Here in England some time in the late fifties, the Ministry of Defence sold
at auction, Canadian Universal Bren Gun Carriers in crates. I have seen
several of these still crated in the late sixties. The crates had a trap
door on the side for inspection purposes and enterprising ( and dishonest)
persons had climbed through this to steal the sirens! I have had two or
three of these carriers through my hands and they were definitely new. Last
one went away about ten years ago.
Bought my first Jeep from Evans scrap yard in Manchester in 1957. It had 75
miles on the clock and came with original hood and sides with the metal
reinforced windows direct from the big US base on Burtonwood airfield. In
those times demil consisted of two hacksaw cuts in the front chassis rails.
The Jeep cost £75 (about 120$). Sounds cheap? At that time I was an
engineering apprentice at Metropolitan Vickers in Manchester. We were paid
£3 yes three pounds A WEEK!!!! So today, a good restored low mileage Jeep
still costs 25 times the basic wage.
Cheers, Mike S. UK
----- Original Message -----
From: COLIN STEVENS <colin@pacdat.net>
To: Military Vehicles Mailing List <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: 30 October 2000 07:52
Subject: Re: [MV] Crated Jeeps - some facts
> MVs IN CRATES
> The crating of military vehicles for shipment overseas WAS common in WWII.
> Canada did it a lot to save space on ships as every cubic foot of shipping
> space counted during the Battle of the Atlantic. Remember too that the USA
> got into the war 2 and a 1/4 years AFTER Canada, Britain etc. and crating
> for many (but not all) vehicles was well established by then. There are
LOTS
> of photos of Canadian built MVs (e.g. Canadian built Dodge D8A 4x4 8 Cwt
> which is similar to US 1/2 ton but right hand drive and British style rear
> cargo box.) crated for overseas shipment - being crated, enroute, and
being
> uncrated in North Africa etc. The Canadian Army Engineering Design Brasnch
> (AEDB) DESIGN RECORD (Published 1945) discussed the efficiencies of the
> various crating methods as I recall.
>
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