The Curator at Home: Jerry Cans | The Tank Museum

[Music] well hello I'm David Willi I'm the curator at the Tank Museum obviously not at the Tank Museum but this is the first of one of those improvised chats we're going to be trying to do two so we can still feed out hopefully some interesting content now we asked you one of the questions we asked was what sort of things might like to know about here about what might be able to do I would repeat we haven't actually got access to the Tank Museum and its collections at the moment so that in the ideas of getting inside tanks etc is going to be problematic we can't really do that so we can't be on-site so what we're going to try and do is whatever we can answer it'll be me here probably at home or maybe we'll see what other people can come up with as well but one of the questions that was asked was something about one of those areas that often gets overlooked in military history but because we like all the kit and we were the Tank Museum we've got the end product but one of those areas which is how do you keep that kick going logistics as it would be called supplies as it was in the old days and one of the obvious ones is how do you keep a tank going or an armored vehicle really any motorized vehicle in the military is the obvious one is you're going to need fuel and that history of how the fuel can has developed and been used again I've been trying to quickly Jenna and finding out all sorts of interesting little bits and pieces so this little session we're going to look at some fuel cans now here in Britain in the very early days of ordering petroleum you actually went to a chemist to do that you actually got your petrol from a chemist but the numbers of companies that were making it were very few and the range of it and some of those mixes became quite problematic which is why you start getting this idea of branding only by ours and when they were starting to sell petroleum they start selling it in sealed containers so you knew this was it only by sealed container etc and then we get all the branding that gets stuck on the outside now traditionally in Britain fairly quickly a company that was based in Hackney that actually patented the word petrol which is why you actually see some of the other countries calling things like spirit benzene it sets rather other names start coming in to be other than petrol but the company in Hackney ended up starting and they were a major seller and they start selling fuel in what becomes the standard 2 gallon can now here's an alator example of that the idea of the 2 gallon can it takes off some are very plain this is a military one I think it's got no way of advertising on it at all it just says across the top petroleum spirit highly inflammable stamped in it some later because they were fixed on the side of running boards the cars they start getting embossed they start looking much grander some had advertising literature actually stuck on as a paper on the whole most of these ones end up with a brass cap and the idea of the brass cap here with a cut with lugs on the top so you can actually if they get stuck you can leave it them off or you can have a tool for that the brass cap is to stop any risk of as I turn out they're probably making all the sound effects the brass is to stop any chance of a spark and again that's another one of the things you have to think about with petroleum all the time it's the high risk fuel and the risks of setting it on fire causing flames fire and the the vapor to to ignite but this type of can was in use in Britain well up into the 1940s only in the 1920s do we start seeing kerbside petrol stations and pumps coming in to operations so you tended to for early vehicle owners who ordered in your cans quite often you what how it works is you just pay for the petrol that's inside and you're actually paying a deposit for the cam you get that money back when you hand it in or you refill etc so technically didn't really own the can in Britain there was ended up three to four hundred different brands manufacturers suppliers and one thing I did find out is that by looking up on this subject matter the collectors market for these is obviously like with so many you know automobile memorabilia etc and there's a huge collectors market but the British versions of all these are much easier to get hold of because of course in Europe when the Second World War came along these were the types of things that were very quickly impounded or taken by the military or were lost all got rid of in scrap drives if they weren't needed anymore so actually there's a much bigger collector's market for these in Great Britain than there is in the rest of Europe just simply because of the numbers that survived being an island that wasn't actually invaded now as war approached in Britain they came up with something that ends up being called the flimsy it's a four gallon can and it's done in a dissimilar manner to this one it's larger and square so in that way it looks similar but it is almost just like a biscuit tin the argument behind it with these are quite relatively expensive to manufacture and the military saw these next four gallon tins is almost being disposable you were supposed to back load them if you could but because they were made of a very thin metal they were square edged on the hole which meant that that often got damaged those square edges where the welding where or where the seams were they were like they almost look like tin plate like that's why I mentioned the word biscuit tin think of all types of biscuit tins that's that's kind of how they looked and the issue about them because they were so flimsy they ended up getting the name flimsy that's what they were called by British soldiers now normally those four gallon tins were put two together in a little bit of a wooden framework it for transportation but they had huge issues with the loss of petrol because they were so flimsy as soon as they started getting damaged there's a wonderful account of where some of them were being shipped and they realized quite quickly they didn't even just said with a rolling motion of the CEO of on the boat these flimsy zwerling punctured splitting on their seams etc and they got to the point that when they opened the ships hold the fumes were so strong they had to come up with a system where they actually dropped down some sailors on a platform from one of the Derrick's drop them in there to grab as enough of the fuel cans they thought was still together pull them out quickly before they were overcome with the fumes and in another team took over and another guy well you took the first team took a pressure fresh air as it were that's how bad some of this was and I'm going to read you from that a wonderful wartime journalist Alan Morehead whose books again I'd strongly recommend reading