Aust Army Trailer

[Tony Smith]

Originally posted by Lang
Wonder why they went to the American style trailer? This one seems much more useful - bigger capacity, easier loading more versatile and probably cheaper.
The amphibious feature of the American trailer is like a hip pocket in a singlet.

They probably went to the American style for the sake of conformity. There's possibly also the Inferiority Complex at work here, too, as the No 1 looked decidedly homebuilt compared to the Bantam.
The Amphibious feature may have been useless, but a watertight trailer is very useful when disembarking from a landing craft or conducting numerous river crossings and you want to keep the contents dry.
That said, the Aust Jeep trailers had their shortcomings compared to the US trailers. The US trailers were built on a chassis which could bear more longitudinal stress. On Bougainville, the Australians modified US trailers by fitting them with a Jeep Pintle hook on the rear crossmember to enable them to be linked into trains. The Aussie trailers only had a folded, sheet metal, integral chassis and could not be fitted with a pintle hook. In designing the No 5 and RAEME Trlr in the late 50s, the Army went back to the centre tube chassis of the No1 and 2 to enable them to be linked into trains again.