Can anyone tell me what the curious things (parts C18 and C42) are on the front fenders of Tamiya's SdKfz 232 8-Rad kit? They are vaguely triangular in cross-section and are seen strapped down on the kit and in contemporary photographs. Are they cargo bins, tool cases, storage, or what?

Oil cans.

Woo hoo! Thanks!

Bruce;

I think that actually those are the early-version petrol / gas-cans. The Reichswehr and pre-war and early-war Wehrmacht / Heer used the old-style 20L triangular cans in service from the early 1930's into 1942 - This style was replaced by the 20L blitz-canister / jerry-can starting in 1939. The early 8-rad cars used the triangular 20L tins. German military oil cans were a mixed crowd; square tins, 2- and 5L triangular tins, small drums (5L and 10L). Both petrol 20L and 5L "triangular" oil tins had the same overall form. I THINK that those mounted up on the fenders were the larger 20-liter petrol tins...

Petrol/gas tins were painted one or another gray color. The same 20L triangular can style could be used for water (marked with a black or white W and sometimes a white band). AFAIK, the oil cans were often painted other colors and some had commercial labels on them. Oil tins were clearly marked "Oel" (oil).

The 20L triangular tin is similar in overall size to a 20L jerry-can. The 5L oil tin would be much smaller.

Cheers!

Bob

Hi Bob,

thanks, that's very interesting. I only knew of the 20l jerrycans that could hold petrol/gas or water (with the white cross), though I did know that there was an early pattern and a late pattern version. The Tamiya kit has this sort of jerrycan mounted on the top of the fenders, though of course as an older kit the cans were cruder, two-handled and with the spout in the middle of the can. I imagine the two types of can may have co-existed for a while...

Britain used a rectangular (google flimsies) can before they got the jerry can copies.


and here is the german pre-jerry can and the jerry can



/ Robin

Robin! THANKS for posting that last pic! I was going to, but ended up heading off to the home-center for an emergency repair bit and didn't have time to collect it from the web and post it HERE! That's one of the few nice available images of the early-style 20L "triangular" can - note that it has the black W for water... Something done pre-war. During the war, that black W soon became replaced with a white W and soon a white cross - to enable troopies to pour the right stuff at night without lights on... Imagine brewing up a cuppa tea with petrol...

Cheers! Bob

PS: @ Bruce: The two types DID coexist in service from 1939 through into 1942 (and maybe early 1943 in north Africa) - but very seldom served together on any one vehicle. The mounting brackets were pretty specific to can type. The Blitz can was developed initially as a "opportunistic" fuel-robbery can for motor and infantry troops who might come across some available fuel-tank needing draining... It was a much more ergonomic design that a guy could easily carry on foot. It was soon recognized as being a simply better canister for all uses, and became the standard issue by later 1940 for vehicle use. The triangular early-style cans remained in service because they were issued on early-type vehicles and did work OK.

The jerry-can entered service wearing a simpler "X" pattern on 1939 and 1940 cans. From 1941, the sides had a "box-X" design. There were Heer, Luftwaffe, and SS -marked cans and fuel (kraftstoffe) and wasser (water-only) cans. Earlier fuel cans had a plastic lining that allowed them to be used for water (presumably after a few good rinses...).

Cheers! Bob

Such cans are available separately from Plusmodel (set #115) if needed :



H.P.

If anyone is curious (at least I was so I asked Google) I can inform you that Glysantin is some additive to pour into the engine cooling system.
/ Robin

http://www.glysantin.de/en/
"Glysantin® – with threefold protection against corrosion, over-heating and frost"

I am sorry, but I disagree on this.
The black marking says: W4P1 (although the "4" might be a Gothic "A" and the "1" might be an "i"). But the engraved markings clearly read "20 Ltr. Kraftstoff" (20 liter fuel).

The reason why jerrycans have 3 handles for carrying: a soldier can carry 2 empty ones in 1 hand with the side handles and a full one in each hand with middle handle.

Peter

Another piece of more or less useless information:

The triangular can has the word Kraftstoff stamped with letters from the Fraktur-font while the jerry can uses some roman font.

The official shift came January 3 1941, see text borrowed from Wikipedia below:

"The Fraktur typefaces were in heavy use in Nazi Germany, when they were initially represented as true German script; official Nazi documents and letterheads employed the font, and the cover of Hitler's Mein Kampf used a hand-drawn version of it.[5] (However, ironically, the typefaces most popular in Nazi Germany, especially for running text as opposed to decorative uses such as in titles, were actually the more modernized fonts of the Gebrochene Grotesk type such as Tannenberg, designed in the early 20th century, mainly the 1930s, as grotesque versions of blackletter typefaces.) The press was scolded for its frequent use of "Roman characters" under "Jewish influence" and German émigrés were urged to use only "German script".[6] This radically changed on January 3, 1941, when Martin Bormann issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use.[7] German historian Albert Kapr has speculated that the régime had realized that Fraktur would inhibit communication in the territories occupied during World War II.[8]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur

/ Robin

I just LOVE the great stuff that emerges in these threads, Robin! Geaux, the tiny little devilish details of HISTORY!

Bob

Hi, Talking about jerrycans and others, I've seen some US jerrycans in some Sherman tanks painted in red (scale models) so
what are they used for? Any others colors?

TIA

Álvaro

There is an entry in Wikipedia about the jerry can and it contains the following section about regulations:
"Current US regulations

As of January 10, 2009 all portable fuel containers are required to conform to two new regulations:[10]

They must meet new federal Mobile Source Air Toxic regulations, based on the California Air Resources Board’s regulations.[11]
They must meet the requirements of the Children’s Gasoline Burn Prevention Act.[12]

These new regulations do not apply to OSHA-approved metal safety containers, but rather to the common red plastic, portable gas cans. The regulations apply only to newly manufactured gasoline cans, and there is no requirement on the part of users to discard their existing cans or to upgrade, although the EPA provides informational resources for implementing community Gas Can Exchange Programs.[13]

Furthermore, in the state of California, the following colours are mandated:[14]

red for gasoline
yellow for diesel
blue for kerosene

Per ASTM F852, the particular shades should be "medium yellow" and "medium blue"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan

Note that this is a current regulation so I don't know how/if it would apply to a Sherman tank in WW2.
I would personally not have liked to display a bright red can on the outside of "my" vehicle if I had been a tank commander. Sort of makes camouflage difficult ....
There is also this thread from 2008 here on Armorama:
http://armorama.com/forums/123897&page=1
The use of red cans is questioned but not ruled out completely ....


From Olive Drab:
http://olive-drab.com/od_mvg_jerry_can_markings.php

"You will find many styles and types of markings painted onto Jerry Cans. THe most common will be a stencil in black, white, or yellow with an indication of the contents: "MOGAS", "DIESEL", "JP-5" and so forth. In many units, there was a practice of painting MOGAS can tops red and diesel can tops yellow.

Water cans will have "WATER" or just "W" on them, at least until the late 1970s when the plastic water cans were phased in. In some zones of World War II a white cross was painted on water cans, in come cases following the lines of the X molded into the can body. (See USMC photo above). Some metal cans have "WATER" stamped into the metal above the opening, near the handles."


/ Robin