[Lang]

Phil

I was lucky enough to get this lot back in the mid 70's. I was working in Victoria Barracks (the main HQ in NSW) and heard that the big base vehicle workshop west of Sydney was having a clean out.

I raced out in a ute and got there just as they were loading absolutely full, a truck with all their manuals dating from the 30's - several tons of them! Not just theirs but those from the nearby Ordnance Depot.

I knew the officer in charge of that section well and we both climbed up onto the pile and pulled out only Operators Manuals, Workshop Manuals and Illustrated parts manuals of every type of vehicle the Australian Army had ever operated and many they had not. The cardboard box of waterproofing instructions somehow got saved.

I filled the back of the ute but could not stop tons of books heading to the dump. If I had received earlier notice I knew the system well enough to easily have had the truck leave for the dump and arrive back empty with thousands of manuals diverted from the destruction order to disappear into the mists of the community

Unfortunately I donated maybe 300 manuals to a museum a couple of years later, just keeping a selection of a couple of hundred in my library. The museum failed, I got no phone call, and even today I see my rescued manuals advertised and at swap meets for outrageous prices. Maybe you have one??

As for scanning, these books appear to be very generic inside the covers (I haven't read right through any yet). If that is the case we may be able to achieve the aim with more types by just copying specific vehicle instruction pages to attach to the general section.

I can understand why these manuals are rare as each has the check list tear-out pages and look like they were issued for a specific operation and probably thrown away after the vehicle was prepared.

Lang