Road Transport n British Occupied Germany
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Some Eye-witness Impressions of the Present State of Road Transport Gleaned from a 1,000-mile 'journey Through the Reich
IT is no exaggeration to say that the welfare of Germany in the immediate Suture depends, to a great extent, more upon road transport than upon any other single factor, excluding, perhaps, the willingness of the population to work under Allied Military Government. Restoration of Reich railways is proceeding steadily, but the damage which we inflicted upon them will take longer to restore than the road network, although the repairs thereto may be of a rather temporary nature:
This fact was made, apparent as a result of journeys, totalling some 1,000 miles, in a period of eight days in July, on the roads of the area occupied by the British 21st Army Group. The writer made use, for the bulk of this mileage, of a Humber four-wheel-drive " box " car.; this proved capable of covering a comfortable 40 miles in the hour, where the autobahn were sound, and was equally at home in negotiating field tracks and piles of rubble in the course of a tour of engineering investigation.
Large sections of the autobahn were in excellent order, but diversions became necessary at intervals, for two reasons. First was the number of bridges put out of action by demolition or bombing: in one case no fewer than seven bridges were down in 12 miles. The second reason was the use of sections of these highway§ as petrol
damps or vehicle parks. The inconvenience to traffic caused by this policy does not seem readily explainable, particularlY as the detours are invariably narrow,. and are becoming badly potholed in view of the traffic density. There is a 40 m.p.h. limit oh the autobahn, and frequent notices remind drivers that police traps are operating upon them.
Signposting in both British and German is comprehensive, and. there are few ambiguous junctions. SOrne.of the notices one sees are rather superflitouS, Stich as one which baldly ahnounced " bridge damaged," and some 15 ft. beyond it was a 40-ft. gap, with a drop of 50 ft. into the valley below.
Breakdown vehicles, operated by the British Army, patrol certain sections of the autobahn to keep it clear of any broken-down vehicles. This is Most essential, as the mechanical condition of some of the German lorries and cars is dubious, to say the least of it la most of the big towns, operates a " get you home service." This can be valuable, as it is not uncommon to find a British Arrax, vehicle 250 miles away from its own unit.
• Discipline of German road users is of a high standard, whether one considers vehicle drivers, cyclists, or pedestrians.; Particularly in regard to the lastnamed. one might expect absent-) minded behaviour, having regard to the circumstances -urrounding their very long journeys on foot, often carrying what remains )f their worldly. belongings In the towns and villages children abound on the roads because the schools are closed. In the country districts hand carts, perambulators a n d bicycles are pressed into service to transport home anything which will burn, because the pointlatiOn realizes that fuel is going to' be an Al priority in the winter of 1945-6.
Long convoys of British Army vehicles carry demobilized German soldiers from collecting points into the harvest fields. There was clear evidence between July 17 and 26 that what looked like an excellent corn harvest was being gathered in iti a speedy way. Mari-Power Was needed in • unusually large proportions, because many operations had to be done by hand instead of machine, as so many tractors, mowing machines and reapers and binders are out of action through lack of Maintenance and spares
All German-owned vehicles have to operate under a Military Government permit. , When the 6ghtin-g ended, large parks were established at strategic points, into which were collected civilian vehicles and Wehrmacht
vehicles; rigid distinction was made between the two categories. Gradually the contents of the parks are being sorted out, and sent back, or more accurately, towed back in the case of the military vehicles,' to major parks, fir& which they go to repair centres.
Some of the German vehicle makers' factories are being pat to work, on the reconditioning of their own products, and the same applies to agents for such makes as Ford and Opel. Maintenance has had to be neglected for a long time. and frequent breakdowns occur, particularly with regard to tyres on 1 he lighter vehicles. Those machines which were "'Captured from the German army, suffered in addition -from combat damage, so that it is quite common to find that only 10 per cent. in an enemy vehicle park can be classed as runner'. With a park containing, perhaps, 1,000 vehicles, at a peak period, the problems of dispersal were somewhat intense.
Whilst' on this • mintenance topic', it is interesting to note• that the single-cylindered -oil
engined tractor S for 'industrial work, of such makes as fIanomag, Ilurnboldt-Deutz a n d Lanz, seem to have kept in better running orrh-ttilan many of the more complex machines. This applies also to tractors of similar types used foi" agricultural work.
It was always a common German practice to use on the roads these industrial tractors with t,%o ut even three trailers. To-day, this continues; force of circumstances often dictates the addition of a .foitrw heeled cab to the train, or even too or :three hand-carts tied on' behind the last trailer. Anything that can bfs made into a trailer has been so eon: verted. One sees bomb damagedlight lorries, shorn of engines and gearboxes; made into trailers, and, where time
allows, the cabs have been removed, and more payload space provided.
