[Rob Beale]

These docs fill gaps in our knowledge. (pp1-18)

NZ wanted to build LP carriers, and it seems were wanting to copy the Aust LP1 - i.e. the request for plans and armour plate.

In fact NZ Govt Railways stripped a UK sourced Bren No1 Mk I and reverse engineered it.
Lynn Eades surviving LP1 shows that local castings were used. It has similarities to Ben's Scout, and features that carried over into the LP2, but not into the UK built UC MkI.

With no ABP3 available, a stranded ship (Port Bowen at Wanganui) that was being stripped of useful materials, provided mild steel plate for the manufacture of 40 Bren No2 MkII LP Carriers.

Interesting to see the description of the new Aust LP2 as a Universal carrier, when the manuals were all titled Carrier MG LP2.

The supply of armour plate and most suspension castings is interesting.
60 sets per month were shipped to NZ. The total of 420 must have been the original plan for LP2 production for NZ army.
Like Australia the NZ requirements were increased based on experience overseas to 520 carriers (+ 25%)

I have circumstantial evidence that the NZ LP2 hulls were numbered from 41 to 560. No early hulls have been found less than 41, but neither have later hulls greater than 1170.
The first 200 were issued to the Mounted Rifles regiments (we have LP2 #229 which has markings for 9 Wellington East Coast MR)
and a mid production LP2 that served in WW2 with a hull # greater than 520

Also the Eastern Supply Group Council orders of 650 carriers for export which were built but never purchased.
These LP2A were stored at GM NZ till the end of the war, and after "Questions in Parliament", were issued to the post war army - a largely Territorial army that was training for possible deployment to the middle east - again - as 4 NZ Div.
(The NZ Regular Force infantry was raised in 1957 for service in Malaya)

Rob