them this is from his book the desert war the Germans designed what appears to be the best petrol container for the desert flat solidly built holding five gallons it could be used over and over again known to us as a jerrican the great bulk of the army was forced to stick to the old flimsy four gallon container the majority only used once we could put a couple of petrol cans in the back of a truck two hours of bumping over the desert rocks usually produced a suspicious smell sure enough we would find both cans had leaked now there's a all different sorts of reports that were done at the time that there was an estimate about a third of the fuel was being lost just through leakage in trying to transport it around and back to that word logistic if you've had to ship this if you've had to then try and maneuver it in some manner up to the frontline troops all that energy and effort going with a third of it being lost just in sheer wastage and leakage on that route that's pretty appalling as a figure so they were obviously looking for better ways of being able to do this and when we see the German jerrycan this seems to be a great answer to the problem so as soon as of jerrycan was captured it was returned into use in British or Commonwealth service so onto the jerrycan this dates back to 1935 when the German military actually issues say we're going to need a new petrol container so they go to industry and there's a company because then forgive me I'm going to read this one because I'm always going to say it wrong the moola engineering company in 1937 their chief engineer and again forgive me if I don't say his name right Vincennes Grund Vogel he's the guy that comes up with the really the design that become the jerrican and the idea is he's looking at it as a problem in the sense that they're gonna go for something like it's about four and a half gallon so the metric 20 liters that it they're going for and his design he's very very clever because he's got a look simplistic but it's got a number of very sophisticated features that again some of you will know all this but if you don't know it you just think well it's just a can isn't it well no it's not they've thought this through very very cleverly and in 1936 they produce about 5,000 that go out for trials it kind of gets its first public airing as a new bit of equipment in the 1938 and and yet they it starts being seen in the photographs etc but just to have a look at what he's come up with as a design just looking here this is actually a British wartime jerrycan sorry about the state of it I just dug it out the garage and this is a British copy 1945 dated one but the idea with the sophistication that we're looking at so what we get these the indentations and you've got slightly different versions on different companies those ridges and rivets as it were they're put together so that it strengthens that big sheet that's being stamped out of press steel and by stamping in these indentations it's giving it more strength and it's also given it more surface area to be able to contract into if it gets cold or expand into if it gets hot because so again straightaway these are going to all different climates different temperatures different times of the day that's going to affect the the volume inside so that stamping was done that way another very clever things the Germans had worked out was if you actually do the weld the seal down here this seal is actually not proud of the edging if you look at it flat on so that doesn't get damaged in the same way that if the seal was down an edge and so that that idea that there's obviously more pressure there more chance of it being here it bursts etc so by doing that seal in a recessed Ridge when they're putting it together that means it's got much more protection to it and again they've all all nerds all the edges are cornered on a lot of the flimsy they're square or edging there which of course is much more open to when it's impacted splitting damage than a rounded edge is going to be other features that were thought through very carefully so instead of a screw cap here I think this was yeah its rusted solid I won't be either open in the moment but you can see on the side there you lift this up that flips up the top of the cap there inside that cap there's a tiny top piece that funnels away so oxygen can still get in as you're pouring the material the petrol that's inside out and so you can actually pour that out from that that funnel that way without necessarily having to have a spout so it's not doing that classic glug glug glug the handles again are designed very specifically with a view that they are higher than the normal fueling point in you to stop fueling obviously when it gets to the the bottom of the neck here which means you've still got air in the can like this raised area at the top here and that means the air that still lift in the can and through the handles if you drop a full dairy can into water there's enough air in there to be able to make it float still so another one of those features that you're going to be able to save your fuel if you end up having a flood or it's going down on a ship or something either any luck you should be able to save the fuel can now another feature which I will move my product placement or nice tank monkey you can get from the cup here's another jerrycan another feature is why those handles are done in the same way so that you can carry two empty jerry cans with one hand by having having those at the side the other feature you can do is if it's a full one and you're carrying it almost like human chain style you can have one person's hand on that one the other person's hand to help you carry them whoops like this so you're going along and you're being able to use those handles in that manner so it's another one of those features that again was very cleverly thought through at the time and the British as I mentioned we start using the Jerry cam captured ones as soon as we possibly could and then they move on to manifest shirring in britain and they actually had a factory actually in the Far East as well where they were started to manufacture these and we use them and use them and use them because there's such an obviously good feature good simple design but with a number of sophisticated levels to it so they're they're very a very effective piece of kit the Americans start manufacturing as well and they end up going for a screw cap criticisms pluses and minus they're their arguments for the screw cap by the way was it was the same type of screw cap that we'd got on those bigger drums of fuel that you'd be carrying around the two hundred gallon drums and those ones if you've got the same tooling etc that would make it easier and that was the argument there and the American Marine Corps being the Marine Corps ended up going for their own