Jerry cans

[Timn]

Started the Airfix Willy's Jeep the latest kit. What colour would 2nd world war Jerry cans have been. Was petrol and diesel cans different colours like they are now. 

Also where would i source boxes and jerry cans from.  Unfortunately i dont know much about these photo sharing sites to post pics so sorry guys....I cant show any.

[Kingsman]

Cans were not colour-coded for fuel contents as the can manufacturers had no idea what they would be used for and plain cans could be allocated for any use.  US cans were OD, Later British ones were SCC15: earlier ones may have been SCC2.  However, water cans were different as they had an enamel inner coating and had the indented sided patterns painted white to denote their purpose.  It is equally plausible that the can on your Jeep could be a water can.

 

I'm not certain when the yellow/red colour coding came into use, but I believe it was post-war.  While there are many sites telling you the colours none have the history.  In more modern times the cans had stamped coloured metal labels attached to the front of the handles to indicate contents but I haven't seen these in WW2 photos.  Nor have I seen writing on the cans themselves or any indication of coloured filler caps, although the latter could be hard to see in monochrome.

 

British and Commonwealth forces were generally very careful to keep diesel and petrol AFV in different units.  For example, units equipped with diesel Sherman IIIs had only that type until the Firefly came along: Fireflies were all petrol, so in NWE those units did have mixed fuel types.  Most of our vehicles were petrol.

 

Another factor may be that PLUTO only carried petrol, which was then stored in bulk tanks and distributed by tanker truck wherever possible, and never carried diesel.  Diesel was always supplied in NWE as "packaged fuel" in jerrycans.   If all else fails there is always the Sniff Test: diesel and petrol smell very different.

 

US forces did not use diesel-engined vehicles operationally except for construction plant and some tanks with USMC in the Pacific, so it was not really a problem for them.

[Timn]

Thanks for that info dogs body.....i did google to see what came up and colours came back as Blue, Red, various Greens and a Mustard Beige colour.