Military Vehicles, February 1997,: Re: MB/GPW Engine Color
Re: MB/GPW Engine Color
GIjeeps@aol.com
Fri, 28 Feb 1997 01:26:32 -0500 (EST)
Depending on how primitive a shop your jeep was rebuilt in it could have been
completely disassembled, scraped clean, rebuilt, primed, and lovingly sprayed
with two smooth, even coats of brand new GI issue Lusterless Olive Drab #319
fresh out of the can, or it could have been slopped with a broomfull of black
and yellow paint mixed together in a bucket or a helmet shell. It all depends
on how close the shop was to the front line! Seriously, the engine would
almost certainly have been repainted with the same batch of paint that the
shop crew was repainting the bodies and other parts with. They didn't care if
a Ford motor stayed GPW Gray or not. Registration numbers went the same way.
They came out of the factories blue drab but would have been redone in white
the first time the jeep was repainted. Ordnance Light Maintenance shops
simply did not keep stocks of blue drab or GPW gray sitting around so they
used what was on hand. Black, yellow, OD, and white were plentiful and these
guys didn't care if your jeep had matching numbers and correct paint shades
when you bought it forty or fifty years later. Jeeps were three year vehicles
anyway and in the hands of a rifle company their life span was more like two
weeks so paint jobs didn't matter much!