Red Ball Express

The Red Ball Express was a famed truck convoy system that supplied Allied forces moving quickly through Europe after breaking out from the D-Day beaches in Normandy in 1944.

[1] To expedite cargo shipment to the front, trucks emblazoned with red balls followed a similarly marked route that was closed to civilian traffic.

[2] Staffed primarily with African-American soldiers, the Express at its peak operated 5,958 vehicles that carried about 12,500 tons of supplies a day.

[2] It ran for 83 days until November 16, when the port facilities at Antwerp, Belgium, were opened, enough French rail lines were repaired,[3] and portable gasoline pipelines were deployed.

The need for such a priority transport service during World War II arose in the European Theater following the successful Allied invasion at Normandy in June 1944.

To hobble the German army's ability to move forces and bring up reinforcements in a counter-attack, the Allies had preemptively bombed the French railway system into ruins[3] in the weeks leading up to the D-Day landing.

To ease this strain, main highways leading to the front were set aside very early in the advance as "one way" roads from which all civil and local military traffic were barred.

Reaching the supply dumps in the forward areas, the trucks unloaded and returned empty to Arromanches, Cherbourg and the lesser landing places by way of other one way highways.

The trucks used 11-inch (28 cm) wheels that could be easily overwhelmed, and efforts to escape could burn out transmissions while dried mud could immobilize their brakes.