Significant number of 1938 Ford truck in Luftwaffe with unusual bed

[Bill Murray]

For the benefit of other MLU members, Ivan and his Russian and Ukrainian mates have done an outstanding job of researching not only the Ford marque but also several others. Far beyond the normal research, with hundreds, possibly thousands of photos and detailed analyses of different characteristics of the vehicles. I believe most of them are modellers and wish to build/present very accurate representations of specific vehicles.

A lot of this material can be seen on www.acemodel.com.

So, Ivan, I have not corresponded with you for many months as my computer got some sort of malware and I lost much of my data base late last year.
Sorry about that.

Regarding your current research on that group of 1938 Fords, I did some work last year and never reported my findings. I will try to post here my current thinking on the trucks.

1. I agree that they are US style trucks with what appears to be a US style body. I would suggest they were supplied to some country as a complete unit in some quantities, possibly a few hundred.

2. As they mostly were used by the Luftwaffe and one of the photos is dated 1939, I agree that they did not come from the BeNeLux area.
Nor, do I think they came from any other Western European country or from any Scandinavian country because of the date of the photo.

3. That would seem to leave us with one of the countries that Germany occupied before 1939 or a neutral country that was allied with Germany and the Luftwaffe somehow took over vehicles from that country.

4. Information on such possibilities is a bit hard to find, but here are some possibilities...........

5. Hungary..... Ford Cologne supplied 820 trucks to the Hungarian Army in 1938-1939. I would suspect these were German style vehicles with the open cabin. Later, but still perhaps 1938 models, Mavag received 1500 Ford chassis and I have not found out where they came from. Some, obviously, were made into Mavag-Ford-Marmon 4x4 vehicles but I do not think all of them were 4x4.

6. Spain... Franco's armed forces received hundreds of Ford and Chevrolet trucks in this time period. Henry Ford was a bit of a "fan" of Franco and through the Ford Agent in Portugal, Franco was able to purchase many, many Ford products. It is possible I think, that the Luftwaffe could have taken over many of these trucks after the SCW was over.

7. I post below several photos of such trucks from both countries.

Bill