During World War II the United States exported more tons of petroleum products than of all other war matériel combined. The mainstay of the enormous oil and gasoline transportation network that fed the war was the oceangoing tanker, supplemented on land by pipelines, railroad tank cars, and trucks. But for combat vehicles on the move, another link was crucial—smaller containers that could be carried and poured by hand and moved around a battle zone by trucks.
Hitler knew this. He perceived early on that the weakest link in his plans for blitzkrieg using his panzer divisions was fuel supply. He ordered his staff to design a fuel container that would minimize gasoline losses under combat conditions. As a result the German army had thousands of jerrycans, as they came to be called, stored and ready when hostilities began in 1939.
The jerrycan had been developed under the strictest secrecy, and its unique features were many. It was flat-sided and rectangular in shape, consisting of two halves welded together as in a typical automobile gasoline tank. It had three handles, enabling one man to carry two cans and pass one to another man in bucket-brigade fashion. Its capacity was approximately five U.S. gallons; its weight filled, forty-five pounds. Thanks to an air chamber at the top, it would float on water if dropped overboard or from a plane. Its short spout was secured with a snap closure that could be propped open for pouring, making unnecessary any funnel or opener. A gasket made the mouth leakproof. An air-breathing tube from the spout to the air space kept the pouring smooth. And most important, the can’s inside was lined with an impervious plastic material developed for the insides of steel beer barrels. This enabled the jerrycan to be used alternately for gasoline and water.
Early in the summer of 1939, this secret weapon began a roundabout odyssey into American hands. An American engineer named Paul Pleiss, finishing up a manufacturing job in Berlin, persuaded a German colleague to join him on a vacation trip overland to India. The two bought an automobile chassis and built a body for it. As they prepared to leave on their journey, they realized that they had no provision for emergency water. The German engineer knew of and had access to thousands of jerrycans stored at Tempelhof Airport. He simply took three and mounted them on the underside of the car.
The two drove across eleven national borders without incident and were halfway across India when Field Marshal Goering sent a plane to take the German engineer back home. Before departing, the engineer compounded his treason by giving Pleiss complete specifications for the jerrycan’s manufacture. Pleiss continued on alone to Calcutta. Then he put the car in storage and returned to Philadelphia.
Back in the United States, Pleiss told military officials about the container, but without a sample can he could stir no interest, even though the war was now well under way. The risk involved in having the cans removed from the car and shipped from Calcutta seemed too great, so he eventually had the complete vehicle sent to him, via Turkey and the Cape of Good Hope. It arrived in New York in the summer of 1940 with the three jerrycans intact. Pleiss immediately sent one of the cans to Washington. The War Department looked at it but unwisely decided that an updated version of their World War I container would be good enough. That was a cylindrical ten-gallon can with two screw closures. It required a wrench and a funnel for pouring.
That one jerrycan in the Army’s possession was later sent to Camp Holabird, in Maryland. There it was poorly redesigned; the only features retained were the size, shape, and handles. The welded circumferential joint was replaced with rolled seams around the bottom and one side. Both a wrench and a funnel were required for its use. And it now had no lining. As any petroleum engineer knows, it is unsafe to store gasoline in a container with rolled seams. This ersatz can did not win wide acceptance.
The British first encountered the jerrycan during the German invasion of Norway, in 1940, and gave it its English name (the Germans were, of course, the “Jerries”). Later that year Pleiss was in London and was asked by British officers if he knew anything about the can’s design and manufacture. He ordered the second of his three jerrycans flown to London. Steps were taken to manufacture exact duplicates of it.
Two years later the United States was still oblivious of the can. Then, in September 1942, two quality-control officers posted to American refineries in the Mideast ran smack into the problems being created by ignoring the jerrycan. I was one of those two. Passing through Cairo two weeks before the start of the Battle of El Alamein, we learned that the British wanted no part of a planned U.S. Navy can; as far as they were concerned, the only container worth having was the Jerrycan, even though their only supply was those captured in battle. The British were bitter; two years after the invasion of Norway there was still no evidence that their government had done anything about the jerrycan.
My colleague and I learned quickly about the jerrycan’s advantages and the Allied can’s costly disadvantages, and we sent a cable to naval officals in Washington stating that 40 percent of all the gasoline sent to Egypt was being lost through spillage and evaporation. We added that a detailed report would follow. The 40 percent figure was actually a guess intended to provoke alarm, but it worked. A cable came back immediately requesting confirmation.
