DUKW
199 Comp RASC Arromanches

This is Italeri's 1:35 scale DUKW and a set of MiniArt British Tank Riders both acquired earlier this year from my favourite supplier of great and different kits, Crewkerne Models. I have finished this in the colours of the British Army's 199 company RASC 33210. 199 Company RASC were assigned on D-Day 6th June 1944 to support the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in the amphibious transport of their stores and ammunition from coasters and LSTs offshore to the beach supply dumps at Courseulles-sur-Mer on Juno Beach.

I always love digging into the backstory to my builds, and so here's the history bit, which I found interesting discovering:

The name DUKW comes from General Motors Corporation model nomenclature:

• D, 1942 production series
• U, Utility
• K, all wheel drive
• W, tandem rear axles, both driven

The DUKW was developed in 1942 by 3 forward thinking designers : Rod Stephens Jr. of Sparkman & Stephens, Inc. yacht designers, Dennis Puleston, a British deep-water sailor resident in the U.S., and Frank W. Speir from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the National Defence Research Committee and the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Their brief was to solve the problem of resupply to units which had just performed an amphibious landing.

Initially rejected by the armed forces, when a US Coast Guard patrol craft ran aground on a sand bar near Provincetown, Massachusetts, an experimental DUKW just happened to be in the area for a demonstration. With winds up to 60 knots, rain, and heavy surf preventing conventional craft from rescuing the seven stranded Coast Guardsmen, the DUKW, however, had no trouble. All military opposition to the DUKW then melted away and the DUKW later proved its excellent seaworthiness again by crossing the English Channel on D-Day 1944.

While the DUKW was supplied to the U.S. Army, & U.S. Marine Corps, around 2,000 were supplied to Britain under the Lend-Lease program, and it is one of these I have tried to represent.

On D-Day, DUKWs were employed to transport troops and equipment from the landing ships to shore. Once they reached the beach, DUKWs could drive directly onto the sand without needing a traditional port or harbour. This generally allowed for a more efficient unloading of supplies and troops.

This was a very simple and satisfying build and a great addition for my D-Day collection.