Jeep Willys (other names: Willys MB, Jeep) is an American off-road car from the Second World War and the post-war period. The first prototypes of the car were built in 1940, and serial production was carried out in 1940-1945. Nearly 650,000 copies of it were created in its course! The weight of the cart was about 1.1 tons, with a length of 3.36 meters and a width of 1.57 meters. The drive was provided by a single engine with a power of 60 HP. The maximum speed was up to 105 km / h.
The Jeep Willys was developed to order and demanded by the US Army, which in 1940, faced with the war, asked for a completely new 4x4 passenger car with a load capacity of up to 250 kilograms, which could be mass-produced. It is worth adding that initially the American Bantam Car with the Bantam BRC was the clear favorite in the tender. However, the US Department of Defense, striving to ensure the best possible car design and trying to ensure trouble-free series production, handed over the plans for the Bantam BRC to the Willys and Ford plants. Based on these plans, Willys developed a Jeep that had a much better power unit than the original Bantam BRC, as well as being mechanically more perfect. Ultimately, it was this car, the Willys Jeep, that won the tender for the US Army. The presented car was actually mass-produced and went to almost all Anglo-Saxon armies fighting in World War II, and thanks to the Lend-and-Lease program, also to the Soviet Union. He took part in hostilities in North Africa, Italy, Northwest Europe and the Pacific. It is often assumed that the Jeep Willys is one of the symbols of American triumph in World War II.
The M12 King Kong was an American self-propelled gun from the Second World War. The first prototypes of the car were built in 1941, and serial production continued in 1942-1943, ending with the production of about 100 examples of this vehicle. The M12 King Kong was powered by an engine Continental R-975-C1 with 400 HP. It was armed with a single M1917 or M1918 or M1918A1 gun - all 155 mm caliber.
Work on the M12 began in connection with the pursuit of the US Army command for its far-reaching mechanization and motorization, based on the experience of the first years of World War II. These experiences indicated the necessity to have self-propelled guns of various calibers capable of working with infantry. One of the fruits of the work undertaken in this spirit was precisely M12 King Kong. To shorten the research process and facilitate production, the modernized chassis of the M3 Lee tank was used. The main changes were the placement of the engine in the middle of the hull and the installation of a gun mount at the rear of the vehicle. After minor modifications, the M12 King Kong guns took part in the fighting in Normandy, France and West Germany in the period 1944-1945 as part of field artillery squadrons, most often subordinate to the commands of the American corps. After 1945, they were quickly withdrawn from service for the M40 self-propelled guns built on the chassis of the M4 Sherman tanks.