We then arranged a visit to several fuel-handling depots at the rear of Montgomery’s army and found there that conditions were indeed appalling. Fuel arrived by rail from the sea in fifty-five-gallon steel drums with rolled seams and friction-sealed metallic mouths. The drums were handled violently by local laborers. Many leaked. The next link in the chain was the infamous five-gallon “petrol tin.” This was a square can of tin plate that had been used for decades to supply lamp kerosene. It was hardly useful for gasoline. In the hot desert sun, it tended to swell up, burst at the seams, and leak. Since a funnel was needed for pouring, spillage was also a problem.
Allied soldiers in Africa knew that the only gasoline container worth having was German. Similar tins were carried on Liberator bombers in flight. They leaked out perhaps a third of the fuel they carried. Because of this, General Wavell’s defeat of the Italians in North Africa in 1940 had come to naught. His planes and combat vehicles had literally run out of gas. Likewise in 1941, General Auchinleck’s victory over Rommel had withered away. In 1942 General Montgomery saw to it that he had enough supplies, including gasoline, to whip Rommel in spite of terrific wastage. And he was helped by captured jerrycans.
The British historian Desmond Young later confirmed the great importance of oil cans in the early African part of the war. “No one who did not serve in the desert,” he wrote, “can realise to what extent the difference between complete and partial success rested on the simplest item of our equipment—and the worst. Whoever sent our troops into desert warfare with the [five-gallon] petrol tin has much to answer for. General Auchinleck estimates that this ‘flimsy and illconstructed container’ led to the loss of thirty per cent of petrol between base and consumer. … The overall loss was almost incalculable. To calculate the tanks destroyed, the number of men who were killed or went into captivity because of shortage of petrol at some crucial moment, the ships and merchant seamen lost in carrying it, would be quite impossible.”
After my colleague and I made our report, a new five-gallon container under consideration in Washington was canceled. Meanwhile the British were finally gearing up for mass production. Two million British jerrycans were sent to North Africa in early 1943, and by early 1944 they were being manufactured in the Middle East. Since the British had such a head start, the Allies agreed to let them produce all the cans needed for the invasion of Europe. Millions were ready by D-day. By V-E day some twenty-one million Allied jerrycans had been scattered all over Europe. President Roosevelt observed in November 1944, “Without these cans it would have been impossible for our armies to cut their way across France at a lightning pace which exceeded the German Blitz of 1940.”
In Washington little about the jerrycan appears in the official record. A military report says simply, “A sample of the jerry can was brought to the office of the Quartermaster General in the summer of 1940.”
Richard M. Daniel is a retired commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and a chemical engineer.
WOW WHAT A NEAT STORY
Those cans were in use…. US Navy, 1955….
As many of these things as I have wrestled, I never knew this story. Fascinating! There is an old saying, I think it’s a line from Shakespeare, Richard III. But, it goes on about, “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, a horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle….etc.” The Washington attitude toward the Jerry can in 1940 almost put us and Britain in the same spot! I never dreamed it could be that vital!
Not much has changed in Washington. They are still a bunch of arrogant, pompous, “not invented here” A-holes who are more interested in their own fortunes than they are in the long term survival of the USA. They fight and bicker over the most innocuous things while there are forces without and within trying to destroy the country. Shame on them!
You sir are exactly correct…Trump will have to work hard and long to drain the swamp of these damn congressional assholes and liberal be bureacratic fools!
So this is where the French Can-Can came from.
Great story learn something new did not know that it was a German invention I had the opportunity to use them while in the Army
IN 1953 WHILE IN THE EXCAVATING BUSINESS WE HAD OVER A HUNDRED JERRY CANS USED TO SUPPLY THE HEAVY EQUIPMENT. THE ONLY PROBLEM WE HAD WAS THE LOSS OF THE SPOUT THAT LOCKED IN TO THE CAN TO EMPTY IT. AS A RESULT WE WERE CONSTANTLY BUYING THEM BY THE DOZENS.
Used them in Vietnam. I guess those officials that refused the Jerry Can back then have now produced offspring who now work in our government! LOL
We used them to carry out our refuel on a trip on the river in the Grand Canyon.
I have used those cans many years ago, but I don’t remember the spouts. Does anyone have a picture?
Bill, I don’t have a photo but I’ll try to give you a description of the ones I used…..they were a flexible spout that was reversed and inserted into the can for storage. The cap hung by a chain and could close the can with the spout inside.
Bill, further….I should have checked this first….search: jerrican spout image on the internet for images of every possible variation of both spouts and cans. Both should be readily available at your local military (Army/Navy) surplus store…..along with many types of ammo cans…..and both P-38 and P-51 can openers. Good hunting.
Here you go.
