Jim, I have a list of GPW's and DoD that includes a couple close to 15730.
According to the list published by USM in Lakeville, MN they have a serial
number 15642 with DoD of April 13, 1942 but they also have a serial number
15933 with a DoD of April 7, 1942 so your 15730 was probably somewhere in
that range. The later serial number with an earlier date could have been
shipped from a different factory or any number of other reasons why the
differences in number vs dates. They sometimes jump all over the range. My
pride and joy is a Script '42 GPW with sn 14914 with DoD of April 10, 1942 so
that adds even more curves into the mess.
The following is a short list of the GPW's in this time range:
14582 4/8/42
14914 4/10/42 (Mine)
14929 4/10/42
15080 4/9/42
15132 7/29/42 (Yes in JULY)
15642 4/13/42
15730 ---------- (Yours)
15933 4/7/42
16002 4/xx/42 (apparently unknown)
16018 4/9/42
So your GPW probably came off the line sometime between April 10th and April
13th of 1942.
Hood Numbers are anybodies guess. They were applied "in the field" generally
by a soldier having to put them on as punishment for some minor misdeed, and
they were generally applied to a whole field of jeeps at the same time with
total disregard as to serial number or date of delivery. Ray Crowdery's "All
American Wonder - Volume Two" gives on page 253 gives the contract number of
W-398-QM-10977 for the first 15,000 GPW's and they were suppose to have
registration numbers between 2054778 and 2069777 inclusive. The next
contract was W-398-QM-11424 for an additional 63,146 GPW's and their hood
numbers were suppose to be 20100000 to 20163145 inclusive. You can GUESS at
a hood number for the second batch of GPW's as 20100730 since yours at 15730
would have been 730 into the second batch. But again the actual hood number
is almost impossible to determine, as no records have been kept (that anyone
seems to know about anyway). You may get lucky and sand the hood carefully
and find the original number.
Good Luck and Happy Holidays, Tom Campbell - Birmingham, Alabama USA
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