Can someone identify this case?
 

Am on the lookout for battery boxes for the Larkspur radio B vehicle frame but would also consider reasonable alternatives.

Can someone identify the box fitted behind the bar of this Jeep?

http://i42.tinypic.com/33ab12b.jpg
Image owner Khos "Disco Owner" on AULRO, host site Tinypic

If you mean the box just behind the bumper, that's an ammo box. Probably a B166.

Thanks Tankbarrel

I thought it was an ammo box but was not sure which one, most I've seen seem shorter and wider.

What era and calibre would the B166 be?

Diana

Hi Diana, I'm not sure it's a B166, the designation is impressed into the lid, but it looks like one. They are a wartime box used for 3" mortar bombs, PIAT bombs and grenades.

The B indicates bombs. C boxes are for cartridges, P boxes are for projectiles etc.

Thanks Adrian

There is soo many things to learn when you've never studied stuff before the Korean War era and Land Rover 80".

What a box was used for not only depends on its dimensions but on its internal partitioning or mount brackets if any. The one on the front of the Jeep appears to be externally similar to what was fitted out here for transporting 25pdr shell cases- eight to a box.

David

Diana,

Take a look at this link, to confirm what Adrian has posted, pressings and general size about right ;
http://www.bocn.co.uk/vbforum/threads/27495-B.166

regards, Richard

Pretty sure it is not a 25-pdr cartridge box: no circular impressions in the lid (one per cart case - 8 impressions), also appears too tall and not quite wide enough. Suggest its PIAT, as per a previous post.

Mike C

Not 25pdr
 

You're right Mike. I thought of the lid difference later. Dimensions are a little harder to ascertain from a photo.

I removed all the lids and partitions from the hundred or so boxes I bought from Plums in Benalla many years ago for $2 each. I used them on their side for shelving leaving only a couple of the best ones intact. I guess that makes me some sort of a vandal.

David

Ah, yes, Dave, we are all responsible for those sort of acts! I remember the relative dimensions of the PIAT to 25-pdr boxes well because by the time I got to Plumies in Benalla and Albury, I couldn't get enough of all the same sized boxes, and had to settle for a mix of the two sizes, plus the smaller 25-pdr cartridge boxes. Apparently, someone in a Chev modified conventional had pretty much cleaned them out!!!

Having the mix of sizes as storage was a pain: I didn't have enough of any one type to make up shelves, so settled for open Handy Angle shelving. Those were the days. Now I just have to store paper ..... but the US has different sized paper and folders! Even the paper punch has a different spacing. Just can't win.... :doh:

Mike C

That Chev is now in England. Having driven it there from Istanbul in '09 I sold it before coming home.

Back when I purchased those 100 ammo boxes I went through a pile of perhaps four times that number to get good ones as they had been stacked outside for some time and the rain had got to them. Some were full of water, some were rotted through already.

It was around that time that a mate and I bought twenty or so de-milled PIATs from Plum and Crettins in Wodonga for 50 cents each. The army had thoughtfully dropped off the parts removed in the same load of scrap so it was an easy matter to recommission a number of them.

I was amazed when I saw a mock up of a PIAT in the Pegasus Bridge museum in Normandy with a note saying that a real one was unobtainable. The next one I saw was being unloaded from the boot of a re-enactors vehicle at the Bovington Tank Fest. Chatting with the bloke he told me that they are worth a horrendous amount of money. I don't have a single one left. Easy come easy go.

You're no doubt aware Mike that the Australian Army officially referred to that weapon as PITA, Projector Infantry Tank Attack. A not so subtle psychological switch around that appears at least in the training manual of which my mate has a copy.

David

So it seems that I'll neither get the Larkspur battery boxes nor the PIAT/PITA boxes either.

Will have to keep looking, for something suitable, or use unboxed lead/acid batteries.

Diana

Well, yes, Dave, but I think I should explain that a little more.

We seem to be hijacking D's post, but what the heck, she's a big girl, she can take it!

PITA v PIAT: I remember some years ago a certain restorer from mid-Victoria taking me to task for calling a 2-pdr a Tank Attack (TA) gun. So I did some pretty detailed research, and found the actual changeover orders from AHQ, together with the changes to the unit nomenclature in their war establishment lists. I think I remember that I wrote it up in the VMVC newsletter. Anyway, the truth of the matter is that all equipment and units with the words 'anti-tank' (AT)were changed in Australia in about mid-1943 from AT to TA, which was the norm until just post-war, when it reverted to 'AT'. TA was adopted as it sounded more aggressive than defensive!! The 2-pdr carrier started out life as an Anti-tank carrier, but like all the other equipment, became a TA carrier in mid-1943. As it was declared obsolete BEFORE the reversion to AT, it ended its military life called a 'Carrier, 2-pdr, Tank Attack'. Now I don't know when the PIAT/PITA was declared obsolete (should go and search that out), but it certainly had the two names bestowed upon it in Oz at different times during its service with the Australian Army in WW2.

Mike C :salute:

Only 2 names? Reading of some accounts where the PIAT projectiles seemed to bounce off the later German armour, I would have thought it would have been christened with a number of other names, mostly disparaging. The acronym PITA, not referring to "tank Attack" may well have been one of them! :D

Disparaging names would certainly come naturally in the circumstances you mention Dianaa. Also in an incident related to me by a workmate who had been with the BAOR. They were undergoing training on the PIAT and when one of the fellows fired the weapon a chunk of the spring steel disc that locates and secures the bomb in the tray came back and opened up his face so as you could see his teeth through his cheek. As a couple of fellows helped him away the NCO in charge of the training simply called out 'NEXT'!

To get back on topic, if looking for a box to hide some batteries in it may help to simply give the dimensions of what you need and see what pops up. Does it matter if the box has been repainted? Do you want it with stencilling? You just don't know what's out there. 2pdr, 25pdr, .303, 3.7" We've all got some and a lot of us will be at Corowa. (Except Mike)

David

Yep, was in Oz last November, so another trip back down under is not on the agenda just yet. Yet another year I miss Corowa. On the bright side, we'll be touring in Texas and Arizona about that time.....

I thought the Larkspur series had specific battery boxes that went under the radio rack in the rear compartment of the FFR Land Rover. They were held in place in an angle steel rack with threaded rod braces with wing nuts and brackets. I can't say I've seen many survivors in Oz (I had the rack at one stage), but maybe the UK might be a source? Postage might be a bit expensive.

Mike C

As Mike C suggests, yes they were specific Larkspur Battery boxes and the big issue is that the boxes need to mount four side by side in a frame that is demountable from a Land Rover or Austin Champ, into an Studebaker truck or even into a radio shelter.

http://www.remlr.com/wireless/b_veh_...%20P15_mid.jpg
Image source: http://www.remlr.com/wireless/b_veh_...%20P15_mid.jpg

The image below is the actual box, from Mike Kelly's wanted post from last year. http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...ad.php?t=16424
http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/at...2&d=1302656855

Mike specifies dimensions of 15" wide and 11" tall and I measure the frame making the max 8" for the depth .

I am even getting to the situation (if Mike is in agreement) of making a mould off Mike's single box and then replicating them in fibreglass.

Scarce boxes
 

Hi Diana,

In more than twenty years of hunting and collecting Radio gear I have never found any of the Larkspur battery boxes lying around.

I have bought one small and one large (yes there are two sizes) example from other collectors but nobody seems to know what happened to the rest.

It may be that they were all bought up by a scrappie somewhere, or perhaps - and this is what I prefer to think - they are all lined up and neatly stacked on their sides in a dry shed somewhere waiting to be found by one of us...

Cheers and good luck.

Phill