Canadian NSN Catalog

[David Dunlop]

I ran across a reference on line earlier today about the existence of the above item.

Apparently, it is a multi-volume publication titled, Canadian Army Catalog of Material, dated February 1964 and covers everything in use by the Canadian Army at that time.

How it is set up, or used as a reference, I do not know, so I am wondering is anybody has ever run across these publications? It would be interesting to know if these publications could provide any indication of how much World War Two material was still in service in 1964 and what the NSN references for said materials would have been.


David

[Ed Storey]

Yes, the Canadian Army Catalogue of Material was a multi-volume series of catalogues from the mid-1960s with each catalogue covering a specific NATO supply class. For instance if you wished to order a flag or pennant then 7610-21-116-3338 Canadian Army Catalogue of Materiel - Supply Class 8345 - Flags and Pennants - 1964 would be the catalgue to consult. Not every unit held a complete set of these catalgues as they would only have the volumes which applied to the material classes they held in their respective stores.

These catalogues evolved over time and it was the Canadian Army Catalgue of Ordnance stores which predated the Material Catalogue. The wartime volumes were called Vocabulary of Army Ordnance Stores and again covered a specific stock class but of course at that time the catalguing system being used was British. After the Vocabulary Catalogues and prior to the Canadian Army Catalgue of Ordnance Stores was the Canadian Ordnance Catalogue which began the change over to the NATO catalguing system.

You also have to remember that both the RCN and the RCAF also had their own catalguing systems.

Naturally there is a lot of wartime material in these catalgues as the three services began a serious post-war program of catalguing and quantifying the vast amounts of material they had languishing in their respective stores, and this became even more administratively challenging during both the change over to the NATO classification system and then unification of the Canadian military in the late 1960s.

The three service's catalgues became the Canadian Forces Catalgue of Material in the 1970s and is divided by NATO class.

This is just a quick overview of supply catalgues as there is more to the story and I have much more to learn on what is a specialized field of study.

[rob love]

By the late 1970s, microfiche replaced the older books. CFP137pt1 was the main index of NSNs, but there were others which cross-referred the manufacturer numbers to NSN, the LOCAT section which indexed LOCAT (locally assigned) numbers, and the recognised manufacturer part numbers.


In the 90s we went to CDs and eventually it was online. I still prefer the CGCM over the newer CGCS version today as it lets you cross refer over more fields.



I did have a few of the older stocked class catalogues which I would use in the tool crib back in Winnipeg. They were an alphabetical listing of everything within that stock class. One section I found amusing in the 5120 stock class catalogue was "tools, no known use".

[David Dunlop]

Geez, Rob, I hope there isn’t a CO Staff Guide with a corresponding classification.


David

[David Dunlop]

Hello Ed.

Thanks for taking the time to post that information. That is quite an evolution of documentation, and quite frankly, any of them would be a significant challenge to maintain in the pre-computer era.

I have a mid-1940’s copy of the British ZA VAOS Catalogue printed just before the explosion of new equipment coming on stream leading up to D-Day and I had heard stories a lot of that equipment was not fully documented for some time.

David

[Ed Storey]

Yes, there was a huge amount of new material introduced during the war that did not get catalogued until after the conflict was over. You have to look into the wartime Army and Routine Orders to keep up as new material and changes were at times recorded in those documents. Looking at wartime British vocubularies, even if an item is listed, without an image, the description can be vague or misleading.

[rob love]

I always wondered why the electronic versions of the CGCM and CGCS did not include a photo of each item. It would save millions in not ordering the wrong part. There is/was a way to search the part number thru the EIF catalogue and that would hopefully get you to the illustration in the part catalogue. They also use Equipment Reference numbers (ERN) which will tell you what equipment the part or bolt is used on, and you can then work backwards to figure it out. For instance, if the ERNs for a headlight was 30350, 30460 and 30105, you could search the MLVW, the 5 ton, and the M151A2 manual for a line drawing.