially regarding our own national surety . So , on June 10 , he pledged that the United States would " extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this country . " America had become , in Roosevelt ’s run-in , " The Arsenal of Democracy . "
By the next March , " Lend - Lease " had been authorized by Congress , providing war equipage such as airplane , tanks , and trucks , along with intellectual nourishment and other supplies and service . The main recipient role was Britain , though the program was soon extend to China , and then , in September , to the Soviet Union . The legislation allowed the President to accept quittance " in kind or property or any other lineal or indirect welfare that the President deems acceptable . " Of course this imply much of the amount – which eventually outstrip $ 49 billion – was actually an straight-out gift ; though , the Allied nations gave U.S. troops station abroad some $ 8 million in " reverse Lend - Lease . "
Of all the item of equipment supply to the Allies under the Lend - Lease program , none was more enthusiastically have than the landrover . On September 19 , 1941 , American diplomatist W. Averell Harriman and his British opposite number , Lord Beaverbrook , were send to Moscow to confer with Russian dictator Josef Stalin . The purpose of their coming together was to discuss further supplies and equipment that might , under the Lend - Lease program , be rank at the disposal of the Soviet Union .
In stark line to the amity he had manifested on an early , like occasion , Stalin was curt , blunt , even unmannered . Harriman , the quintessential diplomat , reviewed for Marshall Stalin an impressive lean of goods and serving that the United States and Britain were prepared to provide to the Soviets , who at the meter were put away in a desperate struggle against the kick upstairs German Wehrmacht .
Stalin remained unimpressed , almost hostile . Finally , running down his list , Harriman amount to what was apparently the central item : 5,000 jeeps .
Old Joe Stalin ’s eyes lit up . " Good ! " he is report to have exclaimed . " But I want more . This is a warfare of motors . It is insufferable to have too many of them , and the side having the big bit of motors is bound to win . "
Find out the Russian Army ’s reaction to the landrover , and learn more about the landrover ’s versatility on the next page .
For more information on Jeeps, see:
Jeep’s Versatility
Of course everybody else wanted landrover too , for the most part due to the jeep ’s versatility . For the sentence being , 5,000 was all " Uncle Joe " got , though eventually he encounter several thousand more . Reportedly , Soviet propagandist were at pains to inform the home folks that these remarkable little machines were Russian - built , in a secret factory .
However , the Russian soldier evidently knew the source . In fact , the Russians became so fond of the jeep that , consort to Doreen Canaday Spitzer , girl of Willys - Overland Chairman Ward Canaday , they referred to the landrover as the " Ooeelees ! " Correspondent Henry Cassidy cabled from the Russian front that " the American jeep has met the Russian clay and the situation is well in hand . "
In his Word of God , Lend - Lease , Weapon for Victory , Lend - Lease decision maker Edward R. Stettinius Jr. , afterward to be Franklin D. Roosevelt ’s writing table of state , relates the keep up story :
" The Russians early find out the time value of our landrover … They had ask for bike sidecars , but as I wrote Ambassador Litvinov late in January 1942 , our own Army was using jeep almost alone instead of motorcycle sidecars … The Russians decided to try out the jeeps and presently found that our Army had in effect ground to rely on them … They work so well in the mire and rough buy the farm on the Russian roads that the Red Army quickly ask for more . Since then we have ship M of them to Russia .
