History of 10.50-16 tyres

[mlombard]

Hi

Ok so I know that the subject of CMP / Blitz tyres has been done to death here, and I'm not about to repeat it, BUT I'd like to know the history of some military tyre sizes. So we have:
9.00 x 13
9.00 x 16
10.50 x 16
11.00 x 20
My particular interest is 10.50 x 16, the reason is I was chasing some, like many others.

However I am lucky enough to have access to quite a heap of old tyre catalogues and some Tyre and Rim Association publications. So, and this is where it gets interesting, these catalogues have lots of tyre types and tyre sizes, and they go back to the early 1950's at least.

So I can find all the others sizes in these catalogues, 9.00x13, 9.00x16 and 11.00x20's etc., but nothing, nada, zilch about 10.50x16, they have 10.00x15 and 10.00x20 etc. But,, and here is the really interesting thing, it has 10.50x16 when it comes to inflation pressures etc., and tells me the ply rating etc. So whilst the tyre companies, and we are talking Dunlop, Goodyear and Perdiau etc. here, acknowledge that they exist,, they didn't sell them, well not at least to a civilian market, post WWII. So anybody care to shed some light on this.