Rebirth of the Schwimmwagen...

[Stoneyridgeboy]

Interesting read of someone wanting to bring these back from the 40s.

KC Engineer Building a Market for Amphibious Vehicles | Reuters

[trevorakm1]

Damn I like that on many levels. I'm going to post it on one of the gun boards I follow.

[JoeMeg]

Most impressed with the slip clutch that the prop ass'y engages when it is lowered into its operating position. Neat idea.

[Noel Woods]

Many years back, I worked at the Patton Museum at Fort Knox between deployments. That gave me the opportunity to examine a Schwimmwagen in detail. While it was interesting, it was too much of a hodge-podge to do well. It relied on props to propel it in water, and because there wasn't much ground clearance they tended to high center when going in or coming out of the water.

Much like many of the boats I owned earlier, they took on a lot of water and relied heavily on bilge pumps. Just like our machines today, when you throw mud and dirt and silt in the mix, the pumps failed very quickly.

On the road, they performed poorly. The aerodynamics of a boat hull don't lead to good performance. Later, when the Amphicar was developed it was plagued with some of the same issues. Its no wonder there are only a couple hundred surviving examples out there.

The Kettenkrad, tracked motorcycle was a different example. The Germans used those in every theater during WW2 with great success. It wasn't amphibious, but was a great machine that has a lot of potential even today for production.

[wfo]

Looks like the volkswagen thing

[Nick O.]

Looks like the volkswagen thing

This amphibious vehicle is based of the Kubelwagen, which The Thing is civilian version of. Kind of like a Willys MB and CJ2A, or Humvee and Hummer H1.

[amphibious drew]

It's not in my budget, but I love those little vw's.