Battle Stations: Duck - The Truck That Went To Sea (War History Documentary)
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- čas přidán 26. 04. 2014
- Battle Stations: Duck - The Truck That Went To Sea (War History Documentary)
The World War Two D-Day landings would have failed if American ingenuity hadn't transformed a General Motors two-and-a-half-tonne truck into the DUKW amphibious vehicle : nicknamed Duck : in 1942. Using archive film, interviews and reconstructions, this programme goes on board the craft and reveals the secrets of the machine that, although the slowest and least lovely of vessels put to sea, proved vital on the beaches of Normandy thanks to its ability to go almost anywhere.
It was western cowboys, great plains farmers, New England fishermen and even city boys who became soldiers, sailors marines and airmen, and won. We should be forever grateful to America's Greatest Generation, who helped the heroic British and allies win that war.
Thanks 👍 USA army navy air the cost of freedom
my first and only ride on one of these was a tenuous affair....always aware it could sink quickly...I positioned myself just above the stern and took note of the location of the life belts stored overhead...the spray from the prop just beneath me kicked up a bit of spray but she went in and out of the water smoothly and rode pretty well in the water...all in all, an interesting experience.....quack!...quack!...quack!.....@@user-wg6xc2qi5s
I do believe this particular channel presents the best WWII documentaries I have seen on CZcams. Bravo!
I remember as a kid in the 60's if there was a parade in the town I lived in there was a Duck going down Broadway.
I can remember Ducks being used to evacuate civilians during the 1954 floods in NSW, Australia. Did a great job.
Oh that's awesome - the ducws, not the flooding
Just after the War we were stationed with my father at RAF Oakham. Every Sunday morning we had Duck come round Married Quarters to take us to church. Us kids loved it.
The Ugly Truck & The Ugly Higgins Boat ... and the Amtrak!
My first duty station was Ft Story, VA. We didn't have DUWKS, but we did have LARC 60s. Barry Hope, SGT USA retired
The DUKW has a grandson still alive and kicking in the M3 Amphibious Rig.
My Grandfather of the 476th Amphibian Truck Company was on the first wave invading Iwo Jima and drove a DUKWs (Ducks)...
I'm Australian & in a small Queensland town called Hervey Bay, a neighbour only a few houses away had one of these working vehicles, I only saw it in action a few times & I'm not sure how many of these working vehicles made t back to Australia, but I saw one working & it was as impressive as this video shows. Just had a thought, lucky they didn't try & find an acronym for ' Floating Truck ', lol.
Amazing to think that they were designed by Rod Stephens who also designed fast and elegant racing yachts.
bukster1 I guess the lesson was that his specialty was yachting, while the GMC engineers were specialists with trucks. Start with a truck, and ask the yacht master what he would do with it to make it float. They worked together and got the job done, because there were plenty of people who figured out that it was only a matter of time before a vehicle like the DUKW would be needed, and very badly, because we had amphibious operations facing us in both oceans. Europe would have to be invaded, and the continent was crisscrossed by rivers across its breadth. In the Pacific, you had to get over choral reefs to get to the islands, and choral was tougher than steel, so you had to drive over the reefs. As the Japanese POW said, he knew their battle was lost when he saw the American boats with wheels drive over the reefs. Their officers said the enemy would not even get close to their island because of the choral reefs; that assumption was blown to hell when the DUKWs just drove over the reefs. The average Japanese soldier must have thought aliens from outer space were working for the enemy.
Well most of the time,those who were seldom talk about were mostly the unsung heroes. Salute to the DUKWS you will forever be remembered to those people who operated you,lives you saved & most of all for those people you helped liberated...🇺🇸🗽💖🇵🇭..
😢😢😢
Yankee ingenuity really helped us win. And don't forget that southern gentleman Higgins with his landing craft! The Brits with their dam buster bouncing bombs and Bletchley Park code breakers! The Germans and Japanese were clever too, but the vast resources of America shifted the balance.
Higgins built PT"s as well....and you could find at least one of these quirky little craft onboard most LST's....proved great for river crossings in Europe where a lot of them were used...eventually they also produced the smaller Jeep sized versions, that also proved useful.
Some DUCKs doing a fantastic job even to the ninetys at the german THW (technical,help,organisation with the blue trucks) for flood rescue!
