WW II fuel drum color

Thanks for the confirmation, guys. One thing's for sure, I am NOT going to attempt to paint the colored band around the center of each drum. My sanity will not hold out that long.

Depending on the source (refinery, POL distribution point etc), the drums could be black, gray or OD. No matter which color you decide to use, I would say that all the drums on each pallet should be the same color. I'm baseing this on a discussion with my uncle (who wandered all over the Pacific as a SeaBee in War Deuce), several years ago.

Fuel was carried in drums on cargo ships during WWII- in many cases it was easier to ship it in drums rather than deal with it in bulk at the destination. This sometimes led to disastrous results. I know one gentleman who was part of an army quartermaster company that was shipped to the Philippines on a Liberty ship, with the fuel for their vehicles stored out on deck. The ship took a kamikaze shortly before debarkation- most of the nearly 200 men killed in the attack were victims of the subsequent fuel fire, not the initial hit. The sinking of another Liberty ship near Alaska was blamed for many years on an explosion in one of her cargo holds, which were crammed with fuel drums. This was despite the unanimous testimony by survivors that they were in fact torpedoed by the Japanese (they were subsequently shown to be correct).

I don’t have any specific information on the color, but you probably can’t go wrong with olive drab.

Regards,

Chris Friedenbach
Crewmember, SS Jeremiah O’Brien

I thought it was something like that.

As for fuel, again relying on my Dad's 60 year old memories, he said that at least once they carried a deck cargo of solvents or lubricants, something like that, and all of them were scared to death the entire trip over that the whole ship would explode - that was one trip where the "only smoke on the fantail and flick the butts FAR over the side" rule was rigidly enforced!

If I remember correctly, the color of the band indicated the contents of the barrel...typically, full fuel drums wouldn't be carried by a cargo ship, the liquid would be transported by a tanker to a location overseas where it was off-loaded into storage tanks, then distributed.

If I remember correctly...and it's been awhile...white band indicated water, red indicated solvents, yellow indicated petroleum products (oil, gas).

Don't quote me on that though...

Jeff