I would hate to think I was asked to face enemy fire in a vehicle festooned with petrol cans like that.
True. But it is imminently preferable to put the gas cans on the outside vs. on the inside, particularly when the vehicle is not bullet-proof.
And they may not all have been petrol. I expect that fully half of a normal load was water.
I would hate to think I was to be left to walk 300 miles through the dessert, with no water, on the way home.
It was a long range recon vehicle, expected to cover many hundreds of miles through sparsely populated North Africa. There was no way to assure a gas station could be found before having to drive home.
(Pics from Wikipedia)
The British also festooned their LRDG trucks with petrol cans, although they didn't have the greatly preferred "Jerry Cans" available in numbers until later in the campaign.
And the LRDG was more inclined to stage stockpiles along their routes. This was a workable solution for fully planned out long distance transits, but did not provide a workable mechanism for ad hoc long-range recon patrolling.
His last pic suggests a remarkable contrast with the desert suggested by its name…
Yep. First I've read about it being used on the Eastern Front. In this case, a Fallschirmjaeger Division was evidently supplied with appropriated Italian vehicles in 1944, after Italy de-camped on the Axis in 1943.
Or so I've read. Never been there, never done that.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
