The manufactures were concerned about the possiblity
of all those vehicles returning to the United States
and flooding the market with cheap used vehicles. The
potential for the distruction of the civilain market
for new vehicles seemed to them to be a very real
possibility.
There was a great deal of lobbying down in Washington
DC and a law was passed that prohibited the
reimportation of those vehicles from europe except for
use by the US military. In addition, the law mandated
that the vehicles would be destroyed in Europe as part
of the demobilization of the military.
My source of information on this was the Journal of
Automotive Manufacturers from the time period. In the
Journal I saw pictures of the hundreds of biplanes
stacked up ready to be torched. There were also
pictures of WWI ambulances and trucks stacked up to be
burned as well.
My WWI ambulance was only 1 of about 8 that survived
the war and the burn off out of over 6000 produced.
It is important to preserve these vehicles or the only
ones left will be the ones in pictures. Of course
that goes for the ones being used today as well as
Korea, Vietnam, and WWII.
Just my thoughts on the subject. Clearly economics
plays a role..
===
Joe Baker
Major, Cavalry
Formerly of the
1st Squadron, 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment (Germany)
and the 418th Med Co (AMB) RVN
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
===
To unsubscribe from the mil-veh mailing list, send the single word
UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to <mil-veh-request@skylee.com>.