" Last year when an Associated Press newswriter visited a Soviet weapon regiment on the cardinal front , he was drive in a jeep through deep mud and across grating field of force to the regimental HQ . Between jounce he turned to the Red Army driver and asked him how he like the cable car . The gadget driver do with one word : " ' Zamechatelno ! ' That is the Russian equivalent for ' cracking ! ' "
Later , Britain ’s General Sir H. Maitland Wilson , the soldier with the long continuous service in His Majesty ’s Army , sent a jeep to Yugoslavia ’s Marshal Josef Broz Tito . " My representative tell me that the Marshal is delighted with it , " General Wilson by and by echo , " and was amazed by the carrying out it put up during his first tripper across the very spoiled route of that land . "
On every fighting front the jeep prove its versatility . Major General Courtney H. Hodges , chief of foot , call it " the most useful motor vehicle we ’ve ever had . " As a flock attack aircraft carrier it take three men easy , six in a pinch . As a reconnaissance mission machine it could go anywhere a round could , and a lot more places besides . go with a .30- or .50 - caliber gun in the back seat , the landrover became a nomadic ack - ack unit . equip with a two - way radio together with hundred - rations and some blanket , it became a mobile command post .
In the island - hopping Pacific warfare it ran provision convoys along bulldozed course from coral beaches to the front line . outfit with an improvised weapons platform , it slipped through foeman territory in Holy Order to void the wounded to send on aid stations . The jeep ’s small silhouette enable it to operate closer to the front line of work than a regular ambulance .
The jeep was outstanding at scattering clusters of planes or hauling some of them away to revetments when an alert was sound . It could pull a 37 - mm antitank gun with comparative simpleness . It was excellently fit for night patrol oeuvre .
At one dot , there was a rumor to the effect that a jeep was about to be equipped with a 75 - mm gun . Since the fourth - tonner ’s pragmatic lading limit was no more than 800 pounds , the theme of its carrying a 3,900 - pound gunman was cockeyed . Yet , the fact that the hearsay receive wide circulation say something about the sureness the gentleman placed in the stout little simple machine .
incur out more ways in which the jeep was used in the next section .
Uses of the Jeep
utilisation of the jeep were endless . Oftentimes the jeep ’s hood serve as a chaplain ’s altar , or as a card table for the more lay - minded . fitly equip , it could become a portable powerplant for aircraft searchlight , floodlights , shortwave radio sets , radio detection and ranging equipment , even welding apparatuses . It could be used as a field telephone exchange , a food supplying unit of measurement for front - communication channel fighters , or a medical building block for front - line first - assistance .
Popular Mechanicsreported in the November 1942 exit , " In Australia our soldiers were given the difficult undertaking of lay an underground cable length at an aerodrome without interrupt field operations . By pick and shovel it would have taken several days . But the landrover rush along in , hitched to a plough , and the ditch was drudge at ten miles an hour . Behind it came another landrover , towing a reel of cable system , and next a third jeep pulling a roller that covered the cable and flatten out the ground . The job was finish in two hours while Australians gaped . "
The next Sir Frederick Handley Page allow for success account and war feats of the World War II jeep . Read on to con more .
War Feats of the Jeep
The many war feat of the World War II landrover made story . Fitted with flanged steel wheel , jeeps were used on railroads in virtually every theatre of operations of operations . In the Philippines a little after part - tonner pulled a 52 - short ton provision train for 19 naut mi , averaging 22 mile per hour . In France , they consort along the main rails lines , while in Australia they were used as switch engines .
easy channelise by amphibian landing craft and by air , the jeep went everywhere . It was report that a jeep was the first motor vehicle to capture the usurious climbs and dense jungles of a Modern India - China route supercede the Burma Road .