I was in the Royal Air Force in Libya from 1958 to 1960 at El Adem and Tobruk. For six months I lived on an outpost on a bombing range( also used by the US Airforce). We used Jerry cans there do everything, Diesel for Electric Generators ( this was my job ) Petrol for vehicles and two different colour cans for fresh and saline water.
Had one on the back of my M1A1 Jeep, in Viet Nam, Jan. ’66 – Jan. ’67. Body was Aluminum, engine was a Overhead Valve 4 cylinder Ford. In 1973 bought a new Jeep Commando V8. First thing I put on the back was a spare tire carrier, with a 5 Gallon gas can carrier. Came in handy many a time.
We used these can’s while in the field in Germany in 1955-56. I believe a version of this can was used for water also.
I was familiar with some of the story but the majority of the history was new to me, a history major and WW-II junky.
I saw them used in the Army in 56′-58′. But my most personal use was one jerry can secured to the roof rack on my car behind one mounted spare tire (with spare hub cap) on my 1958 trip to Alaska after discharge from Fort Campbell, KY (MSC Lt in 326th Abn. Med. Co.) to teach 8th grade on Ft. Richardson, Alaska. I returned back down the Alcan with the same rig in ’59. The rig appeared in my 1mm travel film made of the trip and on the pages of Popular Science magazine explaining hour to build it. The 5 gallons helped stretch over the peak fuel price points of the trip.I was familiar with some of the story but the majority of the history was new to me, a history major and WW-II junky.
I saw them used in the Army in 56′-58′. But my most personal use was one jerry can secured to the roof rack on my car behind one mounted spare tire (with spare hub cap) on my 1958 trip to Alaska after discharge from Fort Campbell, KY (MSC Lt in 326th Abn. Med. Co.) to teach 8th grade on Ft. Richardson, Alaska. I returned back down the Alcan with the same rig in ’59. The rig appeared in my 1mm travel film made of the trip and on the pages of Popular Science magazine explaining hour to build it. The 5 gallons helped stretch over the peak fuel price points of the trip.
As 14-15 year-olds in DP camp in Germany, we used abandoned war materials as play toys and used ingenious methods to make something go “BOOM!” Jerry cans had residual gasoline in them and could be made to swell up and go “boom.”
Being in Army Transportation units most of my career, these cans were vital to all missions. In Iraq during convoy ops, you never left your log base without a few of these cans topped off with diesel in your vehicle . I was once reprimanded by an officer for telling my guys to grab some gerry cans for a mission and make sure you grab a ” Donkey Dick” ( nickname for the fuel can nozzle) not realizing a female soldier was in earshot distance.
There are tools that come to hand so readily that they seem elemental, in a way. Club, stone ax, bronze tools, jerry cans . . . As humans, we have developed the need for liquids of all kinds, and a way to transport them. I believe the jerry can’s usefulness will continue well past the development of fusion power.
I had two buddies, WW2c Vets, who hardened to Camp Borden Ontario in 1948 after having spent some time at Fort Churchill. They were there as General Duty scuts. One night, they were having a few in the Canteen when they were called upon by the Orderly Sgt to proceed forthwith to the Commandants Quarters. Mrs Tedlie(Commandants wifie) said that their oil hater had run out of fuel and by gosh, she was freezing.Theses two wothies picked up a jerry can of heater fuel complete with nozzle and proceed on their task. One of the forgot to fasten the spout on firm and 5 gallons of stinky oil flooded the living room floor. They were on the next train back south.
Great story. What sticks out in my mind about the story, Politicians were just as stupid then as they are now.
Very interesting. As a 15 year old in South Africa my father acquired in 1949 two 1942 military surplus Willys Jeeps and they were fitted with these Jerry Cans. I remember well that the cans were fitted with spouts and cam controlled caps. Very effective. I spent some of the best years of my life careering around with my mates in those Jeeps.
I have two of those cans in my garage to use with my Land Rover. I the UK nowadays they sell very expensive but pretty stainless steel versions. I believe the US forces have stopped using the jerry can not more than ten years ago. The article above is factually correct as to the British forces in Egypt in WWII. The cans they were using just about cost us the war! The can going to the US in 1940 I can well believe as government procurement departments are normally useless. An interesting point is that normally the cans are marked with a date of manufacture. Normally green cans are used for fuel and black cans for water. Mine are both green and are used for diesel.
I hope you posted this interesting and valuable piece of history to Wikipedia!
Trouble with Black cans is that they are hard to tell apart from the Green ones in the dark.
