Ancient Web: Fire Trucks at War Preserved Army Firefighting History

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

World War II required armies to supply ammunition, food, vehicles, and fuel. It also required fire trucks. Somebody had to protect the sprawling airfields, depots, and new installations from the fires that all that machinery could start.

Visit Fire Trucks at War.

This independently maintained website calls itself a history of US Army fire apparatus from 1918 to 1950 and the Army Engineer firefighting platoons of World War II. Its curators explicitly say they are enthusiasts, not official government historians. The collection has expanded to include earlier Army machines, Korean and Vietnam-era material, and photographs of Navy and Air Force firefighting equipment.

The vehicles needed their own classification system

The site's introduction explains how the Quartermaster Corps operated a motor-transport shop at Camp Holabird in Baltimore. During the 1930s it assembled pumpers and crash trucks for Army facilities. Wartime expansion made that shop insufficient, so the Army turned to commercial apparatus builders.

In November 1941, according to the site's account, responsibility for military fire protection moved from the Quartermaster Corps to the Army Corps of Engineers. The archive preserves the resulting class names: 100-series aircraft crash vehicles, 300-series brush trucks, 500-series structural pumpers, 750-series pumpers, and firefighting trailers.

This is wonderfully specific history. It explains why photographs of apparently similar Army trucks may represent equipment with different intended jobs.

The homepage includes a damaged Hickam Field fire station following the Pearl Harbor attack, a photograph of a firefighter's badge supplied by a veteran's son, and a series of images from Fire Prevention Week at McClellan Field in October 1946. Personal and institutional records share the same space.

One acknowledgement thanks Nelson Dionne for donating pictures, magazines, manuals, and books. His earlier research, including a 1986 article about military firefighting, inspired the site's collector. The page links a January 1946 Army technical manual and other specialist histories for readers who want to pursue the equipment further.

The site is not pretending to be a continuously updated defense database. Its value is that it recognizes an overlooked supporting service as something worth indexing, photographing, and remembering.

Wars have famous tanks and airplanes. This page saves some of the machines that helped keep them from burning.

Explore the vehicle-class lists and historic photographs.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.