The Terrifying Reality of WW2 Jeeps: Bruce Crompton Risks Everything to see if Wire-Cutters work

[@terrywoodham8419]

Great stuff guys more of this type of content please Bruce and pleased it wasn't Freddie in the jeep 👍. More please

[@AmazingWarStories]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@craighibberd2952]

Give these boys a new series. Loved your program and you're content

[@AmazingWarStories]

We're working on it!

[@HughJengine]

Love hearing from you Bruce. Great to see Freddie and the team too. Keep the great content coming. 👍

[@jaytomo617]

amazing stuff guys!!!

[@gd-pi8ch]

Well done Bruce and Freddie, informative, entertaining and factual. Time consuming for you but really worthwhile for us!

[@user-andywelch]

Very interesting Bruce and impressive demo and Freddie keeps his job

[@peteharris7704]

Used the same in Northern Ireland in the 70s & 80s on landrovers.

[@AmazingWarStories]

Were they ever used Pete for just as a precaution?

[@easyskankaify]

So glad your still going

[@KeefsCattys]

Brilliant video Bruce . Didn't know you were making videos anymore . Subscribed and looking forward to more , Best wishes mate

[@AmazingWarStories]

Cheers! Thanks for getting on board!

[@Qspecialman]

Living in the Norman bocage as I do I can just imagine how lethal the wires across the narrow lanes would have been. Nice video Bruce, very enlightening. What about showing a tank trying to break through a bocage hedge? The bocage, as you know, were tiny fields full of rocks so the local peasant farmers used to collect the rocks and pile them up around the edges of the fields. Over many years these piles of rocks were planted with hedges to show the edges/ownership of each field. Plus protect the crops/cattle from the weather. Hence the expression ‘bocage county’. With the Germans well established behind each hedge in turn rooting them out must have been a real nightmare. Terrific video.

[@monkey555500]

Freddie is class here

[@italianjob99]

Bring back Combat Dealers, from an actual real life Nigel!

[@markku-leifsorensen-hall2031]

Brilliant as always guys

[@AmazingWarStories]

Great - really appreciate the feedback...

[@kieronwalters3120]

Thanks a million.

[@MilitaryMachineFr]

We love this new one continue, may the exhibition mannequin rest in peace … 🙏😭😂

[@AmazingWarStories]

Don’t worry, after lots of surgery Nigel has been brought back from the dead to serve another day!

[@loiscrompton]

😂😂

[@Jerem_83200]

trop bien militarymachine bientot avec bruce

[@greginnocent438]

More Bruce and Freddie please

[@AmazingWarStories]

we're working on it!

[@jimmylight4866]

I always saw those wire cutters on the front of US jeeps in Normandy and now I know why!

[@monkey555500]

Brucie boy too...top stuff

[@milesbrown8016]

Awesome. Give the man a bells 🥃

[@AmazingWarStories]

Always!

[@zcargx4618]

Yea that content is gooood

[@busterboy7505]

I have seen film footage of jeeps with a frame similar to this and I thought it was for towing in case the jeep broke down, yes please more like this if possible 👍👍👍👍👍.

[@Nick-q8k]

There was something like that so that one jeep could tow another one.

[@jonathanlewis453]

@@Nick-q8k There was a hinged A frame, on a substantial steel tube, which substituted for the front bumper. Several jeeps linked together this way could make up a gun tractor. The old ring and pintle hitch was less precise than the modern ball and socket type but the A frame also looks like a basis for a fixed (and driverless) tow.

[@Nick-q8k]

@@jonathanlewis453 yeah,I've just looked it up,but they only reach to the height of the bonnet/hood,I'm sure I remember ones that were far higher that would function as a protection against a "garrote wire",unless they just extended it in theatre to fulfill both roles.

[@JamesBraddy-l1t]

GREAT WATCH, THANKS

[@AmazingWarStories]

You're welcome!

[@boxfox2945]

A wire would decapitste yu. Hsppens sometimes in u.s. & other places, where a stray wire gets pulled across a road by storm or something. Forgot they put steel beams on jeeps. Till watched this.

[@nigelsutton9073]

Poor Nigel 😂

[@chuckster6513]

I was in Viet nam 67-68, we had these on all jeeps. It was a court martial offence to be caught driving a jeep without one.

[@AmazingWarStories]

Did you ever hear of an instance when one saved someones life?

[@MG-id7hl]

If I remember correctly, was wire strung across a road in Force 10 From Navarone - lopping the noggin off a German officer in a halftrack ?? Good device and great to see how it's made 👍🏻

[@pepsi666]

Steve McQueen proved it did work in the Great Escape, didnt cut his head off but knocked him off his bike

[@User-wollswoycegawage]

That's funny I've just been watching a film with Michael Caine and Nigel Davenport They have just been using wire cutters

[@timothywalker4563]

First it was Buster from Myth-busters now it’s Nigel 😂 4:17

[@AmazingWarStories]

Poor old Nigel - I'm afraid he has more trials he has to face coming up!

