Reprint
by Permission of Author
Between 1941 and 1945 more than 640,000 quarter-ton utility vehicles were built for the United States Army. They were nicknamed “Jeeps”. They ended up on every continent on the globe except Antarctica, and were so well suited to their job that war correspondent Ernie Pyle once said of them: “…I don’t think we could continue the war without the Jeep. It does everything. It goes everywhere. It’s as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for and keeps on going. It doesn’t even ride so badly once you get used to it…”
Today the country’s roads (and off-roads) are virtually littered with “SUV’s”; Sport Utility Vehicles manufactured on every continent except Antarctica. They come in every size, shape, and price-tag, and every one of them owes its existence to a small group of dedicated engineers who provide a classic example of the ability of a small well-focused team being able to accomplish a near-impossible task.
INVENTING THE JEEP
In the years following World War I, various factions in the US Army explored the concept of what they referred to as a “light reconnaissance vehicle”; a means, other than the horse, of getting around the battlefield quickly. Experiments ranged from modified Model-T Fords, to a motorized platform with no suspension, on which two infantry men would ride laying on their stomachs! Nicknamed the “Belly Flopper”, it would travel up to 28 bone-jarring, teeth-rattling miles per hour. These experiments were not something that Army brass was particularly interested in, so development generally depended on spare parts and spare time. The first Belly Flopper, for instance, was build using $500 appropriated from a fund set aside to buy shop manuals.
In 1938,
a struggling car company in Pennsylvania had lent three of its small roadsters
to the Pennsylvania National Guard to evaluate as reconnaissance cars, during
its summer maneuvers. That company
was the American Bantam Car Company, or simply “Bantam”.
In
1940, as tension in Europe escalated, so did the Army’s interest in a light
vehicle that could carry men and ammunition to the front lines.
They never dreamt of all the uses that the military and then civilians
would find for what would become the “Jeep”.
(Examples of some unique variations include: being fitted with stretchers
to become ambulances; being surrounded by a boat hull to become amphibians;
having tracks attached to become tanks; having tires replaced with steel wheels
to become railroad engines; and one even had an autogyro rotor attached (like a
helicopter blade), and would actually fly
when towed by a fast truck or airplane! But
we’re getting ahead of ourselves; the first prototype hasn’t even been built
yet.)
Armed with favorable reports from the National Guard’s officers and men, the Bantam military sales representative met with officers of the Infantry and Cavalry to pitch the idea of using a modified Bantam roadster as an Army light reconnaissance vehicle. The officers were impressed with the idea, and had extensive testing carried out on the Bantam chassis (the body was of no interest at all to the Army). It was decided that the roadster’s chassis would be a good place to start, and in June of 1940, in about seven days, a committee created a specification for a quarter-ton reconnaissance vehicle. The specs included:
§ Four wheel drive (the original Bantam reconnaissance cars were 2-wheel drive)
§ Wheelbase to be 75 inches, and height to be 36 inches.
§ It would have to carry a crew of three with a .30 caliber machine gun mounted on a pedestal.
§ Cooling capacity to allow a sustained speed of 3 mph without overheating, and enough power to travel at a top speed of 50 MPH.
§ Minimum ground clearance of 6-1/4 inches.
§ Ability to carry a 600 pound payload (a little over ¼ ton)
§ And a completely unrealistic weight limitation of 1275 lbs (This was ultimately raised to 2160 pounds)
On July 11, 1940, the Quarter Master Corps issued an invitation to bid on an order for 70 light army vehicles to 135 companies. (The invitation must have gone out to every company that ever built a vehicle with a motor in it!) The bids were due back just eleven days later, on July 22!
To put together an accurate proposal for a production run of a completely new vehicle in just eleven days was no simple task. They had to price out every nut, bolt, gear, and piece of wire for a car that wasn’t even designed yet. They had to figure out how long it would take to design such a vehicle; how many designers would be required, and how much they would be paid. They had to estimate how much it would cost to manufacture parts that didn’t exist even on paper. And they had to project what their production line would look like, what it would cost, and how many men they would need to employ to run it.
