A few hours ago some new tracks appeared in my backyard. I have seen similar tracks before, but it must have been about 5 years ago. I live in north central Kentucky and seeing tracks like this is a rare event.
I followed the tracks out across my hay field.
And out past the tree, where they circled back toward the front yard.
I think I found the critter making the tracks.
This 1945 Studebaker M-29 Weasel was in my shop for five years. Complete engine overhaul finished yesterday, started for the first time this morning.
In World War II, A British boffin named Geoffrey Pyke worked for Lord Mountbatten in a secret British government agency identified as the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as his Director of Programs. His thinking was best described as fanciful or what we would call today, off-the-wall. He thought the best way to weaken the German front line forces was to cause them to protect their interior better. He devised a plan where a small number of saboteurs would parachute into Germany and Denmark to attack power plants and other infrastructure well behind the front lines in such a way that the Germans would pull troops from other places to protect these valuable assets. The saboteurs would require special high-speed vehicles adapted for use in the snow to be dropped by parachute from bombers flying overhead to make the attack and vanish into a storm. The Germans had no vehicle capable of following through the snow at that speed, so escape was certain.
The British SOE thought the idea was worthwhile, but Britain had no resources to make such a vehicle. They approached a military think-tank in Canada to design and build the special vehicle. The vehicle was built and tested in British Columbia in all kinds of weather and terrain. It was modified as faults were found, and eventually, a workable vehicle was developed. The design was placed into production by Studebaker, but only after it was again modified to make production simpler. Studebaker used their six-cylinder ‘Champion’ engine coupled to a Borg Warner transmission similar to the one used in the military Jeep. The steering differential was made by Clark and was adapted to the one used on a Cletrac crawler tractor. Studebaker then made a one-piece welded steel ‘tub’ to contain all the drive train.
By 1944, the M-29 was perfected and in mass production. It not only worked well on snow, it also worked well on sand and swamp. It was the vehicle of choice for difficult terrain where wheeled vehicles dug themselves to a standstill. The M-29 was semi-amphibious, too. It had little freeboard, but in calm water, it floated. Later models were equipped with flotation tanks on the front and rear, but only added a slight margin of safety. These M-29s were identified as the M-29C. The tracks propelled the vehicle at a leisurely pace of just 3 miles per hour.
On June 6, 1944, several M-29s were included in the very first waves of the invasion of the Normandy beaches. The engineers charged with destroying the obstacles on the beach were supported by M-29s that carried their supplies and were the command vehicles for the Engineer commanders. The 146th Engineer Combat Bn. led by Lt. Colonel Carl J. Isley were scheduled to land at ‘H+3’, just three minutes after the invasion began.
My Weasel was one of the hundreds of vehicles left in Europe after the war and was taken up by the Denmark military. It was later sold to a company in the US with the intention of reselling it as a sportsman’s hunting vehicle. It was eventually purchased by the Michigan Fish and Game Department, who sold it at auction.
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