UPDATE: I keep seeing the ‘follow me’ jeep from Portland for sale, so I thought I’d rerun this post from last year …
While looking for something else, I stumbled upon a website showing a model of a “follow me jeep”, which is shown to the right. The website notes:
Follow Me jeeps were jeeps that were used at airfields to help control ground traffic of airplanes at an air base.Follow Me jeeps used close to the front remained the normal olive drab paint color, but at bases farther to the rear, the jeeps became brightly colored.
I’ve never heard the term “follow me jeep”, though I did know they were used at airfields. However, I had never seen a jeep painted this way before. So, I wondered if the paint job was someone’s fantasy of what a “follow me jeep” might have been.
However, after doing a little searching, I found a page on Brian’s Military Jeeps Site that discusses, in depth, some of the unique characteristics of a “follow me jeep” plus some very specific restoration information, including an image of a jeep with the “gas attack” paint: portions of the jeep could change color if certain gasses were present.
And to the right is a black and white image of a checkered jeep and checkered trailer.