In 1911, an article was published in the Infantry Journal urging the U.S. Army to mechanize and replace horse-drawn wagons with trucks. The Army's response was that they already had 12 trucks, and that was quite enough. Of the twelve, three were at the quartermaster depot in San Francisco, one at Fort Sam Houston (Texas), one at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and seven in the Philippines.
The transport of French troops using Renault taxis led to some extra experimentation by the Army. They found that, even on the poor roads that existed at the time, a motorized convoy could travel approximately 100 miles per day, quadruple the distance that a mule train could cover. When Black Jack Pershing was sent to Mexico in 1916, the military still had less than 1,000 motorized vehicles. By the end of the expedition (two months before the United States entered the Great War), Pershing had over 500 of them, with trucks made by 128 different manufacturers.
In 1917, the Army decided to standardize on their own design of trucks, to reduce the maintenance nightmare that came from having a hundred different types of truck. Instead, they would have commercial factories produce trucks to an Army standard. The Standard AA was to be a 3/4 ton truck, the Standard A 1 1/2 tons, and the Standard B 3 tons. Four or five Standard AA trucks were prototyped, but it never went in to production. Only three Standard A trucks were built, one prototype each being produced by Autocar, Denby, and White. The first Standard B was delivered in October 1917. A total of 9,452 were built, with over 7,000 reaching Europe by war's end (thirteen months after the first prototype was complete).
Early trucks had wooden wheels and electrical lighting. Later production used steel wheels and a combination of oil lamps and an acetylene spotlight; electrical systems were still unreliable at this time, to the extent that the trucks had two separate starter systems.
Top speed was around 24 kilometers per hour due to low gearing in the 4-speed gearbox, and the truck was capable of hauling three tons of cargo.
Standard B Liberty Truck
Fire Control: 0
Stabilization: None
Armament: None
Fuel Type: G, A
Veh Wt: 4.7 tonnes
Crew: 1
Maint: 2
Night Vision: Headlights
Tr Mov: 24/5
Com Mov: 11/2
Fuel Cap: 123
Fuel Cons: 15
Config: Veh
Susp: W(2)
HF 1
HS 1
HR 1
I saw the chassis (only) of one of these at a military vehicle museum in Lexington, Nebraska. http://heartlandmuseum.com/index.php
ReplyDeleteI was travelling cross-country, and happened to stop for the night at the motel across the interstate. Saw the vehicles from the restaurant in the morning, and knew I was going to have a late start to the day!
I've gotten to see two of them, at the Museum of the United States Marine Corps (Triangle, VA) and the US Army Transportation Museum (Fort Eustis). Both are from the second series (steel wheels and oil lamps). This post was actually delayed because one of the pictures I took of the sign with technical information was too blurred for me to read the data, and I had to visit the Marine Corps Museum a second time.
DeleteI didn't remember the one at the MC museum, so I've seen 1.5 of these, then.
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