An armored advance runs on gasoline, and in the late summer of 1944 the Allied armies nearly ran dry. Patton's Third Army, racing across France, was halted in September not by the Germans but by empty fuel tanks — the supply lines simply could not keep pace with the tanks. The answer was the Red Ball Express, a round-the-clock truck convoy hauling fuel and ammunition forward from the Normandy beaches. A single armored division could drink hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, most of it carried in the five-gallon "jerrycan" — a German design so good the Allies copied it outright. Battles are won at the front and lost in the rear.

The set gathers fifteen pieces of that rear echelon: a 55-gallon fuel drum, a lubrication can and a jerrycan, .30 and .50 caliber ammo cans and a wooden crate of linked .50, C and K ration boxes, spare Sherman road wheels, and a helmet. It's the raw material of a supply-dump or motor-pool diorama — pile it around the M4A3 Sherman and M10 Tank Destroyer, and put the U.S. Tankers and Accessories Set to work fueling and rearming the column.

W. Britain model 25253. 1/30 scale, matte finish. Fifteen-piece accessory set — fuel drum, jerrycan, lubrication can, ammunition cans and boxes, C and K ration boxes, Sherman road wheels, and a helmet. Boxed.