15-CWT, 2K1, WIRE 5 Body Details

[David Dunlop]

From what I have read on the wartime 15-cwt metal wireless bodies, even with the complaints directly from the Army about the excessive weight issues with earlier versions, it took some serious arm twisting to get approval to use any aluminium at all for vehicle construction, since it was so critically needed in the aviation sector. What weight could be saved from the body skin change alone was enough to get approval.

Yes, two blackout switches are used in the 2K1 bodies. One is mounted on the inside rear door frame, upper left corner, viewed from the outside of the vehicle. The square ceiling lights/ventilation fan wiring channel extends back to the door to loop this switch into the circuit.

A second blackout switch was also installed on the inside door frame of the gen box in the upper right corner, when facing the door. I cannot recall the wiring run for it at the moment, but it was needed if the generators were running at night as the two ventilation doors in the right rear corner of the vehicle would be open and as you mentioned, if somebody opened the gen box door from inside the body to check something, it would not be a good thing.

I would love to find photos or film clips with these vehicles on the road during the war to see what they looked like. There was very likely some sort of 'official standard kit' they all carried, but signals equipment options above and beyond that are enormous and like you, I wonder how the crew dealt with that? On their own, support vehicles or what?

It would be interesting to run a wireless set inside a fully restored 2K1 and test for the amount of radiated signal produced and detectable from outside. One of the first things I noticed on the outside of mine was the amazing number of grounding straps installed between the body of the truck, the frame and the cab. It was nuts! And then, when I pulled out the interior plywood, I could not get over the number of copper grounding clips used when the aluminium skin was riveted to the steel frame. When I finally got around to restoring the window assemblies I discovered the screens on all the windows were copper wire, not the steel wire I had expected. Showed it all to an electrical engineering friend of mine who has worked all his life in commercial and amateur radio and he said it was the closest thing to a Faraday Cage he had seen. Emissions were probably very low.

Cheers for now. Have to go and cook up a big pot of home made chilli for dinner!

David