Royal Navy vehicles

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by Andrew Morrison

To bring a CMP into this thread I have seen the remains of 15 cwt bodies with RN in white letters on the sides in Australia.

Would these have been local supply from Australian manufactured vehicles or imported by the RN from the UK? There were after all plenty of CMP vehicles parked up across the country at the time.

This was a few years ago and cannot remember if they were local or Canadian type.

During the later stages of the Pacific war, the RN sent out aircraft carriers and other vessels to Australia , places like Sydney were buzzing with RN units . They were building up for the expected invasion of the Japanese mainland. I do know of a restored C8AX that was marked with RN on the doors .The owner attempted to trace its histroy through RN archives , but came up with nothing .

Maybe these vehicles were on loan or purchased even .Or maybe the RN officially or unofficially pilfered a few vehicles from the islands as deck cargo.
We will never know the full story .Many vehicles changed ownership with a few bottles of booze as payment .

114892
Physical description: Black & white
Summary: SYDNEY HARBOUR, NSW. 1945-09-06. THE ROYAL NAVY MIDGET SUBMARINE, THE XE4 EXITER, CRUISING ROUND THE HARBOUR.


Mike

[T. Metsovitis]

Quite by chance I found the book "Moving Bases, Royal Navy Maintenance Carriers and Monabs" by Cmdr David Hobbs. In it are quite a few pictures of interesting vehicles. I was fascinated by the workshops based on Bedford QLTs.









There was also this airborne radar maintenance vehicle based on an Ausin K6 crew bus:



Fyll

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by T. Metsovitis

Quite by chance I found the book "Moving Bases, Royal Navy Maintenance Carriers and Monabs" by Cmdr David Hobbs. In it are quite a few pictures of interesting vehicles.

Fyll,

Great pics, thanks!

Hanno

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Early Willys MA Jeep in RN service, courtesy of Life and Google:

AD093240-049B-4A01-905A-4DC3EC9A822E.jpeg
http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images...7c718a_landing

A US Navy yeoman and a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service sitting in a US Jeep marked with a Royal Navy license at the US Naval Operations Base.
Location: Londonderry, United Kingdom
Date taken: 1942
Photographer: David E. Scherman

[Richard Farrant]

Great pictures Fyll

Are there any more interesting ones? I once restored a Morris Commercial C4 compressor truck, it was had original wartime Royal Navy numbers and the unit designtion, "4MLRU" which I am now thinking is something to do with the mobile maintenace units that travelled around with the Coastal Forces, as shown earlier in this thread.

[Noel Burgess]

Excellent photos - never seen anything quite like that before.
That book has just been added to my christmas list
Noel

[Larry Hayward]

It's great to look at old posts sometimes. I have just found out that CFMU stands for Coastal Forces Maintenance Unit. Now all I need is to find what 4MLRU stands for! An MARU was a Mobile Ammunition Repair Unit and ML in the RN is used for Motor Launch so is MLRU - Motor Launch Repair Unit?

Thinking about RN operations you can image that ships would put in to the nearest port with damage- that would then be repaired by mobile units using cutting tools, grinders and generators as seen in the photos posted here.

Has anyone got any more to post?

[chalky]

This ex RN crane lives at Threlkeld museum UK , its american manufactured with truck cab badged 'Transit Crane' and a Bucyrus Erie ( not Ruston ) crane a 22b I think, I'm guessing its post war , but why would the Royal Navy buy American at that time? so is it wartime ?
Reg no. is 7835RN