Jeeps for all seasons

Out of the many hundreds of vehicle designs during WWII, perhaps only a handful stand out as icons of the conflict and have become recognizable to the point that they require no introduction. This certainly applies to the America designed and produced jeep, which was introduced into military service in 1941 and went on to serve in all theaters of operations and prove to be invaluable. All Allied armies used the ubiquitous jeep, including the Russians, who were supplied with more than 50,000 as part of the Lend Lease program. American General George C. Marshall, wartime chief of staff, said the jeep was “America’s greatest contribution to modern warfare”. General Eisenhower considered it to be one of the six most important vehicles of WWII.

The number of jeeps produced by Willys-Overland Motors and the Ford Motor Company during the war approached 640,000. They were used by all branches of the military, but especially the Army. It was a true “utilitarian” vehicle which proved versatile in all roles, including being fitted out with machine guns that allowed it to be operated in both offensive and defensive roles. In liaison duties it was used to transport generals, including Eisenhower, Patton, Omar Bradley and Montgomery. Among its many other roles were medical evacuation, communications support laying field telephone lines, and as an experimental test bed to trial ideas, not all of which made it past the drawing board. For example, mounting an M3 37mm anti-tank gun on a Jeep to produce a mobile firing platform was never pursued.

It’s been more than 80 years since the jeep was introduced into military service, and today there are countless thousands in private ownership. Many have been restored and are maintained in running order and take part in vehicle shows. Some are presented fitted with racks to carry stretchers to demonstrate the vehicle’s use in medical evacuation. Others are shown in service with various units, those used by the airborne divisions being among the more popular, and carrying machine guns and radios as in wartime operations. Some owners are adventurous and have gone to great lengths to recreate some of the more unusual versions, both standard and non-standard seen during the war.

For example, when the Allies landed in Italy, they began encountering a new German tactic — wire strung across roads at the height of a man’s head when riding a motorcycle. Jeeps were often driven with the windshield in the lowered position, exposing the drivers to the same threat as despatch riders. To protect against this nasty trick, pieces of angle iron were attached upright to the front of the vehicles to snap the wire. After the Allied landings in France in 1944, these field kit devices were made available as standard and many lives were undoubtedly saved. Today, examples of this simple but effective piece of “add-on” safety kit can still sometimes be seen fitted to jeeps, making them stand out just that bit more from the other examples.

Other “semi-armored” jeeps were fitted with sheets of armor plate. These changes were known as “field conversions”. These were non-standard conversions and involved the armor being attached to the vehicle over the front grille of the radiator and sloped back at an angle. Plates could be fitted to the sides and another upright was fitted in place of the windshield to afford the driver some protection against small arms fire. Vision slits were cut into the plate for the driver and the passenger, who also served the machine gun on a pintle mounting for the purpose of providing self-defense. Despite the additional weight, this conversion was popular and certainly saved plenty of lives.

There were plenty of other interesting experiments. The Canadians attempted to produce a fully tracked and armored version of the “tracked jeep,” but it never got beyond the prototype stage. Because of the changes, this version of the vehicle does not resemble the jeep and from its final appearance no one would ever be able to tell what it was originally.

The jeep was also used by non-combatant personnel, from unit chaplains to medics and journalists accredited as war correspondents. These journalists, both male and female, working for agencies such as The Associated Press, used the jeep as their main means of independent transport to move around areas, carrying all their equipment as they went. As platforms for movie cameras, the vehicles proved valuable and this role has been reproduced by owners at vehicle shows. The British “Army Film and Photographic Unit” (AFPU) also used jeeps in all theaters of war, from Europe to the Far East.

All types of medical equipment could be transported by jeep, often right up to the front line. For the return trip the vehicles were used to evacuate the wounded on stretchers or seated.

A range of specific field kits were developed in Britain and America to allow vehicles to be easily converted into specialized roles. For example, racks could be supplied to allow up to three stretchers to be carried along with supplies of dressings to treat the wounded during transportation. Those that were “Holden-modified” had a supply locker to carry medical equipment in place of the passenger seat.

During airborne operations, gliders could carry jeeps to deliver them by landing directly onto designated landing zones from where they could deploy immediately. Jeeps could also be delivered by parachute and there were deep-water wading kits which could be fitted for amphibious landings.

British and American airborne units equipped their vehicles to carry their standard radio sets and the role of the vehicle in supporting signals and communications extended to cable-laying for field telephones. The American Army used an item called the “RL-31”, which came with an instruction manual on how to assemble and fit the unit. Quite cumbersome, the item could be fitted in the field and was usually bolted in the rear of a vehicle behind the driver. The whole thing weighed 200 lbs. The operator would unwind the cable using a handle as the vehicle moved forward. A DR-5 reel held 1 mile of W-110 cable, while the smaller DR-4 reels held half that length. An easier option for shorter distances was to use reels mounted at the front of the vehicle on the fender. Versions of this type are sometimes seen at vehicle shows.

The idea of converting motor vehicles to run on rail tracks dated back to 1912 and in 1943 a USAAF unit serving in Australia proposed using jeeps in the same way. By then it was already a proven concept. Trials conducted in June that year at the USAAF base at Eagle Farm in Brisbane demonstrated that a vehicle fitted with rail wheels could tow a cargo weighing 10 short tons or nine times its own weight. Jeeps converted for use on railway tracks were put into service in all theaters of war wherever there were rail tracks, including Burma (modern-day Myanmar).