At Rangoon , as the Japanese advanced , hundreds of China - tie jeep stood on the bob , look manner of speaking to Generalissimo Chiang Kai - shek . To keep those jeeps from fall into enemy hired hand , authorities turn them over to British scout group and to anyone else who would repel them north . The taradiddle is enjoin by A. Wade Wells :
" They slogged through gum - comparable rice paddies on liaison missions ; they yanked stalled hand truck and gas out of ditch ; they carried car gunners to front - line positions ; and , peppered with sniper bullet dents , they get back for more . They carried panic - stricken woman and children to points of relative safety . In short , they made history . "
Altogether , the jeep ’s performance bordered on the incredible , prompting one in high spirits Army officer to comment that the quarter - tonner could " do anything except swimming or mount a grease celestial pole . " War correspondent Ernie Pyle once observe , " It does everything . It goes everywhere . It ’s as close as a dog , as strong as a mule , and as agile as a goat . It constantly pack twice what it was project for , and still keep on perish . It does n’t even depend upon so badly after you get used to it . "
story of the jeep ’s wartime exploit have long since become a part of American folklore . There was , for instance , an incident that took place in 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge . A Belgian sentry at a checkpoint stopped a landrover express three mankind wearing U. S. Army uniforms . speak German , he instantly demanded their fall . ask afterwards how he knew they were Germans , the Belgian respond , " One , the colonel was ride in back and the aide-de-camp was driving . The tangible American colonel drives and the aide rides next to him . Besides , the American colonel never ride in back because it gives him – how you say ? – the piles ! "
One of the more hair - raise jeep stories was reported by Homer Bogart , of theNew York Herald Tribune . It took place during General Douglas MacArthur ’s march on Manila . A patrol consisting of one light tank , six landrover mounting machine hitman , and a half - cart track was driving south on the Manila Road , point for Angeles , some 48 miles from Manila .
" I rode in the half - track , " Bogart report , " with the tank and two jeeps out in front and the other landrover bringing up the tooshie . A inadequate distance beyond Mavalacat airfield , with its heap of wrecked Nipponese woodworking plane we communicate the front line and speed up on across a no - military man ’s land of dry - up Elmer Leopold Rice paddy and occasional clustering of weed huts .
" ' O.K. ' shouted Corporal Bob Lucked , of St. Louis . ' From here on it ’s all Nips ! Shoot anything that pops out ! '
" . . .At the sharpness of Quail the route crook softly . Around the bend dexter we fancy the lead tank do to an abrupt halt . Its crew radioed back a message : ' Roadblock 200 feet ahead . '
" A stout blood-red - faced 2d lieutenant hop into the half - caterpillar tread and grab the radio mouthpiece . ' That block was n’t there yesterday , ' he grumbled . ' get off jeep five ahead to inquire . '
" … Then it chance . We run across the tank lurch in a cloud of opprobrious smoke and dust . Its radio go bad dead .
" … Instantly , from every thicket and shake off in front and on either side come the whimper of snipers ' bullets and the precipitous plosion of grenades . A mortar shell collapse 100 feet behind the half - track .
" There was a frantic moment of indecision . The red - faced lieutenant wanted to deplume out and bring up mortar . Sergeant Ralph Nyquist , the radio operator , who hailed from Marquette , Michigan , was for racing up the road and saving the tank crew .
" ' Well , hell , ' shouted the lieutenant , ' get that No . 5 jeep up there . It ’s their job ! '
" And he waved madly at the three human beings in the jeep , who had no armour trade protection , urging them into the foeman fervency . "
improbably , Bogart ’s story has a happy ending . While the landrover continue the action with a curtain of machine - gun fire , the half - track moved up to the stricken tank , and the entire gang was saved .
Yet despite its incredible versatility and amazing war effort , the jeep still had its shortcomings . Learn more on the next page .
Shortcomings of the Jeep
The jeep did have its part of shortcomings . The hand brake , for instance , was all but useless . Also , Ernie Pyle ’s comment away , no matter how one sit down , it was impossible to stay prosperous for very long . Only two placement were at all feasible : either dash upright or slouched down to the midsection of one ’s vertebral column . Either way , the drive tended to encourage the development of hemorrhoids . U. S. Army medics referred to the malady as " jeep disease . "
throw the jeep ’s alert public presentation and remarkable maneuverability , there was always the temptation to promote it beyond any sane limits . Mishaps were not rare . Bill Mauldin , in one of his priceless Willie and Joe sketch , show his two Gi surveying bust up jeeps in a junkyard . The subtitle reads , " I ’ll be darned ! Here ’s one wot wuz wrecked in combat . "
get soldiers appreciated the fact that the jeep would go places that a mule would not . " set of times a scuff will balk if he does n’t think his leader is using good mind , " one gilbert abide by . " But a jeep will always try out ! "
Predictably , the enemy undertake to emulate the little worldwide - determination machine , most notably with theKubelwagenfrom Germany . Yet , this militarized edition of the Volkswagen lacked the landrover ’s four - wheel effort , and its locomotive mother only a fraction of the " Go - Devil ’s " power . So it was never much of a success .
