Originally published in January 1942
“Our army’s youngest, smallest, toughest baby has many pet names: jeep, peep, blitz buggy, jitterbug, beetlebug, iron pony, leaping Lena, panzerkiller. The names are all affectionate, for the jeep has made good. I was standing in the hot Mississippi sun while Lieutenant Patrick Summerour, of Camp Shelby, explained the jeep. In front of me was a car 11 feet long, 56 inches wide, 40 inches high—half the height of your family auto and three feet shorter. Summerour pointed to a rear towing hook. ‘You pull an anti-tank gun here,’ he said. ‘Civilians often ask why we do not fight tanks with tanks. The answer is twofold. In the first place, a jeep costs $900; a tank $35,000. Second, these tank-destroyers, towing antitank guns, can swarm round old Schicklegruber’s tanks and give ’em hell.”’
—Scientific American, January 1942
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