Red Ball Express....

[Jack]

As the Red Ball express has been mentioned on the forum a few times I thought that I would ask some questions that has been bugging me for sometime.......

 

1. What was the average convoy, in numbers of vehicles?

2. What where the components of that convoy i.e. for every X amount of cargo trucks there would be Y amount of fuel tankers? Again, for X amount of vehicles there where Y amount of ambulances.......

 

Basically what were the stats?

 

Cheers.

 

 

Jack.

[Karoshi]

Jack these questions and many others are covered comprehensively in that excellent book, The Road to Victory by David Colley.

 

The demands set by the front were such that there was no hard and fast rule on getting the stores there by a set number of vehicles per convoy. Trucks were requisitioned from where ever to fill the need, as required. As the route got longer, and the demands got greater, so the number of trucks needed increased.

 

At its height 132 Truck Companies served the Red Ball Express, putting an average of 899 trucks on the road in any day.

 

There was no specific makeup of POl trucks to cargo.

 

As as measure of their flexibility and readiness to adapt, the TC MTS arranged 3,801 trucks alone to transport the 101st Airborne from their base in Mourmelon to Bastogne, 61 years ago yesterday. 18th Dec 1944.

 

The Battle of the Bulge had begun.