The British Army in North Africa 1942 E18640

Royal Air Force Operations in Malta, Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, 1940-1945

The flimsy, officially known as the Petrol, Oil and Water can, was a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

fuel container A fuel container is a container such as a steel can, bottle, drum, etc. for transporting, storing, and dispensing various fuels. Construction A wide variety of container types and constructions are used for fuels. Each has its own enginee ...

used by the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. They held of fuel, which allowed them to be moved by a single person. The flimsy was well known for leaking; when used in the North African Campaign, some flimsies leaked 20%, and in some cases over 50% of the fuel they carried over a journey. One quartermaster reported that his of fuel had been reduced to just over the journey; and was informed that even this was a "good effort". The problem with the containers was the crimped or soldered seams, which easily split during transportation, especially over the rocky desert terrain in North Africa. Containers were stacked on top of each other during shipping, and the upper layers crushed those below, resulting in fuel flowing freely in the bilges, with the resulting poisoning and fire risks. The favoured use by soldiers for the flimsy was as a small stove which could be used to heat meals and tea for the crews. A soldier would cut the flimsy in half, fill the bottom half with petrol-soaked sand and balance the other half on top, filled with water. This was known as a '' Benghazi Burner'' or ''Benghazi Boiler'', after the embattled town of

Benghazi Benghazi () , ; it, Bengasi; tr, Bingazi; ber, Bernîk, script=Latn; also: ''Bengasi'', ''Benghasi'', ''Banghāzī'', ''Binghāzī'', ''Bengazi''; grc, Βερενίκη (''Berenice'') and ''Hesperides''., group=note (''lit. Son of he Ghazi ...

. An alternative use for discarded fuel cans was to fill them with sand and use them to reinforce the walls of dugouts. Both 4 gallon flimsies and the original 2 gallon cans were replaced by the

jerrycan A jerrycan (also written as jerry can or jerrican) is a robust liquid container made from pressed steel (and more recently, high density polyethylene). It was designed in Germany in the 1930s for military use to hold of fuel, and saw widesp ...

, copied from the much better German design of fuel container. This happened gradually from late 1940, first from captured stock of German jerrycans, then with British-made copies.

References

{{Commons category, Four gallon petrol tins Liquid containers Fuel containers World War II military equipment of the United Kingdom Military equipment introduced from 1940 to 1944