[@nathansaunders2576]

I think that producer @ 8:12 works with James May too?

[@AmazingWarStories]

Nope. But I wish he did have me working with him... ; )

[@JelMain]

Until you add something which goes pop when the wire breaks...

[@paulcooke5959]

Not that lucky

[@dancollier9837]

Wouldnt it have been easier to have just removed the glass from the windscreens

[@AmazingWarStories]

Interesting thought but they still needed a windshield when it rained or at night. So they would then put it up in those situations when the planes weren’t flying.

[@stephengostelow7925]

Somewhat of a myth methinks caused by troops stringing field telephone wires across roads of necessity, as they were where the wire needed to go from A to B .. I mean, if Uncle Jerry did this intentionally, then one of their own vehicles came the other way, it would be a bit of an 'own goal', wouldn't it ? Can you imagine the rollicking that would be incoming...

[@AmazingWarStories]

Yes, all we know it at some point it must have happened as the archive we have included shows GI's fitting them to Jeeps. This was shot just before the D-Day landings in Britain, which means if this did indeed happened it would have been in Italy (likely) or Africa (probably more unlikely). It might have also been in the Pacific theatre - but wherever it was it was enough to spook the troops to make the Army add them...

[@stephengostelow7925]

@AmazingWarStories probably a favorite trick of Partisans, so it would be a sensible precaution ...

[@CaptainChuckles]

It appears after this Nigel decided to set up on his own !

[@AmazingWarStories]

We bought him back into the fold...

[@jonathanlewis453]

There is no doubt from photographic evidence that these devices did exist and were to be found on Jeeps in Italy, Holland and Belgium. Therefore the earliest perception of a need for them may have arisen in 1943 and not in the bocage. It is also obvious that a great many Jeeps in Europe did not have them. It is an easy knee jerk response to say that these devices were intended for wire booby traps but I wonder if they (also) had other functions. They look too flimsy but I wonder ( in the absence of anything else when the canvas is discarded and the screen is down) whether they provided rudimentary first line roll over protection in a manner which safeguarded the adaptability and load space of the vehicle.

[@AmazingWarStories]

Hey Jonathan, no I don't think they would have been strong enough to prevent roll protection. We think that an event must have happened probably in Italy for these to have been fired in mass before the D-Day invasion. They might have been taken off once superiority in the field had been obtained.

[@AchimEngels]

1:25. There are no actual records whether or not it was working since that wire accross the roads is a simple myth and war time propaganda. There is no reason for the Germans to do this, since no one knew what area was taken or retaken at what sequence and any own dispatcher would be endangered to have been trapped by that. If wires were spanned accross the roads this certainly was done by the resitance or partisans, but certainly not by the German Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS. People like to believe any nonsense, especially when it is aiming to cruel German tactics. I have a 1944 Willys myself that represents a captured repainted and reused Vehicle. Actually to make fun of all these wire cutter jeeps I have a roll of steel wire attached to my radiator grill....and it certainly also would not have been telephone wire they used. If anything than it would have been a true 1,5 or 2mm steel wire to make any sense of it. That is just stupid. I have tried to find any document over the past 20 years or so that actually talks about casualties or injuries that have been reported as having been caused by wires spanned across roads - nothing. Do you have any? If so I would love to get a copy. They certainly had wire cutters made out of fear...but almost certainly not because they had any comrades in significant enough numbers lost due to it. Any German bayonnete was certainly more dangerous.

[@AmazingWarStories]

Maybe they were worried of the "Werwolf's" putting them up. Many of the recruits in France were young, and would have been resistance trained in the Hitler Youth. You're right the bayonet was for more dangerous! Also, the jeeps that didnt have them attached would have been brought in by glider rather than landing craft, so not all of them had them.

[@sdc8547]

This fella is SO annoying. I'd watch the programme if it wasn't for him. 😢

[@keithmoran689]

Why is he annoying?

[@dereckhasken9055]

Looks to mee like the dummy’s head was already cut given how low the slice on the neck and how high the jacket collar ( which has no damage). The “wire cutter” was more psychological thing just like yanks not closing their helmet straps due to fear of decapitation as a consequence of a blast

[@AmazingWarStories]

I think you're right..the psychological effect would make the drivers drive more slowly, thus slowing their advance. I think the addition of wcrecutters, which clearly worked would have given the crews more confidence to put the pedal to metal...