Admiral Byrd’s Snow Cruiser passing through traffic, Framingham, Massachusetts, November 12, 1939.
In preparation for the war, the Germans had thousands of Wehrmachtskanister (flat petrol cans) in stock in 1939, so they made full use of it during the war. In 1942 the British army in North Africa captured some of these cans from the troops of German field marshal Rommel. They were deeply impressed by their usability. The cans were sent to England, where they were soon put into production. The British soldiers renamed the tin into a Jerry can, the nickname used by Allied soldiers for a German soldier.
Of the twenty million Jerrycans that had been landed in Normandy since D-Day, about half had disappeared without a trace by August 1944. This was a mystery to the Allies. What had happened to the Jerry cans? There are several theories about this; many have been left behind by the crews of tanks and other vehicles, they have been used to make shelters, used as 'blocks' for repairing vehicles and they have been sold or stolen.
An American division consumed about 90,000 liters of gasoline per day during their advance. Because of this, the High Command took this problem very seriously. A large-scale recycling program was set up, for which prisoners of war were also used. Schoolchildren also went looking for abandoned Jerry cans. In return, the children received a certificate signed by Eisenhower.