The same _ multiple trailer scheme, with pathetic additions; obtains in the case of the large fourand six-wheeled oil-engined lorries, such as Faun; Magirus, M.A.N., Hanomag, BussingN.A.G., Krupp, Deutz and HansaLloyd. These massively built, noisy, vehicles seem to have survived the war period remarkably well. The maintenance of their fuel-injection equipment is of none too high an order,
judging by the exhaust coloration, but one has to make allowance for three fully loaded trailers and a motley crew of 'German civilians, demobilised soldiers and displaced persons, clinging on to every possible corner of the vehicles, and to some which height well be classed as impossible if the transport situation be not so dire as it is to-day.
Private cars have been converted into commercial vehicles, often by means which are mechanically very dubious. One common method is to take a 10 h.p. car, remove its rear wheels, and mount chain sprockets on' the half-shafts. A supplementary axle is then provided, often with solid tyres, and the largest-possible body put on.
In some cases, 8 h.p. and 10 h.p. cars are, in this way; turned into tractor portions of articulated vehicles. It is not surprising to find many of them beside the road, and likely to remain there until they rust away.
Gas producers have been applied to every possible wheeled and track
vehicle, even to the smallest factory trucks. The power loss accompanying this change-over from liquid to -gaseous, fuel means that some of the sparkignition-engined lorries with It wo or three trailers have to shed their human' freight, bar the driver, on long hills.
No Oilers Made Recently
On this fuel question it is surprising to find no recently built oil-engined vehicles. This.. applies not only to civilian transport, but with greater force to the vehicles of the German army. The explanation is that it was decided early in the war, that the best use of the limited liquid-fuel resources should be made by turning them, so far as possible, into petrol, and producing a minimum of Diesel oil and gas oil necessary for marine engines, and existing civilian heavy goods vehicles. Emphasis, therefore, was laid upon petrol as a liquid fuel and producer as for everything else.
A number of the Army vehicles was fitted before the war with convertible engines, made -by several manufac, turers. The general principle was that they could operate as, pre-combustionchamber oil engines, or spark-ignition units. In the latter case, the injectors were taken out, compression-reducing pockets inserted (containing sparking plugs), and the fuel-injection pumps were taken off and replaced by coildistributor sets: A egood many of these vehicles were iound. in the parks,. 'but_ a divergency of the scheme occurred on some of the Hansa-Lloyd chassis. 'These had the
cempression change-over devices, but The fuel-injection pumps did not have to be removed, because each had an ignition distributor built into the.,injeclion pump as an integral unit: It was quite obvious that the fuel pumps had been out of action for a long time.
Some of the Diesel fuel which was available was used latterly for the midget submarines. Inspection on the production line for these vessels at Kiel showed that the type of engine used is almost identical with that standardized before the war in BussingN.A.G. sii-wheeled double-deck buses, many of which were operating in Berlin. With an output of 140 1.i.h.p. at 1,500 r.p.m., in_ six cyliri.ders of 130 mm. and 170 mm. stroke, these engines weigh a little under 2,000 lb. They are electrically started, using heater plugs to counteract thermal losses dtie to the use of pre-combustion chambers. Each engine is mounted in a fabricated sub-frame and drives, through a clutch to marine-type generator and thence through a coupling to the propeller. By the use of these standard Bussina-N.A.G. engines, built in Brunswick, it has been possible to achieve a steady rate' of output and td" avoid the time lag inseparable from the development of an engine specially designed for the job.
Comparatively . few technicalnovelties were found on the German vehicles
'inspected. Considerable attention. is paid in that country to the cooling of lubricating oil. This is no doubt doe to the prolonged high speeds possible on the autobahn, coupled with summer ambient temperatures appreciably above those -encountered, in this country.:
The way inwhich this cooling is carried out is, in some examples, surprisingly poor. For instance, on a sixcylindered Krupp engine, oil radiators are mounted on the right-hand side of the engine near the dash. Here they receive the hot slip-stream from the fan. 'As under-bonnet temperatures commonly, are around the ternperatuics of the oil in the sump, the whole scheme s.eeins'of little value, as compared with the use Of a Separate section for oil built into the radiator. In some of the most recently built Steyr air-cooled vehicles, a portion of the air provided by the duplicate cooling fans is " bled " off through oil radiators. .
lie some cases, the whole of such 'radiator surfaces, receive the air blast, but in others, determined by the design of the cowling and bodywork, onlya portion Of each radiator is effective. Air cooling is fat more widely emplOyecl than in this country. The Volkswagen used it in both land and amphibions vehicles, 'likewise some of the Kropp engines.
Interesting Petrol Engines The most interesting and the, most recent of all that we saw, were of the
Stey r-Daimler-Puch (Auto Union) make. . These have eight-cylindered V-type air-cooled petrol engines. The cylinder heads are separately removable. Light alloys are extensively used, and the cooling air is supplied by a double-element fan which works silently, despite its -high speed.. The whole engine, isremarkably quiet,
Engines of this kind have been used in goods-carrying vehicles, reconnaiS-sance cars and half-track Machine's. The details were best seen in a brandnew one which appeared to' have been owned by a German film unit. It was in almost .showroom condition. The detail work of this Austrian-built machine showed no signs of .skimping under war-production conclitIons. In general, with exception of copper. there was little evidence of any particular metal shortage in mechanical engineering in Gerniany'