Hollandia

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by Lang

Mike

I don't think it was as simple as that. Australia had a government purchasing commission in USA and deals were mainly done on a commercial basis.

As discussed in another thread unlike UK, Australia had relatively few Lend Lease acquisitions and bought most of its equipment or traded the value for goods and services provided to US forces in Australia.

Macarthur's people may have helped push Australian orders ahead in the queue for certain operational reasons. Remember that for well over a year the only combat troops in contact with the enemy Macarthur had on the ground were Australian units.

Lang

There was large scale "unofficial" vehicle procurement as well as the official . The unofficial vehicles in the SWPA would have been in high numbers , in the field vehicle swapping was going on continuously.

I have a book written by RAAF wireless mechanics, they would routinely fly long distances ( from Australia to PNG ) to American aircraft dumps to salvage stuff from discarded US aircraft , this was all unofficial of course bit it happened all the time.

The official records in the archives don't tell the whole story

[Lang]

Mike

Depends what you call "large scale". Lot of jeep in a box mythology surrounds these stories.

There were certainly a lot of private small item deals carried out (particularly when Australian soldiers had a beer ration and officers a spirit ration when nearby American units were dry)

There is nothing to support stories of dozens or even hundreds, according to the teller, of vehicles being "borrowed".

Every vehicle had an owner and even the Americans had to account for each one. They had been transported at huge cost and risk of life to the front. For an officer to write off a vehicle when it had been sold/traded/given away was a criminal offence and would only have been done if there was a really good reason or if something of real value was received in return. Most of these deals were done on a local semi-official basis. "You need one of our tip trucks and we need one of your graders"

Of course theft was a major problem (drilling numbers into bodies etc was some defence) and on all major bases there was a punishment camp with many offenders on their way home to serve prison time before a dishonorable discharge.

Lang

[Mike K]

Maybe MacArthur was just offering an alternative where he could bypass the official system, after all he thought he was God and in his mind he could walk on water .

The AWM stuff is all mixed up, I did save some of it but they keep on changing everything around and remove stuff which is annoying to say the least.

[Lang]

Mike

Macarthur was certainly an ego-maniac ( and most were - Montgomery, Patten etc) who surrounded himself with often, incompetent, Yes-men (General Kenney was the exception and he was one of the outstanding Air Force Generals of any country during WW2).

I am sure he was saying he had influence in the right quarters rather than offering specific items.

Lang