DUKW
The DUKW (colloquially referred to as "Duck") is a three-axle amphibious vehicle .
use
The DUKW is a modification of the 2 1⁄2 ton CCKW truck used by the US Army in World War II and the Korean War . The area of application of the DUKW was the transport of goods and troops over land and water. It excelled particularly in the case of approaching and crossing beaches during amphibious landing operations.
history
The DUKW was developed by a cooperation between Sparkman & Stephens and General Motors Corporation ( GMC ). The DUKW was designed by Rod Stephens, Jr. of Sparkman & Stephens, Dennis Puleston, a US-based British ocean sailor, and Frank W. Speir of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Developed by the National Defense Research Committee and the Bureau of Scientific Research and Development to solve the problem of replenishment to units that had just made an amphibious landing, it was initially rejected by the armed forces. When a U.S. Coast Guard patrol vehicle ran aground on a sandbar near Provincetown , Massachusetts , an experimental DUKW happened to be in the area for a demonstration. Wind speeds of up to 60 knots (110 km / h), rain and heavy surf prevented conventional vehicles from being able to rescue the seven stranded coast guards, but the DUKW had no problems, so the military opposition to the DUKW melted. The DUKW later proved its seaworthiness by crossing the English Channel .
The final production design was perfected by some engineers at Yellow Truck & Coach in Pontiac , Michigan. The vehicle was manufactured by Yellow Truck and Coach Co. (GMC Truck and Coach Div. After 1943) at their Pontiac West assembly plant and by the subsidiary of General Motors Corp. built by automaker Chevrolet at the truck assembly plant in St. Louis. A total of 21,147 DUKW had been manufactured up to the end of production in 1945.
Technical specifications
DUKW were three-axle amphibious vehicles, of which the Federal Navy received a large number from stocks of the US armed forces in the 1950s. The official German name was "LKW 2.5 t gl Schwimm (6 × 6)". As vehicles approved for public road traffic, the DUKW had a six-digit Y-license plate number. The name DUKW was a type designation of the manufacturer General Motors and said: DUKW - D = 1942; U = utility (amphibian); K = all wheel drive; and W = dual-tandem rear axles. The DUKW had a payload of 2.5 t. They reached a top speed of 80 km / h on the road and 10 km / h in the water. From the mid-1960s, the DUKW were separated and most of them were given to the technical relief organization .
See also
literature
- Pat Ware: The Illustrated Guide to Military Vehicles , Hermes House, 2014, ISBN 978-1-78214-192-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Siegfried Breyer, Gerhard Koop: The ships and vehicles of the German Federal Navy 1956-1976 . Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7637-5155-6