I remembered yesterday that I recently helped out P.M. Knight with some Dutch translations for a book he’s writing about the Terrapin, and thought I’d e-mail him to see if he knows anything about this CMP-DUKW-thing in relation to the Terrapin. He wrote back to say:—
Quote:
There was an Amphibian Trials and Development Board (ATDB) in Canada, and their chairman,. J.E. Hahn, visited the British Ministry of Supply in August 1943 to discuss the possibility of the Canadians building either DUKW's or Terrapins. The problem was that the existing Ford, Chrysler and GM plants in Canada did not make six-wheeled trucks whose production lines could be readily converted to make DUKW's, but only 4 x 4's (i.e. CMP's). However the Canadians did at least undertake to investigate whether they could produce DUKW's at the expense of CMP's, although nothing seems to have come of this. In the event the Canadians were scheduled to make Terrapin Mk.II's in big numbers (approx. 2000), but this initiative ended with the cancellation of the Terrapin Mk.II in mid-1945. The Canadians were heavily involved in the development of the Terrapin Mk.I, btw.
I think the most likely provenance of the vehicle is that Yellow may have made a few trial DUKW's with CMP chassis, as this would have provided commonality of parts within Canadian forces. I suspect that this may have been conceived before the US entered the war, after which the Americans needed DUKW's for themselves, and so providing a separate model for the Canadians would have been inefficient.
I'll keep an eye open to see if I've got any information on this which I may have previously overlooked.
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