I’m marking my GPW to honor my father who was a WW2 combat veteran. Dad served as a heavy gunner in the 689th Field Artillery Battalion, XX Corps, Third Army. Dad went ashore at Utah Beach on August 20th, 1944, and he stayed through the occupation of Bavaria and Austria, returning home to California for Christmas of 1945.
The bumpers of the GPW read 3A – 689F Star C-4. This represents the 4th vehicle in Battery C. The C-4 also represents my family’s last name and my mom’s favorite number. Luckily, it would appear that this is valid based on the Table of Organization for motorized 155mm howitzer batteries.
I used stencils from Scott Watson at Ron Fitzpatrick Jeep Parts. The paint is Rustoleum’s 7790 flat white enamel from a tin, thinned with acetone and shot though a modeling airbrush at 20 psi. I practiced a bunch with thinning ratios, pressure and heaviness before I shot the real thing.
Here’s the passenger side front stencil. I located the GPW bumper’s tooling hole so that it would not be under a painted area. This then put the lower bar of the “F” directly over the bumper’s F-mark. I tried to move the tooling hole to the space between the 6 and 8, but the 3A would have shifted very near the left edge of the bumper and I didn’t like the look. Fortunately Scott’s stencils are high quality and they snuggled down nicely for painting.
The rear bumperettes and stars came out just as nicely. I highly recommend Scott’s stencils. They performed flawlessly.
Restoration of 1945 Ford GPW 270351 