As a kid in the 50’s I remember at the College in East Tennessee where my parents taught ,the school had a “DUCK”. I always thought it was an odd vehicle to have in the Hills of Tennessee,but I guess a war surplus truck of any kind was a big help with the lack of civilian vehicles post war. Great story . I never realized how much it actually did .
added one of these to the rescue section of my train layout...seemed pretty appropriate as I just saw one at an ATV and boat dealership up the road...since there has been at least one of them sinking with passengers they seem to have drifted into private hands....
I have been in one off the east coast of UK absolutely frightened me to death
The wide medium and large rivers of the European campaigns, like the Rhine. Moving ammunition, and supplies. It was also just a plain truck, part of logistics.
It was 100% useful without a single drawback.
Google Ben Carlin and his "Half-Safe" Duck that he drove and sailed around the world, ending in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1958. I had the great privilege of meeting him where he parked Half Safe at my Scottish godfather's house in Dorval, a suburb of Montreal that May. I was seven at the time, we also lived only half a block away. I sat on the duck and got my picture taken. It resides in Perth, Australia today.
+Ian McLellan Actually he used a "seep", Fords version based on a Ford GPA.
A wheel sheared off one of these in Seattle, on the Hwy99 bridge. There had been multiple tech warnings about his being possible. It spun and speared a bus full of exchange students, Killing 5. The same company killed a pedestrian a few years earlier.
I have seen them in Civil use in the 1974 Brisbane Australia floods only a few but were they well tested during the flood and the flood recovery.
There was a farmer near us who owned a duck and used it to farm an island located in the middle of the Maumee River. He would load his tractor and farm equipment onto a raft and tow the raft with his duck.
That was James Ault of Lime City. He actually owned 6 of them. I bought his second-best one (his son restored the best one) and one of his junkers for parts.
Why constantly call the Duck "ugly"? It has a utilitarian elegance, a total uniqueness about it.
it was a purpose built vehicle...function over form, if you will....
really good doc , well done
Portland Maine has duck boat tours
I got to ride one of these in Rotorua NZ
The Eagle, Globe and Anchor, the symbol of the US Marines. IIRC, the storm and rescue happened off of Cape Cod. The Coast Guard Station boats could not handle the very rough waves during the storm.
In Boston Mass they have duck boat tours, they drive through the city and cruise in the Charles river.
I have seen the giant 4 wheel version that the army bought later to transport a tank. The wheels are 8 or 9 feet high.
It is called a LARC.
The History Prof was absolutely correct. We had no need for camps for Japanese POWs. There weren't any! IIRC, we got only about 200 POWs from the battle for Iwo Jima.
what POW's we had often didn't seem to survive the trip from the beach to the ships...make of that what you will....
Image the DWK drivers seeing a LARC 60. A DWK that can carry 60t.
they adapted quickly in Wales...off the Sheep ( "byby Fluffy lurvja") and into the Duck..( oh what a Fuck...)hoho..!
You can ride the real ones in the Wisconsin dells
A marvelous vehicle. But here in Seattle where they were later used to drive tourists around they became dangerous. Poor maintenance led to crashes on city streets and fatalities. I think the entire commercial operation was eventually shut down.
They're used for tours by a couple of companies in DC... they went in and out of the Potomac and even though I knew what they were, it was still odd to watch them going into and coming out of the river
same deal here in Pittsburgh...very popular, but gone now....
I guess that's how you get all your ducks in a row.
I've heard another explanation of the name, that one of the letters [I thought it was the D] stood for cab-over chassis. The standard layout production lines were swamped turning out Deuce and a half's, so they used the others. Don't know if any are still running, but they were used for years after the war was over.
a few are still running, quite well actually. There is a tour bus service in London which uses this vehicle and I can gladly say I had the pleasure of riding in one going along the Thames. Try to check it out
Sometimes I think they just things up if they don't know the real facts, like the computer "bug" - some textbook writer just attributed it to some Shakespeare play because he didn't know about the moths! (expletive deleted.)
