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.
LRDG (full name: Long Range Desert Group is the name of the British elite unit from the Second World War. It was formed in Egypt in 1940, and its formal dissolution took place in August 1945. He brought it to life by a special order of General Archibald Wavell. It was made up of soldiers from all over the British Empire, and many of them were volunteers. The LRDG was used primarily to conduct reconnaissance and subversive activities against the Axis forces in the period 1940-1943 in North Africa. Sometimes, however, the unit was used as a classic combat unit. One of the most famous LRDG operations was Operation Caravan, i.e. a relatively small attack on the city of Barka. The soldiers of the formation, which had a maximum of 350-400 people, used specially adapted cars for their tasks - especially Jeep Willys or Chevrolet 30CWT cars. After the end of the fighting in North Africa in 1943, the unit served in the Middle East and the Balkans.