The Story of the Jerry Can

this video we're making today will help to explain one of the most readily recognized items of the 20th century what many know is the jerry can what the germans knew as the 20 litre canister so how did we get from a situation where we were using pre-war cans to a can which has become universally adopted by most armies around the world hopefully this video will tell you the story and how we arrived at the icon of the 20th century when the german army rolled across the polish border in september 1939 it unleashed on the world a new type of warfare and a new name for it blitzkrieg lightning war germany had lost world war one due to the static trench fighting that developed determined that this would not happen again the spearhead of the army with air support would drive deep into enemy territory causing confusion and ultimately encirclement these spearhead units were fully motorized and were reliant on the adequate provision of fuel as they advanced no fuel no blitzkrieg and it was something that had given the german military plan as quite a headache from the 1920s onwards as relations with germany improved the french and british allowed german military staff to come and observe their army maneuvers these war games were very interesting to the germans who having had many weapon types banned were keen to see how they were operated it became apparent that a floor existed in tank strategy because in the middle of the fighting the tanks would have to leave the battlefield to refuel this the germans saw as the achilles heel of the allies particularly the french armed with this information when hitler come to power and began to rearm the military planners began to look for a solution what was needed was a way to refuel near the front line the fuel cans that the german that the german army used were triangular in shape these are essentially civilian cans that were designed to stow on the running board of a car they were manufactured from tin plate had a small spare and came in sizes ranging from five to thirty liters whilst at home on the running board of your mercedes tourer the cairns were not very robust robust and because of their shape were very difficult to stack in the back of a truck an early attempt at an improved design was the asby can steel mode of template but with a better shape for storage and handles that improved pouring and moving the can but they were still very susceptible to damage here we see two examples of the triangular can used both by the civilian and the commercial and the military this is a 10 liter this is a 15 liter and here [Music] is a 25 liter 25 liters in this shape was very ungainly and they're not common today the most common size was a 20 liter and this example surprisingly was made in 1943 which is odd when you consider that they'd standardized by then on the jerrycan the reason was there was still some specialist vehicles the sdk fz251 with the angular armored hull required fuel carriage and these fitted nicely into the shape that's why they still kept production of some of the triangular cans even after they've adopted the jerrycan this is the asby is the can that they first try to replace the triangular cans with it's still made of template it's still soldered and whilst it's got a better design of filler and carrying handles it was still prone to become dented and damaged very easily and even leak and that's why ultimately it wasn't adopted on a large scale in 1936 the army issued an invitation to tender for a new fuel plan for the armed forces and this was won by mullet and company this winning design consisted of two halves of pressed steel the middle seam being welded together to form the can the side panels had x shapes pressed into them to add strength the ingenious three position handle was attached separately as was the camlock filler cap and breather pipe this new can ticked all the right boxes it was strong easy to carry and pass the permanently detached cat could got could not get lost and the shape afforded easy stacking these cairns got their evaluation in the spanish civil war where the germans had sent men and equipment to assist general franco examples of these early cans are extremely rare but one of the most obvious difference is the locking cap this differs in shape and design from those fitted to the production models of 1937 from 1937 full-scale production of the 20 litre canister began with other manufacturers making into the same design on early cans only the manufacturer's emblem and date was pressed into the side all other markings were stenciled on in paint and this quickly identified a problem the markings were worn off in use in late 1938 this was addressed by having all the information pressed into the can when manufactured collectors today call these early cans the first pattern that they were not to last and here we see two examples this one on the right is a 1938 can where the only markings on it are the date and the manufacturer's mark which is abp which is ambibut press works which ironically was a subsidiary of an american company the can on the left which is 1939 has got the pressings in the top part but it still hasn't got the their marked pressings at the bottom and many of these early cans were either stenciled with here or luftwaffe depending on what arm of service they were allocated to the second patent can made its appearance around 1939 although the earlier pattern continued in production until 1941 by which time all manufactured manufacturers had switched to the new model the second model is noticeable by the addition of a press rectangle in the middle of the canned sides and the shape of the x pressing is also different this is the can that most people will be familiar with and it is this shape of the pressing that is still in use today although these cans have undergone extensive testing in spain and then during the angelus the annexation of austria and the early stages of world war ii the invasion of poland a problem arose when the can got worn they expanded and if they were tightly packed in a truck or a dedicated