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Unfortunately these are being used by civilian tour operators more interested in profit than safety. Several have sunk or been involved in crashes and many people have died. The latest in Branson Mo. (Ride The Ducks)
They have been modified to carry more people and enclosed so when they sink, people are trapped and many have drowned.
yeah, took note of that when I rode one...didn't want to sit under that tarp in case something happened...the life jackets were stored overhead but they wouldn't do you much good if you couldn't escape that overhead covering...so I sat on the open stern
Dukw tours Boston MARKET
It took great courage (or not knowing just how bad they were!) to ride those pieces of dangerous junk with feeble reserve buoyancy through enemy shot and shell to a contested beach head. DUKW were a desperation measure in WWII and have regularly drowned tourists since (see other CZcams videos).
WWII troop safety expectations were basically "none" from aviation to infantry and everything between. Those were brave men indeed because their entire environment is dangerous.
even saw them as part of "The Red Ball Express".....note the black driver...a common sight on the roads of Europe....
The Gallipoli landings were a resounding success. The failure was that they stayed on the beach for two days allowing the Turks to set up a defensive line. There is a rumor that the Australians stopped for breakfast and actually watched the Turks arrive and set up. If they had gone 5 miles inland the landings would have succeeded.
the Turks proved to be a tough and determined foe....fending off both a naval and land assault...give them some credit...
The military is always preparing to the last war
each war is different...but they're often stuck with old hardware that has to used up....
You can ride on a DUKW in Branson, MO.
+B Horan Seattle also,,,Oppppssss
+B Horan And Boston, but sadly they recently decommissioned their WWII era DUKWs.
The ones in Missouri are reproductions. They were produced for the company. If you want the real deal go to Wisconsin Dells in Wisconsin.
really, the branson ones aren't army built huh
If the Emperor was not promised leniency at the back channels, I doubt if the Japanese would surrender.
it was a smart move on our part as his soldiers dutifully laid down their arms......
At 23:12 ... "the weather was beginning to threaten the whole operation ..."
Can we not give grateful thanks to God, for his lovely balmy weather and full co-operation?
No, if we have to thank Him for the good stuff, we must also blame Him for the bad stuff. But in the meantime wars are won by the grunt with the gun, regardless of weather.
The Japanese surrender was signed on September 1st 1945 - NOT August!
The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced by Japanese Emperor Hirohito on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities ...
17 Axis sympathizers downvoted this.
gallipoli was a sucessful landing and the british took the high ground , then returned to the beach and the turks kept them there. the mistake was going back to the beach instead of maintaning the high ground. get the history right
My father drove a duck in WWII
Fascinating vehicle. Too bad the historical commentary is so painfully inaccurate and shallow.
Where are the in accuracies? I know hardly anything about DUKW’s.
The Battle of Iwo Jima army and Marines there . Get your facts and history write a both were there
What army units besides air corps units were at Iwo Jima before the island was declared secure
air corps personnel were told to sleep with their pistols as the remaining Japs would often forage for supplies at night....@@edpinkerton7947
Typical english, not one mention of Australia or New Zealand at Gallipoli. Very one eyed as per usual.
Do shut up. It was the Australians stopping for breakfast on the beach that messed up a very successful landing.
@@Ubique2927, The Royal Navy landed the ANZACS on the wrong beach to begin with. They also made it inland further than any english landing. And if you do a little research you will find that it was the english that stopped for tea when they landed. And let us not forget the genius that dreamed up the whole debacle, Churchill.
@@gilmoyes2590 … I have done my research and the make believe history that Australia has fabricated around their landings is just that, make believe. The Australians stopped for breakfast and decided to wait around for further orders rather than push on. The British also dilly dallied and farted around on the beach for over 24 hours rather than push on. The only opposed landing was the French one.
The pictures and films you see of soldiers landing under fire are those of the second and third waves. Which landed on the correct beach which of course was the wrong beach by that time.
I am not attempting to down play the actions of the ANZACS subsequent to the first landings but it was the inability for allied senior officers to think outside the box which messed up the landings.
The plan was well thought out and the first few hours went as scheduled but, as usual, the bloody officers messed it up. ALL the officers.
The bravery and fighting after the first few hours is beyond question but the ANZACS messed up just as much as the British.
There were fewer than 300 badly equipped, badly led Turks on the whole peninsular on the first day, with hind sight the initial plan should have been aborted and the first wave should have pressed on rather than waiting for the second wave to arrive.
landing in rowboats?....never a good idea....@@Ubique2927