This postcard demonstrates the use of a jeep on a gunnery school target range in 1943. Here’s the view of an actual target practice jeep being setup.
Maury shared information about this: “If you haven’t seen one of these setups before, this was a “jeep range” to train air crew gunners. The idea was evidently to set up a remote-controlled jeep** with wood posts bolted to it. A heavy cloth target was attached to the posts, and the jeep ran behind an earth berm to protect it, at least somewhat, from the gunfire from the truck-mounted turrets beyond.
Evidently the bullets for each turret were painted with different colored dyes. A bit of the dye would come off on the target when the bullets passed through it, allowing the instructors to tell which guns were actually hitting it.
**I’m not sure how the remote-control was accomplished, but maybe someone else knows (…..and if it wasn’t remote-controlled, that was sure one ballsy driver!!)”
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