The rail system was also used in France, where the vehicles were termed “jeep draisines” by French troops. They continued to be used as the invasion continued into Germany. In fact, the method proved so good that it continued to be used long after the war ended and British troops used the idea during the early years of the Malayan “Emergency” from the late 1940s. Some owners of jeeps today display them in this configuration and even include “tracks”, usually wooden rails because of the weight, and demonstrate them by driving the vehicle along the short stretch of track.

The jeep always seemed to attract the attention of designers who wanted to use it as the base around which to develop their ideas. Some ideas made sense, such as “winterizing” for Arctic conditions or snorkels for the exhaust to allow deep water wading. Other proposed ideas, of which there were countless — such as launching rockets from frames fitted to the vehicles — were dropped during trials.

One of the more outlandish ideas supported by the British Air Ministry department, known as the ‘“Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment”, involved an idea for a “Rotabuggy”. Using technology based on the autogyro method of flying, it was intended to create a jeep that could fly. A plane tail was attached to the jeep and a rotor was fitted to the roof, and the contraption was towed by a bomber. In the end, it was decided that carrying the vehicles inside a glider or delivering them by parachutes was preferable and more sensible.

Another idea developed to the stage where it may have been possible to use it in combat was the “Wasp” flamethrower jeep. An illustration of the only known example of the jeep-mounted weapon appears in the book Fighting With Popski’s Private Army, originally published as Warriors on Wheels in 1959. The book was written by Park Yunnie, who had served in the unit during the war. The lone monochrome image is rather grainy and shows the driver of a jeep surrounded by a collection of cylinders and tubes and the caption reading: “This is a rare, and possibly unique, photograph of a flamethrower on a jeep during World War II”. Then, in 2011 a replica version of the vehicle made an appearance at the War & Peace Show, an event which is sadly no longer held, where it deservedly won the prize for best jeep on display.

The “Wasp” was named after and commanded by Major (later Lt. Col.) Vladimir “Popski” Peniakoff, who undertook raiding operations deep into enemy territory in the western desert and later in Italy. Born in Belgium, Peniakoff had an in-depth knowledge of the region, having served there with the French Army during the First World War. Like other irregular units operating in the region at the time, such as the SAS and Long Range Desert Group, “Popski’s Private Army”, as it became known, was unconventional by nature. Popski was known for devising unusual tactics and fitting strange devices to vehicles, such as mounting smoke generators to some jeeps used by his unit.

It’s believed that Popski thought up the idea for a flamethrower jeep and approached British Army engineers and mechanics to ask if it was possible to create such a system. The intention was to use it to destroy pillboxes, machine gun posts and other fortified enemy positions. The Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers gave consideration to the idea and concluded that, in their opinion, it could not be done because the jeep was too small to carry all the equipment and fuel that would be required. Vehicle-mounted flamethrowers were already in service, but these were fitted on heavier vehicles such as the Universal or Bren Gun Carrier, known as “Flame Thrower, Transportable No 2” and used either the MkII or MkIIA projector. Nicknamed “Wasps”, they entered service with the British Army in 1943. The fuel capacity of these was between 75 and 100 gallons and they could project flames out to ranges of almost 100 yards.

Despite the rejection, Popski continued to develop his idea and eventually, with some in-field assistance from engineers, managed to build and fit an improvised flamethrower into a jeep. To cope with the extra weight, the front panels were strengthened using lengths of angle iron, and the frame was bolted through to the chassis of the vehicle. The system was successfully proven during field demonstrations, but it is not known if it was ever definitively used in a combat role while on operations.

Fuel for the flamethrower was projected using gas or air from a cylinder. This was piped to an evaporator in front of the driver’s position. Water heated by the engine expanded the gas, which then passed through pipes to the fuel tanks located at the rear of the jeep. The bonnet hood of the jeep was cut to allow the pipes to pass through. The projector was based on the same system as used on the Bren Gun Carrier Wasp using an ignition circuit, with flames reaching out to ranges of almost 100 yards.

There was an apparent reluctance among vehicle crews to use the flame-throwing device. As a close-quarter weapon, it would have been devastating against defensive positions, but the thought of sitting on so much fuel probably wasn’t appealing to many.

Recreating Popski’s project was the idea of Peter Sanders, a vehicle owner and then member of the Desert Raiders Association. Sanders displayed his flamethrower jeep, along with other vehicle types used by the Long Range Desert Group, at the War & Peace Show. Sanders fabricated certain parts using techniques well known to modelers. To begin, he started by building a 1/15th scale model of what he wanted to achieve. Using a range of materials including wood and glass fiber, he fabricated the handles, projector nozzle, control switches and other parts such as dials which would have given fuel level readings and pressure gauge readings. He used photographs and contacted the Popski Private Army Preservation Society to help with accuracy. Next, he cast the metal parts using brass and aluminium and bent pipes to the correct angles for attachment using couplings.

Using sheet steel and angle iron, Sanders fabricated various parts. He had to cut holes in the dashboard on the passenger’s side to allow the pipes to pass through. He cut slots in a replacement hood to accept the pipes for the compressor system in front of the driver’s position. A fuel tank from a truck was modified, along with a compressor tank and a gas cylinder.

The work took several months using angle grinders to cut and shape the parts and welding equipment used to fix them into place. Eventually, the vehicle was painted green with some black shading and on the engine bonnet. The hood has the vehicle’s nickname, “Battling Brenda” along with a silhouette of a globe of the world on a stand, which is a representation of the cap badge of Popski’s Private Army.

Many thousand military jeeps are held in private hands, and these are only a few of the roles in which they served. It’s up to the owner to decide whether or not to display their vehicle as a basic jeep or in one of the many special configurations that came along. Either way, there is still plenty of life left in these old warhorses.