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The Red Ball Express was a famed truck convoy system that supplied Allied forces moving quickly through Europe after breaking out from the D-Day beaches in Normandy in 1944. [1] To expedite cargo shipment to the front, trucks emblazoned with red balls followed a similarly marked route that was closed to civilian traffic.
Corporal Charles H. Johnson of the 783rd Military Police Battalion waves on a Red Ball Express motor convoy rushing priority materiel to the forward areas.. American logistics in the Northern France campaign played a key role in the Allied invasion of northwest Europe during World War II.
A Red Ball Express truck gets stuck in the mud during World War II, 1944. 1971 AM General M35A2 with winch and camouflage cargo cover. The 2 + 1 ⁄ 2-ton, 6×6 truck was a standard class of medium duty trucks, designed at the beginning of World War II for the US Armed Forces, in service for over half a century, from 1940 into the 1990s.
American logistics played a key role in the success of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwest Europe during World War II. The campaign officially commenced on D-Day, 6 June 1944, and ended on 24 July, the day before the launch of Operation Cobra.
Red Ball Express is a 1952 American World War II war film directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Jeff Chandler and Alex Nicol, featuring early screen appearances by Sidney Poitier and Hugh O'Brian. The film is based on the Red Ball Express convoys that took place after the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944. [2]
The drivers were far more experienced, especially the units that had come from Iran, and there were far more heavy trucks available. While hauls did exceed 200 miles (320 km) on occasion, the average was closer to 140 miles (230 km), which was much shorter than the Red Ball Express routes and allowed the drivers more rest time.
The story of the Red Ball Express was told in the 1950s movie Red Ball Express. There was a short lived television series in the early 1970s named Roll Out which focused on the experiences of a fictional African American motor transportation unit involved with the Red Ball Express.
The best-known work of the Quartermaster Corps in World War II was the brief Red Ball Express, which ferried food, supplies and fuel along the rapid advance of Allied forces from the Normandy Invasion to the incursion into Germany. Six thousand trucks operating 24 hours a day, most with two African American drivers on circular routes carried ...