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Old 06-06-18, 21:26
Colin Alford Colin Alford is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Barrie, ON
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For the past year I have been heavily engaged in a research project attempting to determine exactly which enemy vehicles came to Canada at the end of WW2, their movements within Canada and their current location.

I have read many thousands of pages of archived documents and have a pretty good grasp of what came to Canada and the initial movements. Recently I have been provided Doug Knight’s findings from his research into this matter that was conducted a few years ago and our findings are essentially the same. There is currently a large gap in the records from the late 1940s into the 1950s. Research is ongoing to attempt to locate records to fill this gap.

My understanding of the movements of the MOWAT StuG is that it travelled aboard the S.S. Blommersdyk (or Blommersdijk) from Antwerp and arrived in Montreal in mid-Nov 1945. It was then consigned to Central Ordnance Depot, Plouffe Park, Ottawa, Ont. The foreign vehicles and equipment were controlled by the Foreign Material Section of the Directorate of Development of A and B Vehicles and Small Arms (DVSA), which was subordinate to the Army Technical Development Board (ATDB). The foreign vehicles and large pieces of equipment were being stored at “Pete’s Garage” in Hull which appears to have been a commercial establishment. At approximately the same time that this shipment took place, the Army had decided that the vehicles would soon be stored in Camp Borden. By 15 March 1946, the StuG was present in Camp Borden and stored in a building controlled by A-33 Canadian Armoured Corps Training Establishment. Unfortunately the Foreign Material Section files that have been located end in the summer of 1946 approximately when their higher formation changed. ATDB and DVSA were disbanded/reorganized and the Foreign Material Section now reported to the newly-created Directorate of Vehicle Development.

A brief submitted by the Canadian War Museum Board to the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences in July 1949 stated that “…there remains at Camp Borden a large number of German tanks and artillery pieces which could be made available if accommodation could be provided.”

While there is no inventory attached to this brief, it appears that the foreign vehicle collection was still intact at that time.

The next piece of dated evidence is the picture of MOWAT’s StuG attached above. If the date is correct then by August 1956, the collection had been dispersed with at least the StuG and JagdPanzer IV located in Shilo.

So the locations for this StuG appear to be: Assigned to the defense of Amsterdam, recovered from the Germans after surrender by the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, 1 Cdn War Museum Collection Team (1945), Antwerp (briefly in 1945), Montreal (briefly in 1945), Ottawa/Hull (late 1945 – early 1946), Borden (early 1946 - ?), Shilo (unknown dates, but present in 1956), Calgary (unknown dates), Dr William Gregg (as related by Stew in March of this year), Fred Ropkey (spelling?), then see the link James P provided in post 23 for subsequent movements.

The date I am personally most interested in determining is when and why the decision was made to disperse the collection from Borden. Finding documents from this date may help to determine the whereabouts of the missing vehicles.

For the Jagdpanzer IV, the chain of movements is similar. It was captured by 4 Cdn Armd Div near Wilhelmshaven, travelled aboard the S.S. Grafton Park to West St. John, travelled by rail direct to Borden (late 1945), Shilo (sometime prior to Aug 1956) and then ended up at the Canadian War Museum.

I currently have no evidence regarding any other WW2 German vehicles that were present in Shilo, I wonder if the Jagdpanzer IVs move to the CWM coincided with the arrival of the Kanonenjagdpanzer 90 and there may have been assumptions made about a trade?

Colin
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