DUKW The DUKW ( colloquially known as Duck ) is a six - wheel - drive amphibious truck that was designed by a partnership under military auspices of Sparkman & Stephens and General Motors Corporation ( GMC ) during World War II for transporting goods and troops over land and water and for use approaching and crossing beaches in amphibious attacks . Designed only to last long enough to meet the demands of combat , mass produced Ducks , a modification of the 2 - ton capacity " deuce " trucks used by the U . S . military in World War II , were later used as tourist craft in marine environments . Designation . The designation of DUKW is not a military acronym ; rather , the name comes from the model naming terminology used by GMC : Decades later , the DUKW designation was explained erroneously by writers such as Donald Clarke who wrote in 1978 that it was an acronym for " Duplex Universal Karrier , Wheeled " . However , the name is not an acronym . Description . The DUKW was designed by Rod Stephens , Jr . of Sparkman & Stephens , Inc . yacht designers , Dennis Puleston , a British deep water sailor resident in the U . S . , and Frank W . Speir , a Reserve Officers ' Training Corps Lieutenant out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Developed by the National Defense Research Committee and the Office of Scientific Research and Development , it was initially rejected by the armed services . When a United States Coast Guard patrol craft ran aground on a sand bar near Provincetown , Massachusetts , an experimental DUKW happened to be in the area for a demonstration . Winds up to 60 knots ( 110 km / h ) , rain , and heavy surf prevented conventional craft from rescuing the seven stranded Coast Guardsmen , but the DUKW had no trouble , and the military opposition melted . The DUKW would later prove its seaworthiness by crossing the English Channel . The DUKW prototype was built around the GMC AFKWX , a cab - over - engine ( COE ) version of the GMC CCKW six - wheel - drive military truck , with the addition of a watertight hull and a propeller . The final production design , perfected by a few engineers at Yellow Truck & Coach in Pontiac , Michigan , was based on the CCKW . The vehicle was built by the GMC division of General Motors , which was still called Yellow Truck and Coach at the beginning of the war . It was powered by a GMC straight - six engine . The DUKW weighed 6 . 5 tons empty and operated at on road and on water . It was long , wide , high with the folding - canvas top down and 8 . 8 feet ( 2 . 6 m ) high with the top up . 21 , 137 were manufactured . It was not an armored vehicle , being plated with sheet steel between 1 / 16 and 1 / 8 inches ( 1 . 6 – 3 . 2 mm ) thick to minimize weight . A high capacity bilge pump system kept the DUKW afloat if the thin hull was breached by holes up to in diameter . One of every four vehicles was produced with a ring mount for machine gun , which would usually have held a . 50 - caliber ( 12 . 7 mm ) Browning heavy machine gun . The DUKW was the first vehicle to allow the driver to vary the tire pressure from inside the cab , an accomplishment of Speir ' s device . The tires could be fully inflated for hard surfaces such as roads and less inflated for softer surfaces , especially beach sand . This added to the DUKW ' s great versatility as an amphibious vehicle . This feature is now standard on many military vehicles . The DUKW ' s windshields were provided by GM rival Libbey Glass ( Ford ) under the " Defense Plant Corporation " umbrella as a result of Henry Gassaway , one of the GM engineers whose wife ' s family worked for Libbey , and whose test driving broke the first windshields . Service history . World War II . The DUKW was supplied to the U . S . Army , U . S . Marine Corps and Allied forces . 2 , 000 were supplied to Britain under the Lend - Lease program and 535 were acquired by Australian forces . 586 were supplied to the Soviet Union , and they would build their own version post war : the BAV 485 ( see Developments ) . DUKWs were initially sent to the Pacific theatre ' s Guadalcanal , and were used by an invasion force for the first time during the Sicilian Operation Husky in the Mediterranean . They would again be used on the D - Day beaches of Normandy , but also during the Battle of the Scheldt , Operation Veritable and Operation Plunder . Its principal use was to ferry supplies from ship to shore , but it was used for other tasks , such as transporting wounded combatants to hospital ships or operations in flooded ( polder ) landscape . Post - war . After World War II , reduced numbers of DUKWs were kept in service by the United States , Britain , France and Australia with many more stored pending disposal . Australia transferred many to Citizens Military Force units . The U . S . Army reactivated and deployed several hundred DUKWs at the outbreak of the Korean War with