Jeep Willys (other names: Willys MB, Jeep) is an American off-road car from the Second World War and the post-war period. The first prototypes of the car were built in 1940, and serial production was carried out in 1940-1945. Nearly 650,000 copies of it were created in its course! The weight of the cart was about 1.1 tons, with a length of 3.36 meters and a width of 1.57 meters. The drive was provided by a single engine with a power of 60 HP. The maximum speed was up to 105 km / h.
The Jeep Willys was developed to order and demanded by the US Army, which in 1940, faced with the war, asked for a completely new 4x4 passenger car with a load capacity of up to 250 kilograms, which could be mass-produced. It is worth adding that initially the American Bantam Car with the Bantam BRC was the clear favorite in the tender. However, the US Department of Defense, striving to ensure the best possible car design and trying to ensure trouble-free series production, handed over the plans for the Bantam BRC to the Willys and Ford plants. Based on these plans, Willys developed a Jeep that had a much better power unit than the original Bantam BRC, as well as being mechanically more perfect. Ultimately, it was this car, the Willys Jeep, that won the tender for the US Army. The presented car was actually mass-produced and went to almost all Anglo-Saxon armies fighting in World War II, and thanks to the Lend-and-Lease program, also to the Soviet Union. He took part in hostilities in North Africa, Italy, Northwest Europe and the Pacific. It is often assumed that the Jeep Willys is one of the symbols of American triumph in World War II.
Already after the first experiences of fighting in North Africa at the turn of 1942-1943, the US Army changed the position of the American infantry division. From 1943 onwards, each infantry division had three full-time infantry regiments, in turn composed of three infantry battalions. In addition, the infantry regiment also included other units, for example: an anti-tank company, an artillery company or a staff company. In total, the US Army's infantry regiment numbered approximately 3,100 soldiers. It should also be remembered that the division also included a strong artillery component consisting of four artillery battalions - 3 light and 1 medium, most often armed with 105 and 155 mm howitzers. There was also, among others, an engineering battalion, a repair company, a reconnaissance unit and a Military Police platoon. In total, the US Infantry Division numbered approximately 14,200 people from 1943. It quite clearly dominated the artillery over the German division and had much better and - above all - fully motorized means of transport, which made it a highly mobile tactical formation. It also had much richer "individual" anti-tank weapons in the form of a large number of bazooka launchers, of which there were over 500 in the entire division.