Don't feed the DUKWs

[Spaceball-Two]

@ttyymmnn Axle failed and it smashed into a bus. The owner supposedly knew about the deferred maintenance and didn't act. Bad stuff.

[EssExTee]

@415s30 I'm sure you can just use any old commercial vehicle chassis too

[Roadkilled]

@415s30 said in Don't feed the DUKWs:

@amoore100 They are really simple, slab sided vehicles, pretty simple fabrication. You can hide a lot of ugly under the skin.

Simple, slab-sided, and hiding a lot of ugly. That describes me pretty well. Well, maybe the ugly isn't hidden.

[ttyymmnn]

@Spaceball-Two

Anybody killed?

[415s30]

@EssExTee Oh yeah, here is a real one, the prop is off a transfer case I guess, instead of going to more wheels.

[Spaceball-Two]

@ttyymmnn 4 and dozens injured.

[RamblinRover]

@amoore100
There's a guy on YouTube who has done a couple of videos on DUKW disasters, and in at least one of them he goes into DUKW design flaws (such as they are), operator flaws specific to duck operators (such as issues related to the front hatch) and so on.

To my understanding from those videos, the best modern body DUKWs are made by a company called... MasterJig, I think?

[amoore100]

@RamblinRover Oh, I've watched all of those! My understanding is that Master Jigs are just the nickname for the modernized DUKW boats? I guess I was wondering if there are any manufacturers doing scratch-built ones these days.

[RamblinRover]

@amoore100 I think the dimensional data should be available enough that if you were enough of a glutton for punishment you could make your own. Flat panels, ribs, corner bracketing, and a donor truck - et voila.
It wouldn't be like Jeremy Clarkson commissioning a Vietnam riverboat.

[ForSweden]

Haters will say it is a Chicken Boat

[Ad absurdum per aspera]

@amoore100 — That makes sense; I don't know if they actually use surviving master jigs from the manufacturer or it's a colloquial term for a vessel hewing to the original dimensions (as opposed to, say, "stretch Ducks" or other modified versions).

The original was by legendary yacht-design firm Sparkman & Stephens, and was surprisingly competent in rough seas if well handled. That said, it was meant to be pounded out rapidly for the war, and didn't include some safety measures we've taken for granted in pleasure craft, let alone commercial vessels, for a long time now. A lot was written about how to improve things in the aftermath of the 1999 Ozarks disaster in particular.

(And it should be mentioned that one in the UK burned while underway after an overheated engine set fire to buoyancy foam. The devil is indeed in the details, and some things really should be done by engineers rather than cobbled up.)

See for instance
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/download/26447

[Zenith2455]

A video of one of the many incidents involving a DUKW boat ride. Its a great channel and if you enjoy long format incident reporting videos, check out some of his other videos.

[EssExTee]

@Ad-absurdum-per-aspera said in Don't feed the DUKWs:

it's a colloquial term for a vessel hewing to the original dimensions (as opposed to, say, "stretch Ducks" or other modified versions).

The ones in Boston are a new design based on the M35, which is the truck that replaced the CCKW that the original ducks were based on