• U.S.

National Defense: Jeep O’ My Heart

3 minute read
TIME

They call it all sorts of names: “jeep,” “beep,” “peep,” “bug,” “chigger.”* But by any name this homeliest item in the U.S. Army’s rolling stock, the 2,200-lb. midget combat car, has, after a year and a half of service, been recognized as an unexpected and unique success.

Lieut. Colonel Ingomar M. Oseth, the Army’s No. 1 jeep expert, said last week: “Transportation in the U.S. Army is at least 50% superior to that of any other army in the world, and the jeep can grab a big share of the glory.” Echoed Major General Courtney H. Hodges, Chief of Infantry: “It is,the most useful motor vehicle we’ve ever had.” The men who have to use it give it even more affectionate pats on its sawed-off back.

The jeep, a stubby, bouncy crossbreed between the half-ton command car and the motor tricycle, is as ugly as a bull pup. It has a wheelbase of only 80 in. (Ford V8: 114 in.) and a fourwheel drive that provides enormous traction for its 42-h.p. engine. It has no trouble pulling light field pieces, can skitter along a road at 60 m.p.h. Designed to replace motorcycles and sidecars for reconnaissance work, it can go anywhere a cycle can, and a lot of places a cycle can’t. It can be used as a troop carrier (three men easily, six with crowding), weapon carrier (machine guns, 37-mm. anti-tank guns, mortars), communications truck (to mount radios and carry wire). It has been successfully carried in transport planes and it is planned to try dropping it from a plane with a giant parachute.

The jeep positively will not fly, but there is a widespread notion in the Army that it can do anything else. Last week in Washington there was a rumor that the midget was going to be equipped with 75-mm. guns. Since the jeep’s practical load limit is 800 lb., it could hardly tote a 75, which weighs 3,900. But it is steady as a mule under the recoil of a 37-mm. antitank gun. If, under stress, the jeep should turn over, it is a simple matter for a few soldiers to set it right side up again.

Some 2,500 jeeps are now in use. The Infantry and the Armored Force are each equipped with about a thousand, while the Cavalry and Field Artillery have another 400. They are part of an original order for 4,500, distributed among the Ford, American Bantam and Willys-Overland factories. Newest contract for 16,000 more is held by Willys-Overland, which is scheduled to deliver the goods in four or five months. Present plans call for 95 jeeps to each Infantry regiment.

The fame of the jeep has spread so far that the British, Dutch and Canadians are investigating it. Until the British began using jeeps in Africa, no foreign army had anything quite like it. But, in war or peace, the jeep appears to have a long future ahead of it as a stouter resurrection of the old flivver. Some agricultural experts expect the jeep to be an invaluable asset to the farmer, and many a soldier is firmly determined to get one after the war, for his personal use.

Most common designation: “jeep,” an all-inclusive Army nickname for anything insignificant, from a raw draftee to a tiny observation plane.

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