Axis and Allies miniatures -- jeeps

I'll be posting, on an occasional basis, musings about particular pieces in the Axis & Allies series of miniatures.

There's probably no vehicle more associated with the American fighting man than the ubiquitous Jeep. This all-purpose light truck appears in the Base Set (17/48), oddly sporting a machine gun that's unmentioned in the unit stats. A version with a canvas cab appears as the FO Jeep in the Contested Skies set (18/45). Finally it appears the new larger scale sans machine gun or canvas as a plain old Jeep in the Eastern Front Set (8/60). Although widely used by all the Allied forces, all versions of the Jeep that have appeared so far are American.

Base Set

Stats:
Rarity: Uncommon
Speed: 5
Defense: 1/1
Cost: 3*, 6* for the FO Jeep
Attacks vs troops at short-medium-long ranges: 0-0-0 (5-0-0 for the FO Jeep)
Attacks vs vehicles at short-medium-long ranges: 0-0-0

*Revised cost from updated cards. Formerly 4 and 8, respectively. The Revised cards also change the Service date to 1941 for the basic Jeep.

Special abilities:

Jeep

High Gear 2 -- If this unit makes its entire move along a road it gets +2 speed.

Transport -- This unit can carry one soldier (A friendly Soldier can board or dusmount this unit instead of moving during your movement phase).

FO Jeep

Spotter -- If this unit is within four hexes of an enemy unit and has line of sight to it, friendly Aircraft roll one extra attack die when attacking that unit.

Chatting on the Radio -- This unit can't move during your assault phase.

FO Jeep

Historical text

Jeep

Exactly how this little 4x4 reconnaissance car ended up with the name "Jeep" has never really been determined.

FO Jeep

Forward observers helped aircraft and artillery to spot targets to attack and to correct their aim during bombardment.

A Jeep is unloaded from a landing craft during Operation Torch in North Africa in 1942.

The unit in history: Although it's never been definitely determined how the Jeep got it's name, this small utility vehicle was a huge success. Reliable, easy to maintain and transport, powerful for its size and supremely flexible, more than 640,000 were built during the war!

Eastern Front Set

The unit in the game: The basic Jeep is a good light transport vehicle, speedy, especially down the road, although it's very easy to destroy. It's a very inexpensive transport, more so since the cost was reduced with the revised cards. The FO Jeep is the only American Spotter so far, but the Jeep is so vulnerable to enemy fire that it's hard to keep the Spotter in position long enough to be useful. Although it's not mentioned on the card, beside Aircraft the Spotter ability can also enhance the effectiveness of units with the Indirect Fire special ability. Like all Spotters, the FO Jeep has the Special (dis)Ability of Chatting on the Radio and also doesn't have High Gear 2, so it's not especially fast in game terms. While the basic Jeep could move up to 14 hexes in a turn, the FO Jeep tops out at a total of 5. The FO Jeep does have a limited ability to defend itself against Soldiers with a 5-dice attack at close range. Otherwise, despite the neat-looking machine gun on the Base Set version, the Jeep is defenseless.