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I wonder why they did that to the grills? Improved cooling?
I don't think this would improve cooling, as the bottleneck of airflow is probably the radiator, not the grill.
All I can guess is that the grill was damaged and removed.
Edit: accidentally commented this twice due to poor mobile data service.
It looks identical on both jeeps though
You're right. I didn't even notice the second jeep before. It looks like this was done on purpose, which is kind of stupid, especially on the jeep driving behind the other. The grill is there to protect the radiator from debris. Once the radiator gets hit by a a small rock and starts to leak, which can happen quickly, as they are usually made of very thin metal, you'd have to constantly monitor engine heat and fill up cooling water regularly.
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This was an accidentally duplicated comment due to poor mobile data service in my area.
I would guess weight reduction.
Not reducing more than 1 or 2 lbs doing that (or maybe 5). Still, reducing that kind of weight really isn't going to make much difference-that's within the range of weight difference between two soldiers. 50 lbs? For sure worth it (like the useless windshield).
As little as I think it helped, I'm going with improved air flow for the radiator.
Given the kind of radiators they had (all copper, and damn dense fins), and the minimal fans behind them (directly driven off the water pump, so only ran at perhaps 1/2 engine rpm, meaning practically useless at idle), with no shroud around the fan to improve it's poor performance, I'm guessing any air flow resistance that you remove may help, especially in places like this photo.
Thinking about it, those vertical bars probably created a nice dead zone behind them at certain speeds, since each one would cause a vortex on either side. Would be interesting to see some fluid dynamics of such things (I'm not an engineer, just have one in the family).
It's odd the things that improve performance on old vehicles - sometimes you just never know, since they weren't engineered as extensively as modern vehicles are.
These jeeps are only a few steps removed from factory machine works - they're very simple, using quickly-engineered stuff to achieve a bare minimum (like so much military hardware at the time). It was all kind of "get something, anything modestly functional out there". I doubt there was any functional testing specifically aimed at the grill, probably just "well it didn't overheat during testing", and "look how open it is, how could it be an issue".
Or, as someone else said, it was damaged. Maybe both were - possibly a common issue?
I would guess for increased cooling in a hot climate to prevent engine overheating.