AIF vehicles to the Middle East

[Shane Lovell]

Hi guys

In the short time that I have been following this forum a number of questions concerning the provision of carriers and B vehicles have been raised and debated. This has raised my own curiosity and prompted me to look in the files at Australian Archives here in Canberra. On the whole these are not Army files, but files from the Prime Minister Department who had an overall co-ordinating role.

My initial findings are:

In the early war period all exchange of goods, vehicles, munitions etc was on a payment basis. For goods etc purchased from within the Commonwealth payments were centralised in London. It is probably worth noting that while Australia was an importer of certain vehicles and munitions, it was an exporter of agricultural produce and textiles.

With regard to vehicles, what could be purchased locally was done so and what could not be provided from Australia was then purchased from a Commonwealth ‘pool’. Purchases from the US were initially on a country to company basis, but then the US Government required Commonwealth purchases to occur through the British Purchasing Commission. This seems to be the sytem that existed pre-lend lease.

A feature of many of the files are the various Cabinet funding submissions for the purchase of munitions / vehicles which includes large A3 sized tables itemising each individual vehicle type to be purchased, the number required, their unit cost and total cost. An example of this is the fitting out of 1 Aust Corps to go to the Middle East in 1940. The attached table contains a complete breakdown of vehicles for each Division and Corps troops. Although the tables were optimistic and were regularly amended due to things such as British changes to unit Wes, with they subsequent changes to vehicle requirements they do give a good example of the financial focus of the Government

A report by General Blamey was very critical of the non WD pattern vehicles in Australian service in the ME. His main criticism was that they were not as durable as the WD pattern machines.

Another report notes that the AIF lost approximately 2200 vehicles in Greece. This must have placed a considerable strain on vehicle replacement pools.

Another file table notes all the vehicles shipped from Australia to the Middle East and is dated some time in late 1940. I still need to copy this but will endeavour to post its contents. The one number I remember is that 50 Aust pattern carriers were recorded on the report. Interestingly, the Port Detachment, Base Ordnance Workshop diary held by AWM notes additional deliveries of LP Pattern carriers in late 1941. It even states that some of these are LP 2As.

I apologise in advance for the rambling nature. I will endeavour to post file references etc later.

For your edification… more to follow.

Shane