Editing Jeep (section)

==In Real Life==
During WWII, the United States government put out a contract for an all-terrain 4x4 reconnaissance vehicle with only a 49 day deadline to create a prototpye. These high demands ended up defining what would become the Jeep: simple, rugged, and ubiquitous. Originally produced by Ford and Willys-Overland during its WWII production, postwar demand for the Jeep was so high that an entirely separate division dedicated to this vehicle was developed. Many foreign imitators such as the [[AT Land Rover|Land Rover]] were also made. As for where the Jeep got its name, it's a reference to "Eugene the Jeep" from Popeye, a creature known to defy gravity and go anywhere; soldiers began calling the car the "Jeep" to signify that it was a car that could pop up in the most unexpected places, which the enemy thought were inaccessible. The Jeep was by no means perfect however, with its tendency to roll-over and kill the crew being a major fault.

Regardless, we seriously ''cannot'' overstate the sheer ubiquitousness and versatility of the jeep in World War II. With a few field modifications, people used them for towing, troop transport, scouting, supply transport, ambulances, or even weapon platforms - the SAS were quickly noted after their formation for putting four Vickers K machine guns on them and conducting night raids against German depots and airports in North Africa. You could run the engine just to heat up some water or hook it up to power a searchlight. Even the fucking hood turned out to be incredibly useful by the virtue of being flat and wide as a table and correspondingly people used it for almost everything a table could (aside from dumping your shit on it and forgetting about it because you can't be arsed to move it - it surely wouldn't have been long until someone found another use out of that jeep). Some people ended up taking bumpy rides in jeeps so much [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilonidal_disease#Etymology that it caused them pilondial disease]. The variety of uses and popularity of the vehicle had it appear repeatedly in the famous Willie & Joe comics (which can be seen in the gallery) - the creator Bill Mauldin himself was even given a jeep after the comic took off for touring the front to better allow him to make comics out of his experiences. The Jerries themselves thought the jeeps were amazing as well (there's rumors that some Germans believed that every American was issued their own jeep) and quite loved them whenever they could capture them.

The Jeep remained a mainstay until the adoption of the [[HMMWV Scout Section|HMMWV]], a vehicle that shared the Jeep's off-roading capabilities but could also carry heavier loads and weapon systems, as well as offer marginally better protection than the open-topped Jeep, and being super-wide to ensure it would not roll over (at the cost of not being able to use narrow roads). The Jeep is still highly valued on the civilian market as ''the'' off-road vehicle, while the typical HMMWV is now so top heavy from armor and add-ons that they too now have rollover problems.

IRL, the big ol' M40 106mm recoilless rifle was a US system dating from just after the Korean War intended to replace existing stocks of WWII-era heavy antitank guns, and was most frequently mounted on a jeep on the same pintle mount that was used to mount a machine gun, though crews were also taught how to dismount them, disassemble them, and carry them into rough terrain inaccessible with vehicles to fire them from a tripod.  The M40 was very widespread in US military service until around 1980 and very VERY widely exported to US allies the world over, including to the Shah of Iran, which is how the Iranians got them in the first place.  The Iraqis captured lots and lots of them and were still using them when the 2003 war came.  They're still in service with militaries the world over.  Recoilless rifles are low pressure, low velocity weapons, which gives them short effective range in direct fire--1150m maximum for the M40, according to various sources, and really at their best at 400m and closer.  IRL the doctrine was that they were best employed like any other antitank gun--dug in, camouflaged carefully, and fired at enemy vehicles to engage them from the flanks and rear, from the closest range practicable, always keeping in mind that in WWII on average an antitank gun crew would get to kill four enemy tanks before they got pasted themselves.  When it was introduced the M40's big fat HEAT rounds could kill any tank on the planet from any angle on the first shot, but this wasn't widely known for a while.