Surprisingly, out of 135, only the American Bantam Car Company and Willys-Overland submitted bids. The reason may have been the Army’s delivery schedule. As daunting as the proposal may have been to some of the companies, compared to the delivery schedule, it was a walk in the park. The Army required that the first prototype vehicle be delivered to Holabird proving grounds 49 days after the awarding of the contract! And they were going to impose a $100 per day late penalty. (In 1940, $100 a day would eat into the profits pretty quickly!)
When the bids were opened on July 22, Bantam came out the winner, even though Willys’ bid was slightly lower. Willys lost because they said they didn’t think the 49-day schedule could be met, and Bantam felt that thought it could.
Bantam’s confidence was optimistic to say the least. Due to the economies of the depression, Bantam’s entire engineering staff had been laid off months before! The single engineer they hired to put together the proposal (Karl Probst) now had to recruit a complete engineering and design department to build the new vehicle he had envisioned. Before the Army even issued its formal purchase order on August 5, round the clock work had begun to make what they called the Bantam Reconnaissance Car (or BRC) a reality. For the next two months the engineers virtually lived at the Bantam offices.
Naturally,
wherever possible, existing Bantam parts were used, but these turned out to be
fewer than had been hoped for. Since
the new vehicle would be 4-wheel drive, and all Bantams were 2-wheel drive, an
entire transmission, transfer case, and front-wheel-drive system had to be
engineered, and adapted into the Bantam’s frame.
Close coordination with up to ten major outside suppliers had to be
handled at the same time that engineering was going on, forcing engineers to be
purchasing agents and expediters as well. In
the incredibly short period of two months, a group of engineers, machinists, and
technicians, few of whom had ever worked together before, designed, built,
purchased, and assembled the thousands of individual parts that made up a
completely new vehicle.
With little time for formal blueprints, hand sketches were delivered directly to the machine and sheet metal shops. Machinists worked closely with the engineers to simplify designs wherever possible, then quickly turned the rough drawings into finished parts. At assembly, parts were reassessed, redesigned and remade on the fly. Every part that was scribbled on a piece of paper, and every change that was made, however, had to be documented. If the prototype vehicle was successful, there would be 70 more to be built, and they would all need to be the same.
The prototype vehicle was due at Holabird proving grounds on September 23rd, no later than 5:00pm. On September 21st the first (and only) BRC was driven out of the factory on a short cross-country trial run. Among other things, it easily climbed a 45 degree embankment, proving that the heart of the vehicle, the 4-wheel drive system and four-cylinder engine, had been engineered and built correctly. Testing continued around the clock, with fixes being engineered and implemented “immediately, if not sooner”.
On the
morning of September 23rd, the BRC set out for Holabird, 230 miles
away. They could have loaded the
car onto a truck and hauled it to the proving grounds, but the trip was
calculated to be part of the engine’s “break-in” period.
For that reason, they could not travel more than 25 MPH!
(Its conceivable that the phase “Are we there yet?” was invented on
this trip!) With 30 minutes to
spare, the BRC pulled into Holabird, and without even switching off the engine,
an Army Major hopped in and took the little car on a not-too-gentle test ride.
Impressed,
he handed the Bantam over to the test drivers, who over the course of the next
two weeks literally tested the car to death!
(Loaded with sandbags while jumping over embankments, the frame’s side
rails finally failed, forcing an end to the testing.)
At the end of the test report, which listed every major or minor fault
uncovered during the vehicle’s thrashing, the conclusion read: ”The vehicle demonstrated ample power and all requirements of the service.”
With a few refinements, the design was approved, and Bantam started
producing the seventy-unit order.
The design was so successful in fact, that rather than invite competing versions of the vehicle, the Army provided the plans to Willys and to Ford so they too could manufacture what would become the most famous vehicle in the world.
