17 juillet 2007

DUKW !

Incredible ! while driving on the highway we passed a DUKW, a real one from the WWII.
I screamed "It's a dukw the first one I see for real !"

My fiancee told me to stop the car and ran to a bridge not far away to take the pic with my cell phone.
She arrives just in time to take the pic before the dukw was to far.
There are numerous reenactors in France who dress themselves in american soldiers and drive vehicles but this DUKW makes the show for sure.

A Dukw in Germany in 1944/45.

The DUKW (called "duck" by GI's) was an amphibious truck designed to bring wares from boats to beaches.
I found this on "wikipedia":


It weighed 7.5 tons and operated at 6.4 mph (10 km/h) on water and 50-55 mph (80 km/h) on land. It was 31 feet (9.3 m) long, 8.25 feet (2.4 m) wide, and 8.8 feet (2.6 m) high with the folding-canvas top up. More than 21,000 were manufactured. It was not an armored vehicle, being plated with sheet steel between 1/16" and 1/8" thick to minimize weight. A high capacity bilge pump system kept the DUKW afloat if the thin hull was breached by holes up to a couple inches in diameter.

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