Jerry Cans

[FishBowlMan]

Apologies if this is in the wrong section.

I've seen reference photos of German Jerry Cans being painted with a vertical white cross to indicate they were carrying water and not fuel. Does anyone know if the Allies did anything similar with their cans?

Cheers in advance,
John.

[Coen]

Yup... They sure did John.
The even used each other's cans and marked them up. It wasn't odd or see allied cans on German vehicles or German ones on Russian. It was really common in the North African theatre. The Germans would paint them with big crosses and the allies would as well and they'd also just paint the embossed markings. Later that actually had cans with the word water stamped right into them.

[FishBowlMan]

Yup... They sure did John.
The even used each other's cans and marked them up. It wasn't odd or see allied cans on German vehicles or German ones on Russian. It was really common in the North African theatre. The Germans would paint them with big crosses and the allies would as well and they'd also just paint the embossed markings. Later that actually had cans with the word water stamped right into them.

Thanks Mike. Great bit of info about the markings.

I've already got a couple of German ones for my SAS jeep to add a bit of variety, but wasn't sure whether the British had a different way of telling theirs apart.