First, I want to direct your attention to this photo on the G503 website
http://www.g503.com/pharchive.html?step=2&xid=3
This is a photo of crated jeeps, and if you go through the rest of the
archives, they show jeeps in other stages of assembly.
You were right in saying that the government did not crate jeeps for
shipment overseas. This was probably done by a contractor to Willys or
Ford. The probability of finding one of these in intact condition is very
slim, as the vehicles were probably all used up by overseas units. However,
I am sure one exists some where.... Mike Scholer, of restoration note,
built a jeep in a crate. He sold it to a collector in Japan.
As for other items, shipping in crates was absolutely necessary for
conservation of space. I have a copy of the original Department of Commerce
guidelines for packaging for overseas shipment in WWII, and there are
explicit instructions on how to package everything from pot-bellied stoves
to bulldozers. These instructions were written for manufacturers to comply
with shipping space limitations, and properly mark their crates with
information vital to hoisting and balancing a ship load- pounds per cubic
feet, center of gravity, hard points, etc.
Larger trucks than jeeps were shipped in other ways. WC51's and WC62's were
stacked on top of each other, and were probably shipped this way. Also,
later in the war (after 1943), when there was not so much of a problem with
shipping losses, the regulations were probably relaxed, and jeeps did go
overseas un-crated.
But they were built, and there probably exists somewhere one never
un-crated. It will either pop out of the woodwork one of these days, or go
to the smelter, or get buried as building foundation (that's how two 1918
Indians were recently found).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 21:37:50 PST