version which is a combination of American jerrican in the body but having a different type of cap to the top of it sort of things so you can see all this and of course then you've got all the different manufacturers tend to put their stamps on it most of them are dated they'll have a day a day for the year of issue and again some are stamped because of the contents it wasn't just gonna be fuel some have a priest and with things like water other ones there was a convention you painted either a white cross on it if it was only for water because the obvious issue there is the last thing you want to do is cross contaminate with water and fuel or if your water's going to taste pretty foul if you ended up using a can that's been used for petrol beforehand now those military cans like that were used in vast quantities in the Second World War I've found an estimate that they reckon about 21 million of those were made there was always that issue about when you travel with fuel in bulk how do you put it all together when you're getting near the front line obviously that idea about splitting up your risk factors so do you put some jerry cans on a truck with other supplies and spread that out amongst a truck fleet if you're one petrol bowser gets hit these are all the sorts of issues that logistics have to all the logisticians have to look into to see how what is the best way of transporting things like fuel and in the end despite allied efforts by october of 1944 even though we were using some quite sophisticated systems they were still transport courting a million gallons of fuel a day from the d-day beaches all the way through one or two of the ports captured all the way through up to the front line and the vast majority of that was being taken forward in carry cans now for the frontline troops there was all without issue what do you do with the empty jerrican you're supposed to back load it quite often the guys and there were in their advances for always didn't always do that they'd sometimes you know leaving by the side of the road sing hymn in HD whatever to the point that the American military asked French schoolchildren to collect them and they was prizes for the kids who got the most and everything and they estimate about a million jerry cans were collected by french school kids and handed back in that way as a way of keeping them therefore in circulation and used now that would Jerry cam where's the word come from the British user would because we had the word for the Germans called them Jerry's that stems back from a lot more before World War two and there is a thought that it's it's from the First World War and I brought this one out to might wonder why I pulled a poll out and this is the sort of thing you kept under the bed in the old days too if you were caught Fault in the night this in Britain was called a Poe or a Jerry and if you think about it there was a thought that it might be that van upside down looks a little bit like a German helmet which is why we started calling them Jerry's even in the First World War so that's maybe one of the reasons why and the word Gary comes along I'll again there's another theory Jerry built it doesn't mean very well-put-together in Britain if Jerry built it could have been that word but anyway the the common term Jerry was what in Britain we were using for the Germans and that word so it was a Germans can hence a Jerry can and that would seem to stuck and it still being used all around the world today now of course into the 60s into the 70s the metal Jerry can tends to start getting replaced by plastic versions this is a fairly modern one this is a Dutch army while Netherlands air water I was told that actually these are being made there we go this one was actually made in Canada and this is black plastic it's actually I will say I nearly said polyurethane it's not they're actually made from a material that's nowadays it's called polyethylene and that's very dense heavy plastic very durable and obviously it doesn't rust and everything jerrycans by the way they had a plastic liner in all they were painted on the inside to stop that rusting feature but these ones presumably cheaper to make as well and they can last a good time but there's lots of other methods now the jerrican is still being used obviously for many different functions in militaries around the place to keep supplies going forward to keep water on a vehicle keep emergency fuel supply but one of the other big things that comes around now is they've got this idea of they've actually called it the the raptor i think is a mark five portable fuel Bowser and it's one of these massive great big is about three and a half foot across diameter they these great big rubber looking black balls have been slung beneath the helicopter they've got Kevlar in them as well which is good protective and that will carry a couple of tons of fuel and it can be dropped down by a helicopter quite easily simply and off you go and there's a fuel point on the side of it so nowadays very different methods for sometimes getting that fuel around the place you'll see all the huge great big petrol bouncers there is still that fundamental problem though is a petrol Bowser is absolutely okay for mobile warfare until you get into certain types of combat zones and if that's the only way that you're going to get fuel forward they are hugely vulnerable vehicles two very simple types of attack so again how you can distribute the fuel how you might have to spread it about a little bit so at least some of it will get through if you are you can't have that risk of your one key supply chain being broken down because of the loss of those Bowser's etc that's the sort of thing logistics people still have to talk to this day so there there's a little bit there on petrol cans either ones I've managed to find at home in the garage etc little bit of information there on logistics as well and again this is just a first attempt of doing this type of thing so if you've got other ideas of subjects we might be able to talk to you about do keep coming back on the comments and we'll be will be doing these at the moment it's a beautiful spring day here in England at the moment so we're making the most of it sitting outside probably won't be able to do this all the time but we hope you found that a little bit of interest we are a charity here at the Tank Museum so if you can support us please do consider joining our patreon scheme or becoming a member of the Friends any donations will go directly towards the Tank Museum and its activities

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 111,384

Rating: 4.9884882 out of 5

Keywords: #MuseumFromHome, military tank, tank museum, david willey, david fletcher, the tank museum, bovington tank museum

Id: XgsRHBREJYE

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2020