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Alan Mighty · 23-07-2018, 16:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZULU40

Originally of course the jerry can or gerri can was developed for the Wehrmacht, where fuel was marked with a W and and X for water.

At the time the Brits and consequently all Commonwealth forces were still using tins of either 2 or 4 Imp gallons or 4.8 USg, they were considered single use as the seams often proved to be weak and would leak.

After the Africa Corps lost Benghazi where jerry cans were acquired in quantity, the Brits seized them famously used by LRDG (Long Range Desert Group), in some ways the forerunner to the SAS. Brit fuel tins were used to make improvised stoves (for tea), to be called Benghazi burners.

A wonderful aside, Z40.

I'll add a little embroidery:

The Wehrmacht had let a tender, in 1935 or '36, for a standard fuel container. The winning designed was Vinzenz Grünvogel (1905-1977), a German engineer working at Eisenwerk Müller & Co. AG (in Schwelm, Westfalen). Herr Grünvogel designed at least two styles of pressed steel fuel containers with a welded seam and an integrated spout and vent to carry 20 litres of fuel.

At the time, the rest of the world were - as Z40 wrote - using "flimsies", thin-walled cans with rolled seams. Diesel and gasoline leaked through those rolled seams. The flimsies tended to be cubes and without an integrated spout. So unwieldy to carry and a nuisance to empty (you needed a separate funnel or spout).

The company that made the fuel containers for the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmachtkanister or jerry can, was Ambi-Budd Presswerk. That was a US-German company, part owned by Edward Gowen Budd (1870-1946) a US citizen and the other part the Arthur Müller Bauten und Industriewerke (hence Ambi). Ed Budd had special skills in pressing sheet metal and forming the metal was a key to building strength into the sides of the jerry cans (so the sheet metal was not as wobbly as the plain metal sides of a flimsy).

The story goes that Paul Pleiss, the German-American manager of Ambi-Budd Presswerk, told the US military about the superiority of the Wehrmacht's new fuel cans: just the right weight for a soldier to lift and carry; non-leaking; integral spout; with shapes pressed into the sheet metal sides that gave them more rigidity than plain sheet metal, and with the right shape for lifting, carrying, and stowing.

The US military ignored Pleiss. And like the Brits used flimsies and fuel drums - one leaky and inconvenient, the other too large for a single soldier to move and carry.

To get back to the contributions of El Ping: the bidone or bidon is a direct descendant of the flimsy used for kerosene and the like. But better in blow moulded or roto-moulded polymer than in sheet metal.

The words are much used in French and Spanish.

In Middle French of the 15th century, a bidon was a portable and resealable container made of wood or metal. In the 18th century, bidon was a measure of volume, of about 5 litres. In more modern military French, a petit bidon is the canteen of an individual soldier, a bidon is the pot holding water in the camp kitchen.

The ultimate etymology is from proto-Germanic *bidōn, *bidjan, a tub, a vessel, a vat; from proto Indo-European *bhidh, a large pot, a barrel; likely from proto I-E *bheidh, to bend, to weave, to bind.

The Old Norse word biða or bida was likely one of the intermediates between proto-Germanic and Middle French.

Jerry is of course just a British abbreviation for German, dating from the later years of World War 1 of the aftermath (i.e. 1918 or 1919).