Sometimes , military exploit involving the omnipresent jeep seem , in retrospect , to have been downright foolhardy . There were , for instance , the lightning rap led by a British officer , Major David Sterling . One of these attacks was directed against a German airfield in North Africa . Under Sterling ’s leaders , a company lie of 18 jeeps and their crews made its way through the desert , somehow escape espial , until the perimeter of the airfield was reached . Then , in flying hero sandwich geological formation and with machine guns blazing , the jeeps ululate down upon the base , catch the Germans totally incognizant .
In a matter of endorsement the landrover were gone . They vanished into the desert , leaving behind them an flying field littered with the wreckage of 25 aircraft destroy and 12 more seriously discredited .
As far as the North Africa run is concerned , it is to Britain ’s Major General ( later Field Marshal ) Bernard Montgomery to whom much of the credit must go for the licking of the brilliant Field Marshal Erwin Rommel . Montgomery knew the time value of the landrover and made good use of it . Once , in an endeavour to minimize casualties , he employed several jeeps to put Rommel ’s tank car out of action .
circulate widely under cover of darkness , the small fleet of landrover made its way deep behind the German lines . Traveling by nighttime and lying broken during the daytime hours , they came to a point on a Nazi supply artery where an ambush appeared to be practicable . The mark was a group of fuel storage tank carrying gasolene for Rommel ’s tanks .
There the jeep force hold off for the approaching convoy to rumble into its surgical incision of road . When the motortruck reached a given period , the landrover drove at them at high speed . Weaving in and out of the train of vehicle , the jeeps forget a lead of havoc , the entire logical argument exploding into fire as they passed . Before any effective action could be taken against the landrover , they were gone into the night .
The following morning , the tank go far at their appointed place , expecting to refuel from supplying that should have arrive during the night . As the resultant role of the hit - and - lead foray by Montgomery ’s landrover , fuel was in such short supply that there was n’t even enough remaining to permit their retreat , much less to arrest the Allied advance .
Thanks to the wipeout of many aircraft and the immobilisation of the tanks , Germany lose the crucial conflict of El Alamein , a decisive turn period in the North Africa war . Two and a half weeks after this Allied victory Montgomery was knight by King George VI .
The landrover had proved its worth . Squat , stubby , and so frightful as to be almost cute , this remarkable product of the aggregate genius of Karl Probst , Barney Roos , and no assure how many others was , in Ernie Pyle ’s words , a " divine instrument of wartime motivity . "
Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Conley sum up the record of the wartime landrover : " various , dependable , and virtually indestructible , this sorcerous motor vehicle rebound to glory as one of World War II ’s most enduring fable . " Little did anyone know that the success the jeep had in warfare were the first of many to come .
On the next page , hear about the jeep build for the sea : the Seep Jeep .
1942 Seep Jeep
It was an intriguing concept : a seagoing jeep . The Army had flirted for years with the theme of an amphibious vehicle . Then during World War II , several types were actually built – among them the GP - A : General Purpose - Amphibious , or the 1942 Seep Jeep .
Designed by the Marmon - Herrington Company in cooperation with the boat - building business firm of Sparkman and Stephens , the GP - A was based on the GPW - Ford ’s interlingual rendition of the intimate World War II jeep .
Several decided Isaac Hull were built and tested , first in graduated table modelling form and then at full size . Somehow , while this was go on there was no landrover uncommitted for usance in the experiments . All the engineers had to work from was a table of specification , and those specification downplay the jeep ’s weight by about 30 percent . This factor had a serious damaging effect upon the public presentation of the destruction product .
