40 mm Bofors AA guns made in GB and US

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by David_Hayward


Note the original arrangement when built/assembled in England with Willys MBT [?] trailers and 'H' prefixed trucks as tractor.

It is not a Willys MBT, as that is a ¼-ton 2 wheel GS trailer more commonly know as "jeep trailer". These were also built by Bantam (known as T3) and a wealth of other manufacturers, both during and after WW2.

The F60B in the top picture is towing a 1-ton 2 wheel GS trailer, popularly know as the "Ben Hur" trailer after the Ben Hur Mfg Co. They were also built by American Trailer, Bantam, Checker Cab Mfg Co and various other manufacturers - apparently Willys as well (ref. Richard's note).

If anyone can identify where the 40 mm Ford versions were manufactured please, this would be of great interest.

The Ford F60B was built in Canada. The other versions shown in this thread were Australian-built, and although built along a similar concept, they differed in large and small details. One main difference was the use of the so-called No.43 cab, which incidentally is not the same as an open No.13 cab. As you can see it is much wider to seat the gun crew and it only shares the cowl portion with the No.13 cab. I reiterate this as I have seen you mentioning No.43 cabs in other threads on portees and the like.

HTH,
Hanno

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Hanno Spoelstra

The F60B in the top picture is towing a 1-ton 2 wheel GS trailer, popularly know as the "Ben Hur" trailer after the Ben Hur Mfg Co. They were also built by American Trailer, Bantam, Checker Cab Mfg Co and various other manufacturers - apparently Willys as well (ref. Richard's note).

This question came up on another forum, so also sharing info from David Hayward's book on Pearson's of Liverpool here.

IMG_4692_cropped.jpg F60B.JPG

This text is not entirely correct: 1-ton trailers were not used with Jeeps, nor was the "F60B converted to SP units and the trailers re-allocated for further use" - the F60B was a SP unit from the onset.

IMG_4693.jpg