US Army 1st Engineer Special Brigade DUKW amphibious trucks ferrying supplies from ships anchored off Utah Beach in June 1944. Vehicles of the segregated 817th Amphibious Truck Company are visible in the footage
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US Army 1st Engineer Special Brigade DUKW amphibious trucks ferrying supplies from ships anchored off Utah Beach in June 1944. Vehicles of the segregated 817th Amphibious Truck Company are visible in the footage
DUKW is a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck
Putting a DUKW (or Duck Boat) to use after the war
(Cornell Capa. 1946)
An American DUKW (an amphibious landing craft, given the nickname DUCK) filled with ammunition makes its way down the ramp of an LST enroute to either Utah or Omaha beach shortly after the D-day landings - June 1944
1944 General Motors WW2 advertisement
Un DUKW transporte des parachutistes américains et du matériel de l'autre côté de la rivière Waal à Nimègue - Opération Market Garden - 30 septembre 1944
Photographe : Sergent Midgley - No5 Army Film & Photographic Unit
©Imperial War Museums - B 10434
Les ponts Est et Ouest de Nimègue étant temporairement hors d'usage à la suite des combats, le transport de troupes et de matériel s'effectue par DUKW ou par ferry.
DUKW Amphibious vehicles in Venice, Italy, during World War II
Can you tell us about the DUKW?
When the US realized it was going to have to invade beaches instead of just land on them and casually offload their supplies it was decided to make a better logistic vehicle to do the job. Now of course it would probably be best use to use a tank to get past the sand right? Well no because heavy vehicles can easily get stuck in sand and aren’t always available.
The standard logistics truck of the US Military was the GMC CCKW Deuce and a half truck, this bad boy
CCKW comes from the GMC model Nomenclature: The first C stood for designed in 1941, the second C for conventional cab, the K for all-wheel drive and the W for dual rear axles.
In 1942 it was decided that they would make an amphibious version of the CCKW and name it the DUKW or Duck as most people would call it.
The DUKW was a simple design, with an airtight hull, a GMC Model 270 straight six, and a propeller being added a five-speed overdrive transmission drove a transfer case for the propeller, then a two-speed transfer case to drive the axles.
Most of the top of the vehicle was removed the majority of the time, excluding the windshield and canvas supports on the bed of the truck. One in four DUKWs had an M2 on a ring mount like seen here
DUKW stood for designed in 1941, utility, all-wheel drive, dual-tandem rear axles.
The Duck would go on to see great service in Italy, Europe and parts of North Africa with more than 21,000 being built.