However , it was February 1942 by this clip , two month after theJapanese fire upon Pearl Harbor . The need for water supply - go jeeps was hold by field generals – General George Marshall in special – to be urgent . Besides , Ford was pressuring the administration for a contract , even evoke that production facility might not be usable unless the project got under agency straightaway .
The potential seemed tremendous . Popular Science , describing the Seep as " fundamentally a specially equipped jeep with a steel Isaac Hull built around it , " noted , " This seagoing jeep operates on either ground or water , and can sink from one medium to the other with a exclusive underage adaption by the equipment driver , during which the gondola does n’t have to barricade . Its possibilities as a reconnaissance vehicle are startling . With it an advance patrol can creep up back roads to a river , scout along the shoring , cross at any point to investigate the opposition ’s soil . It can rush back with its information about as fast as any other landrover – upwards of 60 miles an hour on respectable roads . Twenty of them can ferry 100 amply armed man across water to strike the foe from the tush . "
Controls were identical to those of the land - based jeeps , with the summation of two more handles , located just behind the transmittal lever tumbler . One of these mesh the propeller , while the other operated the bilge pump .
A letter of intent was supply on April 11 , 1942 , yell for an initial production running of 5,000 of the fiddling amphibian , and the undertaking incur under way . Then , suddenly , after only 12,778 had been built , production was halt .
Why ? What had pass away incorrect ? The Germans were obviously doing well enough with theirSchwimmwagen , though their seriously underpoweredKubelwagenwas a bust . Denfield and Fry , quoting from a 1971 Army Materiel Command booklet , excuse : " Insufficient testing of other product model , inadequate review and oversight of output , bankruptcy to provide for a go along development program , failure to provide enough training , and , particularly , failure to confab the using service before production began result in former rejection of the task as a proficient and tactical failure . "
Civilians , however , appear to have seen no death of possibilities in the GP - A. Especially Ben Carlin , an Australian engineer , who made a nine - year , round - the - public stumble in one of them . fit in to Bart H. Vanderveen , save inChallenge , " Carlin first picture the vehicle when he was in the forces in India , and said , ' You bonk , with a chip of titivation you could go round the world in one of those thing . ' "
After demobilization , Carlin went to the United States , where he purchase a GP - A at an Army surplus cut-rate sale . He name it , fitly enough , Half Safe . After spending considerable prison term adapting the amphib to his purposes , Carlin , with his American married woman , set out from Halifax , Nova Scotia , in July 1950 .
As Vanderveen recount the story , " They foil the Atlantic , sailing via Madeira to Cap Juby , Spanish Sahara . From ( here they aim and sailed by means of Gibraltar and eight West European countries to London . There , during a two - year hitch , the fomite was extensively reconstruct and modified for the second lap covering – London , India , Australia , Japan , San Francisco , New York . "
Meanwhile , Elinore , Carlin ’s wife , skip over ship in India and made her way back to the United States , where she file for divorce . Carlin fly to his hometown of Perth , Australia , where he recruited a youthful yachtswoman , and the voyage continue . However , Ben Carlin evidently had an irascible disposition . Upon strive Kagoshima , Japan , in late 1956 , his young assistant also took his departure .
ahead of time in 1957 , accompanied this time by an American named Boye Lafayette DeMente , Carlin took to the sea once more . Four month later on , Half Safeput in at Anchorage , Alaska . DeMente , who had quite enough of Carlin ’s nasty temper , flew home to Phoenix . Sometime later on he learned that Ben Carlin had made it to New York , completing his globe - circling tour .
attended byHalf Safe , Carlin later took to the talking to electrical circuit , eventually returning to Perth , where he act upon at a yacht harbor until his dying .
Too small and too slow to be much of a boat , yet too big and too clumsy to serve as a landrover , the GP - A come along to have represent the worst of both earthly concern . One wonders if it might have been more successful had normal development and testing procedures been permitted to take place .
