War-Production Technology: What Was Tested on This Ground, 1941–45

U.S. Army Ordnance tenancy, 29 March 1943 – 30 June 1945

Lead: For twenty-seven months the proving ground was not Studebaker's at all. It was the Army's — and the distinction between what was tested here and what was manufactured in South Bend is the whole article.

The documented core is one sentence with dates, from the Studebaker wartime record: “The U.S. Army Ordnance Department took over the 800-acre Studebaker Proving Grounds on March 29, 1943 and used it for testing trucks, half-tracks, tank retrievers, armored cars, cargo carriers, scout cars and other military units until June 30, 1945.” The vehicle classes are the finding. This ground's war work was proving work — running military vehicles over measured courses and grades (a contemporary photograph in the same record shows a US 6×6 cargo truck climbing a hill at the proving grounds) — performed on vehicles designed and built elsewhere, Studebaker's own South Bend products among them but not only them.

The Weasel requires care, because it is the item most easily mis-credited. The M29 Weasel family — designed by Studebaker engineers under chief engineer Roy E. Cole, powered by the Champion flathead six, built in South Bend in numbers past 15,000 across the M28/M29/M29C — was Studebaker's signature tracked vehicle. Its documented prototype proving, however, was done under tight security on a glacier in western Canada in 1942, not at New Carlisle; and the proving-ground record read for this section does not single the Weasel out by name among the classes Ordnance tested here in 1943–45. As a “cargo carrier” it falls inside the tested classes, and Weasels may well have run these courses — but “may well” is not a source. Printed honestly: the Weasel was designed and manufactured in South Bend (boundary), its snow proving was in Canada, and its New Carlisle proving-ground course is plausible but undocumented in the record read — a delta candidate if a test log surfaces, not a claim.

Boundary discipline, stated once for this section: Studebaker's war manufacture — US6 trucks, Wright Cyclone aircraft engines under license, Weasels — was factory production in South Bend and belongs to South Bend's war-production record. Bendix's war record (aircraft hydraulics, carburetors, and roughly three-quarters of U.S. aircraft avionics through its radio division) likewise belongs to its plants, not to this ground, which Bendix did not hold until 1966. What this ground contributed to the war was a measured place to find out whether military vehicles worked — which is a technology contribution of its own kind, and enough.

Sources:

1. Military Trader, “Studebaker and the rest of the WWII story” — Ordnance takeover Mar. 29, 1943 to June 30, 1945; classes tested (trucks, half-tracks, tank retrievers, armored cars, cargo carriers, scout cars); Weasel design under Roy E. Cole; US6 photograph at the proving grounds.
2. Hemmings, “South Bend Stalwarts” — Weasel prototype built and tested on a glacier in western British Columbia; M28/M29/M29C production figures past 15,000; manufacture at South Bend.
3. General Motors proving-ground wartime survey (usautoindustryworldwartwo.com) — context only: military-vehicle proving as a national system centered on Aberdeen; Studebaker, South Bend, production totals. No New Carlisle fact taken from it.