carrier the only way to remove them was to release the pressure in the cans i'll leave it to the imagination what happens but also some cans remain deformed making them awkward to stack the change impression shape cured this although any can exposed to direct sunlight still has a tendency to pressurize and expand slightly the next development occurred was not a change in the can but rather in its contents as well as fuel an army needs water lots of it the bear marked utilized drinking water containers in varying sizes for bulk transport of potable water none of these had the capacity of the standard canister and were for drinking water only vehicle cooling systems also require water whilst unofficially new cans that had not been used for fuel were marked and used for water carrying with the introduction of the second patent can a dedicated water can was introduced the wording in the can side pressing amended accordingly to aid identifying the water cans a white cross was painted on both sides now let's discuss some of the markings on the can and what they mean especially if you don't understand german at the top kraft stuff was fuel and the capacity 20 liters next below that ford cafalic was flammable at the bottom of the cam on the all-pressed version was where marked armed forces the earlier cairns have seen had here some had luftwaffe on the walter cairns will have water pressed in to them to identify them and a white stripe they also had a white mark under the handles and the weight was quite often printed on with a stamp the water cans being heavier than the fuel cans i might at this point talk about the colors of the cans the early cans were in the standard green or gray colors and when everything else changed over to the uncle gelb which was around the time that the africa core went out to the desert the can colour changed as well so this is a donkle gelp yellow can in its original finish and this is [Music] 20 liter water can again you can see the difference where it says vassa instead of crashed off these markings stayed the same on both types of care until towards the end of the war for some odd reason and whether it was to do with wartime manufacturing the marks began to change and they were no longer pressed into the sides the sides are plain but the markings are on the handles the only other can which again was different to everybody else was the ss version these were all made by sandrip which there's a company that still exists today it's in czechoslovakia although during the war it was the protectorate of bohemia and moravia which is really an ss fiefdom as you can see there's no way march at the bottom of the can but the essex rooms are in the rectangle in the middle of the can these are fairly commonly faked so if you are looking for one do your homework beforehand earlier in the video we saw how the jerrycan came to exist and how it was instrumental in developing a new type of modern warfare now we will look at the impact it had on those on the receiving end notably the uk and the usa britain had been at the forefront of mechanisation of armed forces from world war one but with a great depression and many pacifist movements spending on the army was cut back the empire could be policed by the navy in the raf that was now government policy the army had to make the best of a bad deal but as the political situation in germany changed many began to realize that war was on the horizon the standard fuel or water container being used at the start of world war ii by the british was the two gallon tin plate can essentially a civilian product this capacity was woefully small but the 50 gallon drum was too cumbersome so an alternative was needed and this was found in the oil fields of the middle east the oil companies were using disposable rectangular four gallon tin plate cans to distribute their fuel to outpost supply depots and other remote location packed in twos in a crew wooden frame they earned the name flimsy [Music] these seem to be the answer to the british army's problems the cans were cheap the filling plants already in operation to supplement these some despite non-disposable cans made of steel-worlded and these were fitted with a screw cap unlike the german canister a funnel was required for refueling but even then the process was very messy the reason that the flimsy got its nickname was for the very reason because you can see exactly how light and thin it was when it was being transported around the middle east in non-wartime conditions it obviously didn't take it didn't matter how long it took to get there within reason and so the transport of them was controlled in wartime conditions this wasn't the case and so whilst they seemed to offer the ideal opportunity for the british government at the time the main thing being they were cheap they weren't very practical the other care they had which was far more robust was this four-gallon can modeled on the flimsy re it had obviously could be reused it had a suitable cap and it was quite a robust can it was easy to stack because of its shape but again it didn't pour very well it had no air vent and like most other forms of refuel in your british army it needed you needed a funnel to fill it british troops soon encountered the canister as the germans called it in norway and then in france in 1914 and finally in the western desert and it's there it's how it got its nine jerry cans because that's the term we use for the germans the cans which were captured were used and found to be very practical and after some captured examples returned back to britain it was fairly evident that this was a good design and there's no reason why we shouldn't copy it and so production started with a british can in 1942 it used similar models to the german in the fact that it had war department and the date and the makers mark it didn't have flammable or any other markers but the marks were on one side only and that followed the german pattern that is of course unless you happen to be box or motors because vauxhall motors decided they wanted to be different and although on