Great 1938 Dodge/Army movie

This is great movie showing the US Army in 1938 using their 4X4 vehicles for the first time. Amazing that they still had vast numbers of horses and mules at this time.

Produced by Dodge.



Lang

Good one, Lang!

Interesting stuff there hard to believe this was 1938 US army they came a long way in very short amount of time
I have read that when the US first entered the war in Africa they very nearly failed as their fuel supplies were so badly handled they had little drums which I guess are what we see in this film and the US spilt more fuel than it used a lot more fuel
They (the US that is ) didnt believe the jerry can was needed or worth while even though the rest of allies had adopted the use of the jerry can
After Africa the US built there own jerry cans with that stupid big bung thing on top which made no sense at all because even if they came across fuel supplies of enemy they couldnt safely use them
I was told it wasnt until after the Vietnam war the US adopted the standard jerry can the rest of world uses

Thanks for the link Lang

The Americans stuffed around with those 10 gallon drums in the movie and the British had thin square 4 gallon drums (flimsies) in wooden boxes of 2. Both systems were highly unsatisfactory.

Taking the German design, the British copied it exactly while the Americans made changes, all of which were worse than the original. The Americans never went to the German design and kept their difficult, leaking screw tops right up to recent times when everything became plastic (same dimensions). The French army after the war converted 200,000 American jerrycans to German/British flip tops.

The American Army alone, not counting the Allies, needed 19 million jerry cans for the European campaign.

They shipped the fuel in 44 gallon drums. Here is just one Normandy stock pile. Tried to do a count and I reckon there are upwards of half a million 44's here. Why didn't they use tanker ships? Because there was no bulk storage facility (assuming it had not been bombed) anywhere in the world capable of handling the volumes required.



And thenthey put it in truck tankers or rail tankers to fill the jerry cans for the troops. Note, although it is an American filling station, nearly all the jerry cans are British or German design apart from the odd US ones. Imagine the wastage if they spilled just half a cup on average on 19,000,000 jerrycans each being filled say, once a week! Those blokes filling the cans would be up to their ankles in petrol mud. The really big filling stations had automatic cut off machines on a conveyor belt line but these field stations just had a bloke squeezing the handle.



This must have been early as you can see the 10 gallon drums still in use in the foreground.




Easy to handle individually but hard in big numbers



At some stages fuel became classified like ammunition ie front line units running short can demand ammunition off anyone - alongside units or those behind - who are not actively engaged in a battle and they have to give it up. This still applies today.



Lang