We put a white stripe on the side near the top on either side
And, because the were made of pressed steel the were easy to mass produce. The old British cans had turned brass fittings and, I think, soldered joints so they required skilled labour to manufacture and used expensive brass.
Soldiers based in BAOR used to fill Jerry cans up in venlo using BP coupons then fill their cars up before boarding the ferry home. There must have been thousands of them dumped at the channel ports
I believe the Jerry cans for water were later made of plastic and were black
I used these cans for gas on a small farm in south Texas, I think my last one played out in about 1986.
I still have a jerrycan and use for storage of gasoline for all my yard toyszzzzzzzzzzzzzzz1
Fantastic story — Imagine the very efficient Germans developing the jerrycan, which was copied by the British and which substantially helped the Allies to win WW II.
Cheers to technology!!!
On the night of August 12-13, 1961, East German soldiers laid down more than 30 miles of barbed wire barrier through the heart of Berlin. East Berlin citizens were forbidden to pass into West Berlin, and the number of checkpoints in which Westerners could cross the border was drastically reduced. What you just read was the beginning of construction of the Berlin, Germany wall. In March 1961,at the age of 23, I re-entered the Army for the second time. In early August of that year I found myself being shipped, with my entire unit and equipment, to a navy port in France. In early October of 61, my unit the 524th Quartermaster Company (Petroleum Depot) was housed near a small French town. Around that town is where my part of the saga of the Jerry can begins. Although we were sent to France just in case the allied forces need petroleum support if/when some serious action was initiated, we really had no job to perform- or did we? We soon found out that this area was, and had been for many years, a US storage area for emergency petroleum products. Perhaps you haven’t guessed it yet, but just imaging THOUSANDS if Jerry cans that were rusting out and needed to be replaced. Not only cans, but hundreds upon hundreds of 55 gallon drums. My story is much longer but as you can see the Jerry can was still around in 1961.
I was is the government surplus business in the mid 50’s until I retired in 2008. I bought and sold thousands and thousands of the government Jerry cans. There came a time when no more were available. Then we found a company in Miami OK. The painted them red and were made of lighter gage metal and could not make them as fast as they could sell them. We would order 40 foot trailer loads and sell out in a week.
I find this a little confusing.What is being discussed here are two completely different cans. The German can did not require the spout or so called ‘donkey dick’.
The German can had a clamp down lid and required no spout as it and the vent were built in. The can available in war surplus stores in Canada (I assume this is the British version had a screw down lid (which had a chain to secure when open and hanging) and required the spout with cam lever as in photo. There was another less robust spout, threaded to be screwed into the female threads in can. Both cans had multiple handles .
we had them. In Lorea in 1951 for gas and the same design was used for w ater but I can’t ember how we differentiated between the two,can anybody help
While I was on active duty from ’64 to ’66, the fuel cans had screw on tops and the water cans had snap closed tops. The gas cans were “OD” in color and were labeled “MOGAS”. Diesel fuel cans were “OD” with red tops and were labeled “DIESEL”. The water cans were “OD” and either unmarked or labeled “WATER”.
In 1961-64 while stationed in Germany, my buddy and I used to carry 3 filled jerry cans of gas with us in the back seat of the ’53 VW Beetle on leaves. We gassed up on base before leaving to save money and used the jerry can gas up before buying more on the local economy at higher prices. The trouble was, that on two seperate occasions, we forgot to take the nozzle with is! We would look along the roadsides for cardboard that could shaped into a funnel in order to fill the gas tank. One time, we came across a Lebanese family on vacation stranded at a road side pull off where they had runn out of gas. Offering to give them some gas, and not having the nozzle, we had to slosh the gas at the side mounted gas port on the car fender, loosing much of it running down the car side. They thought we were crazy Americans wasting precious gas, but they got enough in the tank to get going again. I’m sure the family still tells the tale of the nutty “rich” American soldiers who could afford to waste so much gas by sloshing it all over the fender of their ca.
r .
I still have two canes dated 1953 that I use for gas for my lawn equipment. Can anyone put me on to a site/place where I can get the replacement rubber gaskets for the can tops and one of the nozzles with the snap in connection. My cans use a screw in nozzle. The can lining is still 99% intact. The US should take a lesson and starting making everything to the quality of these cans.
Loaded many a truck with those jerry cans, for forward supply, while in Germany.
While traveling in communist Romania countryside in the 1960’s my father showed me on a village farm a can… and even took a picture… I was thinking what is so special about a gasoline can… and then I realized it had a label “Wehrmacht” on it. About 20 years later they were still using those cans!
That’s all we had to refuel our tanks, 500 gal for each tank,