the 1st Transportation Replacement Training Group providing crew training . DUKWs were used extensively to bring supplies ashore during the Battle of Pusan Perimeter and in the amphibious landings at Incheon . Ex - U . S . Army DUKWs were transferred to the French military after World War II and were used by the Troupes de marine and naval commandos . Many were used for general utility duties in overseas territories . France deployed DUKWs to French Indochina during the First Indochina War . Some French DUKWs were given new hulls in the 1970s with the last being retired in 1982 . Britain deployed DUKWs to Malaya during the Malayan Emergency of 1948 – 60 . Many were redeployed to Borneo during the Indonesia – Malaysia confrontation of 1962 – 66 . Later military use . The Royal Marines use five of these vehicles for training at 11 ( Amphibious Trials and Training ) Squadron , 1 Assault Group Royal Marines at Instow , North Devon . Four were manufactured between 1943 and 1945 . The fifth consists of a DUKW hull copy manufactured in 1993 and fitted with unused , World War II vintage running gear parts . In 1999 , a refurbishment program began to extend their service life to 2014 . The DUKWs are used for safety , allowing all ranks to undertake training drills for boat work for the landing craft ranks , and drivers undertaking wading drills from the Landing Craft Utility . Civilian use . Although DUKWs were used predominantly by the military , many also were used by civilian organizations such as the police , fire departments and rescue units . The Australian Army lent two DUKWs and crew to Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions for a 1948 expedition to Macquarie Island . Australian DUKWs were used on Antarctic supply voyages until 1970 . From 1945 to 1965 , the Australian Commonwealth Lighthouse Service supply ship " Cape York " carried ex - Army DUKWs for supplying lighthouses on remote islands . Several were used by abalone fishermen in San Luis Obispo County , California to take their catch from the boats and directly to market , combining the two steps of off - loading onto smaller craft , and transferring it trucks once they reached the beach . Whenever a natural disaster or an emergency strikes , DUKWs are well equipped for the land and water rescue efforts . Australian Army Reserve DUKWs were used extensively for rescue and transport during the 1955 Hunter Valley floods . One of the last DUKWs manufactured in 1945 was loaned to a fire department during the Great Flood of 1993 , and in 2005 , Duck Riders of Grapevine , Texas deployed the vehicle to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina . The DUKW was well equipped to maneuver its way through flood waters , transporting victims stranded on their rooftops to helicopter pads throughout New Orleans . A few , such as the " Moby Duck " , have been adapted by local groups like Seattle ' s Seafair Pirates , for parades and other events . One DUKW is in use by the Technisches Hilfswerk ( THW ) of Germersheim in Germany , a public organization supplying technical support . Developments . In the latter 1940s and throughout the 1950s , while Speir , now Project Engineer for the Army ' s Amphibious Warfare Program , worked on " bigger and better " amphibious vehicles such as the " Super Duck " , the " Drake " and the mammoth " BARC " ( Barge , Amphibious , Resupply , Cargo ) , a good many DUKWs were made surplus and put to use as amphibious rescue vehicles by fire departments and even , coming full circle , by Coast Guard stations . In 1952 the Soviet Union produced a derivative of the DUKW , adding a rear loading ramp . The Zavod imeni Stalina factory built the BAV 485 on the structure of their ZiS - 151 truck . Production continued until 1962 with over 2 , 000 units delivered . Tourist attraction . DUKWs are still in use , as well as purpose - built amphibious tour buses , primarily as tourist transport in harbor and river cities . The first " duck tour " company was started in 1946 by Mel Flath in Wisconsin Dells , Wisconsin . The company is still in operation under the name Original Wisconsin Ducks . In fiction . Two DUKWs , Gert and Daisy ( named after radio music - hall artistes Elsie and Doris Waters ) , are central to Ron Dawson ' s novel , " The Last Viking : The Untold Story of the World ' s Greatest Heist " . The novel tells the story of a modern day Viking raid by a group of Birmingham gangsters who capture and loot the island of Guernsey on the tenth anniversary of D Day with disastrous consequences . The novel is probably unique in featuring two DUKWs in a post - World War II adventure . A DUKW was prominently featured in the ending sequence of the 1987 film . A DUKW is also central to the " 2000 AD " story Disaster 1990 , in which the lead character , London hardman Bill Savage , liberates one from a war museum to survive a futuristic flooded Britain .