Australia and Lend-Lease

[Lang]

Mike

Paragraph 8(a) of the treaty says what happened to the American equipment left in Australia. We paid $6,500,000 for it and we now owned it.

In lieu of any specific American equipment sales records on your radar do you suppose that stuff was just sold off (or kept in storage as you indicated for lots of gear) along with the rest of the equipment? eg A sale of 100 jeeps in Townsville may have included 20 American jeeps with no differentiation?

The Australian jeeps would have been recorded and written off on the records which you have access to but the American jeep records could be as simple as a note in the sales report saying " Lot 34 Ford Jeep USA" or even just "Lot 34 Ford Jeep"?

A bit more info from that treaty stated not only would Australia still get all the gear they ordered that was on board ships at sea they would also get all their current back orders fulfilled by American contractors and this would be loaded on to ships by the Americans for Australia - who covered the cost of freight.

I believe this is probably where the big stocks of new equipment, not refurbished, (Studebakers, White Scout Cars? etc) stored at Bandiana, Singleton and other depots came from.

Lang

[Mike Cecil]

Lang,

The CDC disposals reporting I have located thus far is quite specific as to the source of the materiel: Australian army, RAAF and RAN equipment, including items supplied under LL, are listed as such, and RLL equipment returned to the Commonwealth from US Forces is listed separately as the value had to be accounted for against the RLL account. Virtually all vehicles are listed by chassis/engine numbers and military registration number - be that RAN, RAAF, Aust Army, US Army, US Navy, etc.

All I can say is that I've not come across any CDC listings for the disposal of US Forces equipment left in Australia (other than RLL equipment being returned to the Commonwealth) which, if there was so much of it as suggested by the article, you would anticipate some lists would have surfaced.

As for the back-orders, most were simply cancelled. For example, as of 30 June 1945, Australia had about 1,000 jeeps allocated from the monthly production quota in America against orders and awaiting shipping. Most of these were subsequently shipped to Australia, but the back-orders for a further 4,000-odd were simply cancelled.

Mike

[Lang]

Mike

I believe that particular cancellation was the result of the war nearing an end and an operational decision that no more were needed, not a part of the after-conflict tidy up.

Far from the Americans being generous or the Australians honoring their LL orders, I have read that the Americans REQUIRED the contracts to be completed post-war to avoid American industry having the rug pulled out from under them as they transferred to peacetime production. The wording in the treaty also seems to indicate the outstanding orders were binding.

There are many records of brand new equipment rolling off the line to be instantly scrapped or added to the vast American foreign aid of the period (not because they were generous but to keep their industries going in the change-over period)

The treaty is very clear that American goods owned by Australia may never be sold in USA solely to protect their industry and vice-versa.

Of course there would have been many orders between Australia and American manufacturers not part of Lend Lease on a commercial basis, and in-house trading such as between GM USA/Canada and GMH, that well could have been cancelled.

Lang