[Milsurplus] Jerry Can

[Lee]

During World War II the United States exported more tons of petroleum 
products than of all other war material combined. The mainstay of the 
enormous oil-and gasoline transportation network that fed the war was 
the oceangoing tanker, supplemented on land by pipelines, railroad tank 
cars, and trucks. But for combat vehicles on the move, another link was 
crucial—smaller containers that could be carried and poured by hand and 
moved around a battle zone by trucks.Hitler knew this. He perceived 
early on that the weakest link in his plans for blitzkrieg using his 
panzer divisions was fuel supply.

He ordered his staff to design a fuel container that would minimize 
gasoline losses under combat conditions. As a result the German army had 
thousands of jerrycans, as they came to be called, stored and ready when 
hostilities began in 1939.

The jerrycan had been developed under the strictest secrecy, and its 
unique features were many. It was flat-sided and rectangular in shape, 
consisting of two halves welded together as in a typical automobile 
gasoline tank. It had three handles, enabling one man to carry two cans 
and pass one to another man in bucket-brigade fashion. Its capacity was 
approximately five U.S. gallons; its weight filled, forty-five pounds. 
Thanks to an air chamber at the top, it would float on water if dropped 
overboard or from a plane. Its short spout was secured with a snap 
closure that could be propped open for pouring, making unnecessary any 
funnel or opener. A gasket made the mouth leak proof. An air-breathing 
tube from the spout to the air space kept the pouring smooth. And most 
important, the can’s inside was lined with an impervious plastic 
material developed for the insides of steel beer barrels. This enabled 
the jerrycan to be used alternately for gasoline and water.

Early in the summer of 1939, this secret weapon began a roundabout 
odyssey into American hands. An American engineer named Paul Pleiss, 
finishing up a manufacturing job in Berlin, persuaded a German colleague 
to join him on a vacation trip overland to India. The two bought an 
automobile chassis and built a body for it. As they prepared to leave on 
their journey, they realized that they had no provision for emergency 
water. The German engineer knew of and had access to thousands of 
jerrycans stored at Tempelhof Airport . He simply took three and mounted 
them on the underside of the car.

The two drove across eleven national borders without incident and were 
halfway across India when Field Marshal Goering sent a plane to take the 
German engineer back home. Before departing, the engineer compounded his 
treason by giving Pleiss complete specifications for the jerrycan’s 
manufacture. Pleiss continued on alone to Calcutta . Then he put the car 
in storage and returned to Philadelphia .

Back in the United States , Pleiss told military officials about the 
container, but without a sample can he could stir no interest, even 
though the war was now well under way. The risk involved in having the 
cans removed from the car and shipped from Calcutta seemed too great, so 
he eventually had the complete vehicle sent to him, via Turkey and the 
Cape of Good Hope . It arrived in New York in the summer of 1940 with 
the three jerrycans intact. Pleiss immediately sent one of the cans to 
Washington . The War Department looked at it but unwisely decided that 
an updated version of their World War I container would be good enough. 
That was a cylindrical ten-gallon can with two screw closures. It 
required a wrench and a funnel for pouring.

That one jerrycan in the Army’s possession was later sent to Camp 
Holabird , in Maryland . There it was poorly redesigned; the only 
features retained were the size, shape, and handles. The welded 
circumferential joint was replaced with rolled seams around the bottom 
and one side. Both a wrench and a funnel were required for its use. And 
it now had no lining. As any petroleum engineer knows, it is unsafe to 
store gasoline in a container with rolled seams. This ersatz can did not 
win wide acceptance.

The British first encountered the jerrycan during the German invasion of 
Norway , in 1940, and gave it its English name (the Germans were, of 
course, the “Jerries”). Later that year Pleiss was in London and was 
asked by British officers if he knew anything about the can’s design and 
manufacture. He ordered the second of his three jerrycans flown to 
London . Steps were taken to manufacture exact duplicates of it.

Two years later the United States was still oblivious of the can. Then, 
in September 1942, two quality-control officers posted to American 
refineries in the Mideast ran smack into the problems being created by 
ignoring the jerrycan. I was one of those two. passing through Cairo two 
weeks before the start of the Battle of El Alamein, we learned that the 
British wanted no part of a planned U.S. Navy can; as far as they were 
concerned, the only container worth having was the Jerrycan, even though 
their only supply was those captured in battle. The British were bitter; 
two years after the invasion of Norway there was still no evidence that 
their government had done anything about the jerrycan.

My colleague and I learned quickly about the jerrycan’s advantages and 
the Allied can’s costly disadvantages, and we sent a cable to naval 
officials in Washington stating that 40 percent of all the gasoline sent 
to Egypt was being lost through spillage and evaporation. We added that 
a detailed report would follow. The 40 percent figure was actually a 
guess intended to provoke alarm, but it worked. A cable came back 
immediately requesting confirmation.

We then arranged a visit to several fuel-handling depots at the rear of 
Montgomery ’s army and found there that conditions were indeed 
appalling. Fuel arrived by rail from the sea in fifty-five-gallon steel 
drums with rolled seams and friction-sealed metallic mouths. The drums 
were handled violently by local laborers. Many leaked. The next link in 
the chain was the infamous five-gallon “petrol tin.” This was a square 
can of tin plate that had been used for decades to supply lamp kerosene. 
It was hardly useful for gasoline. In the hot desert sun, it tended to 
swell up, burst at the seams, and leak. Since a funnel was needed for 
pouring, spillage was also a problem.

Allied soldiers in Africa knew that the only gasoline container worth 
having was German. Similar tins were carried on Liberator bombers in 
flight. They leaked out perhaps a third of the fuel they carried. 
Because of this, General Wavell’s defeat of the Italians in North Africa 
in 1940 had come to naught. His planes and combat vehicles had literally 
run out of gas. Likewise in 1941, General Auchinleck’s victory over 
Rommel had withered away. In 1942 General Montgomery saw to it that he 
had enough supplies, including gasoline, to whip Rommel in spite of 
terrific wastage. And he was helped by captured jerrycans.

The British historian Desmond Young later confirmed the great importance 
of oil cans in the early African part of the war. “No one who did not 
serve in the desert,” he wrote, “can realize to what extent the 
difference between complete and partial success rested on the simplest 
item of our equipment—and the worst. Whoever sent our troops into desert 
warfare with the [five-gallon] petrol tin has much to answer for. 
General Auchinleck estimates that this ‘flimsy and ill-constructed 
container’ led to the loss of thirty per cent of petrol between base and 
consumer. … The overall loss was almost incalculable. To calculate the 
tanks destroyed, the number of men who were killed or went into 
captivity because of shortage of petrol at some crucial moment, the 
ships and merchant seamen lost in carrying it, would be quite 
impossible. After my colleague and I made our report, a new five-gallon 
container under consideration in Washington was canceled.

Meanwhile the British were finally gearing up for mass production. Two 
million British jerrycans were sent to North Africa in early 1943, and 
by early 1944 they were being manufactured in the Middle East . Since 
the British had such a head start, the Allies agreed to let them produce 
all the cans needed for the invasion of Europe . Millions were ready by 
D-day. By V-E day some twenty-one million Allied jerrycans had been 
scattered all over Europe . President Roosevelt observed in November 
1944, “Without these cans it would have been impossible for our armies 
to cut their way across France at a lightning pace which exceeded the 
German Blitz of 1940.”;

In Washington little about the jerrycan appears in the official record. 
A military report says simply, “A sample of the jerry can was brought to 
the office of the Quartermaster General in the summer of 1940.”;

Lee, w0vt