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Allied Driving in France after D Day

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by colindj (U14781531) on Thursday, 24th February 2011

  Another question on Allied vehicles after D Day, what side of the road did they drive on?. Did they all drive on the right or did the British drive on the left and the Americans drive on the right ?.
  
  Thank You.

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 25th February 2011

  It depended on the vehicle.
  
  Tanks, for example, didn't seem to bother which side of the road they drove on or even down the middle. Think about it. Would you argue with an oncoming tank which you felt was on the 'wrong' side of the road? And during wartime too? Besides - the whole point of a tank is that it is an off-roader and in the case of, say, the Normandy campaign a tank was as likely to go through a bocage hedge and across a field than down a narrow country lane.
  
  With regards to non-track vehicles then the Bedford QL was one of the main workhorses of both the British and the Canadian armies. They were right-hand drive/left-hand traffic in design. Despite this, once in France, they were directed by the military police to drive on the right. For example Richard Dimbleby of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ flew over Normandy in an RAF Mosquito on D-Day + 6 and described the scene noting that he saw "all our chaps driving on the right hand side in the continental style."

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• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 26th February 2011

  For a considerable period, the "red ball express" routes were used fo the main volume of stores from the beaches & ports to the front, and were arranged so that loaded and empty MT used seperate roads, in part to reduce this problem, AIUI.

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