Tankograd

US WWII Semitrailers for Autocar, Federal & IHC Tractor Trucks

Tankograd Technical Manual Series - No 6006
Edited by Michael Franz.
A4 size, 48 pages

Review by Peter Brown

Semitrailers are designed to be towed by specially-built tractor trucks. For those not into the trucking jargon, these are short but powerful vehicles designed to pull large-capacity separate trailers using a coupling or "fifth wheel". Often called - at least in my native land - "articulated trucks", they differ from "normal" trucks which have some sort of body permanently fitted to carry cargo or hold equipment. Being separate from their towing vehicle, the trailers can be loaded and unloaded separately from the truck which is freed up to use another trailer or even one fitted for different purposes.

As with other books in this series, extracts from the original TMs or Technical Manuals with photos of complete trailers from various angles, some factory line drawings and period photos of the items in use. The trailers covered are -

5-ton Stake and Platform Semitrailer Model 516
10-ton Stake and Platform Semitrailer Model 1025
6-ton Van Semitrailer Model LV-10
Signal Corps Van Semitrailer Model K-78A
10-ton Pontoon Semitrailer Model 1938
25-ton Pontoon Semitrailer Model 1940 in three types

plus two types of the 7-ton Dolly which was a towed axle used to adapt semitrailers for towing by trucks which did not have the fifth wheel coupling.

In additional details are included of the standard 25-ton pontoon bridge including side-view drawings of the basic loads towed by an Autocar U-8144-T truck.

Note that only the trailers themselves are covered in detail, trucks are not included apart from in the in-service photos.

Highly recommended as with other publications from Tankograd. Available from Tankograd Militarfahrzeug distributors, for more details contact the publishers Verlag Jochen Vollert on jochenvollert@tankograd.com My thanks go to Justin Gainham at Bookworld for the review copy.

Page created May 22, 2006

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