Hello my fellow Ford lovers!

I have been a member for a small year now and I thought its time that I would share
some off Belgiums militairy history.
I am the extremely proud owner of a ford f1 wich is extremely rare in my country,
almost no one knows about ford f1 here,but almost everyone here remembers
his big brother the Ford f6 COE. Because of the typical "grill".
Unfortunately they have almost all "passed away" making this one also very rare here.
They where all taken apart with cutters,scrapyards,and even just compressed into
cubes. (the sadness...........)

And it is because of that fact that I want to share some original pictures!
I found no pictures here of anywhere of the COE in military service in Belgium.
Also not one picture of the completely rebuilt version of it. Made for the Belgian militairy.
So this is the debut of them on this forum so they won't be forgotten!

Some faces have been blurred at request of the veteran.

The Ford F6 COE trucks were the standard Belgian army trucks in the 50/60's.
Entire devisions of them drove here and called it home.
If you where in the militairy in those years you drove them, it was that simple.
The following pictures show the ford f6 truck with a soldier, and also a f6 truck
with its driver on the bonnet.Ready to depart on the train.
As you will notice in the pictures the Belgian militairy modified them in all sort of manners.
They made extra handles on the cab for getting in easyer. Some where outfitted witch a
grill guard. Others where outfitted with a Belgian blackout light (also visible in the pictures)
One they the militairy did to all of them was paint the original traffic indicators shut,so they werent visible anymore. And placed traffic indicators right beside the grill on the fender. They also recieved traffic indicators of there doors, some even completely on the cab.
On the pictures you also see the plate of Marmon herrington on the side of the hoods.

In the end it was simple, if a f6 truck was regularly used for something it was modified for
convenience.

If you have more questions I will try to answer them as good as I can.













Then the Next version of the ford F6 COE was the completely modified "Artillery Puller"
These ford truck where extensively modified. Wich also became there own demise.
The belgian military had these build to what they wanted from it,without taking any regard to
what they could. Because all of the ford trucks in Belgium had the straight 6 cilynder engine.
There was not one V8 in any of them. (dont know why this was)
As you can immediatly see in the following pictures of it,it was FAR to heavy for the engine.
It was modified as followed, the cab was expanded to hold 7 to 8 soldier. Begind the cab was a separate part covered with a canvas wich held ammunition. And there was a specially modified "pipe" in the truck from the back to the front inside the truck. This was for a spare cannon barrel. Behind the truck the was a trailer that had extra ammunition and accessories.
And behind that trailer (yes you read correct) was the cannon that belonged with the truck.
Ultimately his weight was his demise, the truck alone without any trailers weighed in at around 6 tons or 13 250 LBS.
I have multiple veterans that drove this truck and they all said the same,it was a nightmare.
It was so heavy the clutch couldn't take it, the truck jumped,rocked, did all kind of weird things when you wanted to start moving. And offcourse it was as slow as a snail.
The belgian militairy build these to work in the field,but they couldn't even drive decently on the road. So they all got a new assignment.
They became the standard truck in the army to learn new cadets to drive. The idea behind this was " If you can drive this you can drive anything".
Later also all the other f6 trucks followed in there footsteps as they all became driving school vehicles. ( I will search in my albums for a picture of one with the driving school sign on it, I know I have one somewhere).







And on a seperate note, the Belgian militairy also used some ford F3 trucks as ambulance trucks!



Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

Many Greetings from Belgium ,Kristof

I will also post pictures of the original belgian blackout lamp that I have in my possesion that you see in these pictures!

 

Hello Kristof,

Those are very cool photographs!

Now you need to post one of your F1!!

Dan

 

Kristof
Thank you very much for sharing this very important part of Ford and more so world history - When I was stationed in Kiaserslautern Germany in the late 70's there was an old graveyard for military vehicles - From certain points you could see into the grounds from the road - There was vehicles from WWII to the newest vehicles being phased out - Sadly the owner would let no one in to look around
Again
Thank You!
Your pictures will be a great addition to FTE

 

Kristof,

cool pictures of Belgian Army trucks. I am sure the M-H guys here were drooling!

thanks for sharing! How about a pic of your truck?

 

Wow! Those are great pictures. We really appreciate you posting those for us. That was a great history lesson.

I would also love to see your F1.

 

Thank you for sharing, Kristof

 

Great pictures, thanks for sharing. Stu

 

Hi All,

Thx for the comments, @4tl8ford, I wish there were still places like those scrapyards that had hundreds of militairy trucks

Where do I post pics of my f1 (I'm very nervous to show it),no one has seen it yet.
Me and my father rebuild it from the ground up and now after almost 2 years its finished.Only a few small details need to be finished.

On a different note, today it was a holiday in my country and a specific militairy base had an open door day( so you can just visit the base)
And I knew they have one of the only survivor ford f6 artillery pullers, it sits in
There private museum, asked for it and if they were to sell it the price would be around
132 000 US dollars.

Greetings Kristof

 

Wow, thanks for sharing the pics.
Thats a great piece of history

Bobby

 

Great history lesson and pictures. Thanks for posting.
I find it interesting that they lashed the trucks to the rail cars using cable and turnbuckles. I wonder if these fasteners were part of the hardware that stayed with the truck. The various individual modifications are very interesting as well.
So far as no V8s, the six was generally considered to be better suited for truck service with the usable torque at a lower rpm than the V8.

 

Kristof,

Did you happen to write a book, or planned to write about the militia?

Quite some years ago a person emailed me asking me to identify a bunch of Ford military trucks like the ones you posted. He sent many pictures of all kinds of four wheel drive trucks used by the Belgian Gendarmerie. He was planning to write a book and asked that I not show the pictures on the internet.

 

@ raytasch,thx for the info on 6 cylinder,learned something new

@ bobj49f2,
I never wrote a book or planned to (sounds good though).
But the the army and gendarmerie here had many trucks after the ford f6 trucks.
And a few are really well known here because so many people drove it.
Do you know the book he wrote?
These pictures where given to me by the veterans in the pics themself.
Pictures of these are very hard to find. I'm quite interested in other pictures to find.

I probably will have more pictures this saturday of the artillery puller from the museum.
As well as the blackout lamp pictures,holding them next to a US army blackout so you can
see the difference

 

And as promised ,here are the pictures of the blackout light vs the US blackout light. (The belgian one also doesn't have a protecting bracket)
And also the pictures of the surviving f6 artillery puller from the militairy museum.

 

Many thanks for the additional pictures. One modification that I've not figures out the purpose: On each truck pictured, there is what appear to be a set of rollers, mounted on, and protrude down from near the center of the front bumpers. Are these a positioning device for say ship or rail boarding? Or perhaps cable guides for a winch?

 

They are indeed cable guides for a winch,this was something of a more standard accesorie


Greetings Kristof