this side it has the markings the same voxel motors decided that they would also put their name on the other side so it's fairly easy to see a can with markings on both sides it's probably 90 99 sure that it was made by vauxhall motors along with the germans the british started using them for walter in the western desert the problem was they hadn't used a dedicated can at that stage and that the poor tommy's who happened to be up in the front line were receiving their water tainted with petrol and even worse if the cannon contained diesel you can imagine it was pretty revolting the british were slow to react to this and it wasn't until 1944 that they produced their own water can again with water embossed at the bottom and white markings to denote that the can was for water use only it was also coated inside with a different finish the germans and the british used a special red oxide paint in the inside of cairns which was resistant to petrol the water cans tended to use a sort of rubber coating which was also there to try and stop the cans rusting out which is a problem with water cans when they're in canada today by collectors because quite often the bottoms have rotted out it didn't take long for examples of the new german can to reach the united states at that time the usa were using commercial 5 and 10 gallon drums rather than a dedicated military care examples of the german cairns were sent to various industrial companies to gauge their opinions on the design and how to set up for max production the u.s army also got involved and the result was an innovative design but based on the german concept these are often called american or the blitzcan the new us can differed in construction from its german cousin gone was the cam lock in favor of a large screw cap with two lugs this would later be increased to four the cam body was made of one sheet of steel shaped and welded together with a simple cross pressing as a stiffener on the sides this is copied from the early german model separate top and bottom pressings welded to the body complete the can to prevent rusting early cans were galvanized but it soon became apparent that the petrol reacted with the finish and produced a white salt that blocked carburetors and so all later production cans were treated with a solvent-proof primer the cans of the date and the manufacturer embossed on them as well as the usa ownership map qmc for quartermaster call and g for gasoline here we can see an early production can this was made in may 1941 in its galvanized condition obviously when it was applied to the us armed forces it was painted in olive drab but the paint wouldn't adhere this was another problem with the all galvanized can on the right is the later production can and you can see the galvanized can has the two lug filler cap with a small lightweight chain the cat the cat on the right has got four lugs and it has a metal rod connected to a short length of chain this was because the chains were breaking on the early cans and also if they became tight the lugs are thinner and they were easy to damage on the left we see the early fallout can cap on the right we see the later one strengthened yes again because they were still having problems with bending the lugs these have got the lugs longer and bent back on themselves to form loops and this was the standard cap which then endured for the rest of the wall a lot of early cairns underwent retrofit of this late cap making the early two lug cap quite unusual today the marine corps weren't happy with this design and because they procured their can separately they decided that they weren't going to adopt the same method they preferred the german camlock cap and so the marine corps had their own can made which incorporated a camlock and u.s marine corps pressed into the bottom to identify these are fairly scarce today certainly in europe because obviously most of them were used in the pacific the final variant in the u.s can saga are the water cans again they don't have g for gasoline but a wall w under the handles the other difference is they have a large camlock lid and this was designed to make the cans easier to clean out if they got contaminated the can on the left the gas can as you can see was quite often stenciled with the contents this was a fairly common thing and it aided identification when the cans were being stacked one thing of note the first 50 000 cans that the us produced went to the british and if you look at a lot of early photographs particularly of the sas in the western desert you can see that the cans on the vehicles are american and not british as we mentioned when we were discussing the british fuel cans the british had been relying on a fueling funnel to fill up the vehicles the design of which is this rectangular shape and it enables a two gallon can to be completely inverted and left in there to empty its contents on its own they continue to be used with the jerry cans to make filling with cairns easier a number of affiliates were developed this one a screw on one for the british two gallon can fairly self-explanatory this one was developed for the german canister it clips on using a similar cam log fitting and enabled things which were in an awkward position to be filled and finally the us can which again there he's tended to come with these as a standard thing because it was awkward to fill a vehicle with a small filler cap without the spout but the pro one problem with this is they did often tend to get lost and that really was the downside of the american design the fact that the filler nozzle could be lost this resulted in people fueling the vehicles by just pouring out the can wasting lots of fuel but i suppose that was just one of those things thanks for watching if you want to know any more information visit the essex hmva website

Channel: Essex HMVA

Views: 1,286

Rating: 4.9069767 out of 5

Keywords: Jerry Can, WW2, British Army, Fuel can, tank, water can, ww2 history, history, Nazi, Essex HMVA

Id: 6T3NfM-qGfI

Length: 25min 56sec (1556 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020