WWII Jeep in a Box

[bmorgil]

You have heard the rumors. the US military had surplus WWII Jeeps in a box, for sale in the late 60's for $500 in Popular Mechanics Magazine. Here is a picture of the real deal!

[gmwillys]

Working at an Army Depot, there have been rumors from the old timers that back in the fifties, the army dug big holes and placed the crated Jeeps and covered them up. Although they do have a vast collection of WWII vehicles in a open building, the only example of a military Jeep is a M38A1.

In Europe, most non tactical vehicles were sold pennies on the dollar to the locals. There are homes around Normandy that where rebuilt after the invasion and we're sheathed with MB or GPW hoods that had been flattened out.

[bmorgil]

I would definitely not be able to resist putting that thing together! I am not sure if it would make it worth more or less?

Does anyone know where the "big holes" may be? What a find that would be. Fields of crated Jeeps! I wonder if they would be solid rust?

[gmwillys]

If it were to actually of happened, Uncle Sam would have probably of just stacked them in a hole and pushed clay over the top. Even if they were in a vault, the odds are that they would look like the time capsule Belvidere that was buried in Tulsa back in '57.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Belvedere

If I did find a NOS, New In Box Willys, it would become our new coffee table in the living room.

[bmorgil]

If I did find a NOS, New In Box Willys, it would become our new coffee table in the living room.

A truly BITCHIN' coffee table man! The definition of priceless.

Miss Belvedere's keys corroded in the ignition! great story.

[gmwillys]

There is a picture on line of a shipping crate of Mausers. The crate has a glass top so you can see Rifles nestled in their beds. The only thing better would be a crate of Garands or M14s.

[bmorgil]

Or an M2 ready to mount up still in the box!

[gmwillys]

To bore sight our remote weapons system, we would have to ride over to ordnance and sign out an M2. People look at you funny when you are cruising around post with a fully functional Browning resting between the two of us. Those were the fun days, now we have steel block simulators with a barrel welded to it. Looks good, but not the same.

[scoutingranch]

Man...I sure would like me a Jeep in a box...before I end up in one.

[bmorgil]

I think we are running out of time! It looks like we are settling for the next best thing. Whatever we currently have and endear!

[LarrBeard]

"Whatever we currently have and endear!" ..."If you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with". Steven Stills, 1970

[LarrBeard]

Jeeps in a Box

Just to follow the theme a bit more. Seventy five years later, we just cannot appreciate how involved the US was in the war effort toward the end of WWII. A striking picture I saw several years ago showed a B-29 graveyard on Tinian or Saipan. The summary was that it was more economical to fly in a new airplane from Boeing than to maintain a supply and logistics trail to ship big parts of airplanes across the Pacific to repair a damaged or failed airplane.

How does that play into Jeeps in a box? From reading other forums, it appears many of the Toledo Jeeps were boxed in Toledo and never fully assembled until they got to the end users. An Ordnance Depot in England could, reportedly, uncrate and assemble a Jeep in about 45 minutes. By mid to late 1944 and 1945, there were more Jeeps around England than we could use.

By VE Day, the problem had to be addressed. Shipping them back, crated or uncrated was too expensive – and besides we didn’t need all of those Jeeps back home. Leaving them in England had two considerations. From a safety standpoint, they were left hand drive – incompatible with long established British traffic patterns.

Economically, dumping thousands of US made Jeeps into the British auto market would have had a terrible impact on the British auto industry which had to make a transition from wartime to civilian production. Cheap surplus American vehicles would have been a mortal blow to recovery of the English auto industry.

They couldn’t come home and they couldn’t stay in England. So, the simple and quick solution to the problem was a barge ride out into the North Sea or English Channel, and the vehicles went to sleep with the fishes.

We find this hard to believe today, but there was so much excess war material that surplus aircraft were sold for pennies on the dollar and scrappers would recover their purchase cost by salvaging the 100-octane Avgas and retailing it as “Ethyl”, at 14-cents a gallon!

[gmwillys]

These days, we send entire brigades of vehicles overseas, then on the return trip we bring a brigade back to be "reset" in the states. Even the battle damaged vehicles were brought back from Iraq for disposal or rebuild, but the Afghanistan vehicles were mostly destroyed and sold for scrap due to the high cost of transportation.

Included are some photos of the European scrap yards.

[bmorgil]

Oh my, man o' man... I don't know what to write. Wow what a sad story to hear and to see.

I am sure glad we "leave no Jeep behind" anymore!

[LarrBeard]

Still another Story:

Looking at the photos of the European junk/salvage yards, I wonder just how many of those vehicles ended up being recycled in some way or another.

In the Winter 2018 issue of the Garand Collector’s Journal, (the M1 Garand is one of my other vices) someone picked up an article from an Australian trekker who allegedly discovered an undisturbed WW II battle site in the jungles of New Guinea. At the site were ( again - allegedly), undisturbed skeletons still in battle dress, a mass grave, rusted M1919 .30 caliber Browning machine guns and Japanese or Australian howitzer shells. In one of the accompanying photos, the idiot of a trekker was holding an unexpended howitzer round at what could be called port arms. I’ll go no further on how world class stupid that was.

But, the other interesting item in this “undisturbed battle site” was the remains of an MB or GPW. Everything was gone; engine, front axle and differential, transmission and transfer case, steering mechanism, windshield, seats and frames, instruments and gauges and probably everything else outside of the photo margins. People don’t want to scavenge battle dress, howitzer shells, rusty machine guns – but they will carry just about everything on an MB/GPW out of the New Guinea jungles.