A brief history of the US military Model M1910 canteen

today's topic is the model 1910 canteen used by the US military from the Civil War almost to World War one US soldiers carried round canteens that maybe looked like two frisbees glued together and stuffed into a round pillowcase in 1909 an Army Committee decided to test out a different style something that would become known as the model 1910 canteen the earliest one I have here was made in 1918 the latest I have is 1966 but the model 1910 continued to be made into the 1990s and over the decades going from steel to aluminum to plastic model numbers actually evolved a little bit but they pretty much all looked like the model 1910 and some parts were even interchangeable this particular one was made by the John W Brown manufacturing company and again it is 1918 as date of manufacture but the cover that he came in his 1934 made at the Jefferson quartermaster Depot in Indiana this looked quite different one was first issued on the side our remnants of stitches that held leather straps on the straps would have gone all the way around and come up the side and tied or bounded up a here at the top this was the mounted canteen cover later I think World War two of these were favored by the airborne people jumping out of airplanes and again this one really predates World War two 1934 as the hook to hold it on to the belt one not interesting thing about this is you may have noticed the writing on the front and this mounted canteen cover produced at the army quartermaster Depot ended its government service as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps the CCC in pre-world War two and the guys name out here Johnny Moore La Mirada California and I was actually able to find information about in my line verifying that he was in fact in the Conservation Corps notice over here something that's quite common on war-surplus a pricetag written with a grease pencil they used to do this thing I know in the 50s and 60s at the surplus stores and you'd see pristine canteen covers and somebody come by with a pen whose mark she would never ever get off there and they put the label on it and I also whose also wanted the back for the dollar 95 so maybe got marked down to 49 cents for the final sale inside this have a blanket wool insulation you can tell it's wool there's a little nip there from a moth or silverfish or something of the sort and this is the looks like the army blanket blanket wool and the later ones have a thicker Messier sort of felt this next canteen is 24 years newer dated 1942 and made by the same company that had the patent for seamless aluminum canteens way back in 1910 that's the AGM company short for aluminum goods manufacturing company as you can see again 24 years difference in these but there's little if any difference they have the same domed metal caps the ring around the neck the chain the shape this 1942 canteen is in a 1949 cover which is not a common date for us field gear it was made by Baker Lockwood a Kansas City company that did business as western awning this is certainly not as beat up as the CCC cover but it has some signs of maybe actual field use next to the US you can see that somebody has taken the needle and thread and just crisscross that a hundred times or more almost like we were reading they did the same thing up here on the back of this the hook is rusty that did a lot of damage to the surrounding fabric they used at some points brass hooks but brass was a strategic material so they tried the cheap steel for a while that didn't work very well so open this one up and take a look at the insulation inside this is not like the blanket wool this is really felt doesn't look as nice as the blanket wool either and oh look inside here is the canteen cup I've had one sitting over here just for this very reason these things are a bear to get out and get back in it's really tight on there I can squeeze that and just doesn't want to move so rather than remove all those and put them back in I just decided I would show you a canteen cup 1945 and these things over the over the flame the handle folds up to go inside the cover they make nice pencil holders in your garage okay this looks different this canteen and the cover were made especially for the Marines these flaps are quite different collectors call these cross flap covers they came along about 1942 43 and then in 1943 they decided to put a hole in the bottom of the cover so it could be used as a funnel apparently a lot of water was being wasted in the field trying to fill up canteens ignore for a moment the canteen that's actually fairly snug there I guess when I get too wet and the fabric expands a little bit it could be tighter inside oh there we go we've been looking mostly at aluminum canteens this one is black porcelain enamel and there's also a less common blue enamel version canteen which seems to been made for the army there's a stamp on the bottom of this u.s. and SM Co which is Singer manufacturing company dated 1942 aluminum and stainless steel canteens used metals that were needed in aircrafts another critical item so it was decided to make the lowly canteen from cheap steel and then cover that with enamel to protect the chief steel from the elements well that didn't work and the enamel was this glass like finish almost just kind of cracked and fell off so you almost never ever see one of these that doesn't have rust on it this one's actually in pretty good condition having the one spot I've seen them you know we got a couple up here too let's see there's one there and one there now what we don't have with this is the canteen cups I think they were very rare I saw one having sold on ebay not too long ago for over $400 just for the cup next up ladies and gentlemen it's a shame manufacturing company and I believe this in 1945 chain manufacturing company made the cover and let's see what we have inside in the way of canteens vollrath prolific maker of canteens 1944 so that's the nice little setup there this is what you call it war issue probably if this was made 1945 it did not get into World War two it was probably sitting on a supply warehouse in Philadelphia waiting out the war now this is the kind of thing you would have seen in the Korean War and even into the Vietnam War in the 60s the Marines were still using you know the old world war ii stuff and i don't doubt that there was some point of the vietnam war where some guy got issued a 1918 canteen this is nice brass hooks on it so it doesn't have any corrosion and really in the pretty good shape and it has as do the other ones the some people call these lift-the-dot snaps and i think they'll actually lift the dots snaps are actually marked as such these don't have any markings but it goes over that stud I did want to note that the 1944 canteen has the plastic screw cap compared to the metal ones we saw on the earlier model machine tends jumping ahead from the end of World War two to the beginning of the war in Southeast Asia we have a 1960 cover that at first glance looks like the previous one this one here from the end of world war ii but notice there's a difference here we have those lift-the-dot snaps over here we have just plain old snaps those kinds of things if we turn this over well see you know it has no hooks but rather slides this is the model M 1956 and the slide slip over the belt instead of being hooked on the belt holes these sliders went on to be used in pretty much everything attached to military belts and other gear from canteens to ammo patches the Marines continued though to use the old-style ones with the hooks into the war but eventually everybody adopted these during the Vietnam War we started seeing field gear made from nylon such as this cover instead of canvas I think this one was made in 1982 it has a pouch for water purification tablets on the front and on the back it has the slides the m56 title slides the canteen of this is dated 1966 there we go they produced these beginning in 1962 and for the first time since 1910 we had canteens with caps that would not fit an older canteen for example we can take a 1918 canteen and a 1945 model and pretty much swapped caps but the plastic cap on the plastic canteens it's just too big it just slides right on the threads don't even engage this style after the Vietnam War gained a hole in the lid there was a hose that ran from that to the gas mask and she had a special watertight fitting an airtight so that you could hydrate yourself while you're walking about in your gas mask while the model 1910 was the military's preferred hydration device for almost 100 years they did experiment with other types of canteens including larger ones and ones designed to keep the water from freezing in extreme cold the model M 1910 canteen is an iconic piece of military gear after World War two Asian companies even started making them for sale to the public for hiking and camping these are made of much cheaper materials and every so often I see them at antique malls label that has World War 2 thanks for watching I hope you learn something Krusty Bob over and out

Channel: BobHudsonVideo

Views: 5,655

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: M-1910 CANTEEN, model 1910 canteen

Id: pZM11i0p0Uc

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019