C15 Wireless Van (aust )

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Thanks Jim! These are the toal Perth-assembled '43 C60L chassis that I know of:

2-8443-00132-P ASSEMBLED 9/8/1943
2-8443-00135-P ASSEMBLED 8/10/1943
2844300143P ENGINE # PR3,868,444 W.O.53 ASSEMBLED DECEMBER 8 1943
28443P00223 ENGINE # PR3,883,068 ASSEMBLED DECEMBER 31 1943
28443P00260 ENGINE # PR3,875,505 WO82 ASSEMBLED 28 MARCH 1944
28443P00264 ENGINE # PR3,875,501 ASSEMBLED MAY 1944

And just two '43 8421:

2842100111P ENGINE # SR3,835,344 W.O.73 10/4/43
2842100128P ENGINE# SR3,857,769 28 APRIL 1943 [PROBABLY 28/4/43

In peacetime, Perth vehicles were interesting as the Plant may have been the one that produced the least Chevrolets each year. The assembly dates suggest that the prodcution was very slow, or these were release dates, i.e. after body fitting and chassis-cabs could have been sitting around stored for some time.

[jim sewell]

Thanks for the info David

I have another C15 2-8421-00077 ( no letter ) SR 3835415
Was this one assembled in Perth as well ?

Regards
Jim S

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

A = ADELAIDE
B - BRISBANE
M = MELBOURNE
P = PERTH
S = SYDNEY

However, it appears that in later post-war years, say around 1958, Brisbane did not bother to use "B". In fact the only Brisbane-assembled CMP I know of is:

38444B00073

So the one you have just mentioned could be a Brisbane truck. However I know of several CMPs assembled by Holden that do not have Plant Codes, so perhaps Brisbane trucks are more common than the above might suggest? All cabs were assembled at Woodville, near Melbourne though.

[Keith Webb]

All I can say David is there is a lack of consistency in the way Holden stamped the data plates. There are many I've seen with no plant code and Sydney production almost never added a build date. It's interesting to see the mis-stamping of the chassis number on the data plate of Jim's vehicle.

Jim, now see from the picture you posted the tac sign is on the door which is also unusual, and while the numbers look like an ARN this wasn't the approved location either... there should be one on the rear of the vehicle, possibly either on the missing door or on the right side.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

G'day Keith:

Compare these known Holden '43 C15s:

2842100041S
2842100047S
2842100074
2-8421-00077
2842100091M
2842100100
2842100111P
28421M00116M
2842100128P
2842100166
2842100244M
2842100317M
2842100360S
2842100373S
2842100380S
2842100412S
2842100415S
2842100437S
2842100441S
2842100479M
2842100490M
2842100506S
2842100508S
2842100518S
2842100519S
2842100538M
2842100591M
2842100592M
2842100609M
2842100613M
2842100615M
2842100706S
2842100711M
2842100712M
2842100730M
28421000919

Now, notice that apart from one suspicious number, all Plant codes were at the end? Some Plants always did their own thing, and located the Plant Code after the Model Number, and others at the end of the sequential. Also, each Plant started with # 00001, and therefore there could be up to five CMPs with the same sequential number but the Plant code differentiated. This was the case up to 1959 after which this problem was sorted I believe. So, it was nothing new! My suggestion is that the stamped chasiss number was the correct one, and the one that the Government used.

[Paul Ramsden]

Speaking as a model maker the camouflage on that black and white image of an Australian signal van looks quite complex. Any idea what colours it would be?

[oztankboy]

hi there!

Well common 2 colour sceam would be pine green base woth portland stone over. See pic of my M3 as an example.

Phil...

[Mike Kelly]

The actual colours are nigh on impossible to work out . This article says it all :

http://anzacsteel.hobbyvista.com/oth...siecamlw_1.htm

I was at a local vintage car swap today at Trafalgar and I spotted a guy with a big board advertising various vehicles for sale , on the sign was a C15 van and a F15A too . His phone number was on the sign and I went away to find a pen , 15 mins later , I returned and he was gone ..... no board , nothing . He had vanished into thin air .

The 1942 Aust. camo notes are posted on the MCC site

http://www.geocities.com/vk3cz/camoausttxt.html

Mike

[jim sewell]

Nice looking truck Mike
Well done .
I noticed that this unit has the manual dipstick fuel gauge as well , was this standard for the wireless vans ?
Regards
Jim S.

[Mike Kelly]

Jim

That wireless van isn't mine , it's owned by Andrew Tostevin in Adelaide . He is a ham radio op and uses the old radio gear . He would be a good source of info as he has researched the vans and he's restoring a 4X4 version of the van . Twins no less , a 4X2 and a 4X4 .....

I can PM his details if your interested .

Mike

[Mike Kelly]

[i]All cabs were assembled at Woodville, near Melbourne though. [/B]

David ,

Woodville is a suburb of Adelaide , the Melbourne plant was at ( and BTW still is ) Fishermens Bend .

Mike

[Pedr]

"borrowed" from
"Formation Signs and Vehicle Markings of the Australian Army 1903-1983"
By Stephen Taubert
ISBN 0 646 34505 2

"2nd AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY DIVISION ®

This division was raised in February 1942, and served in New South Wales and Western Australia. The formation sign was a Penguin set above a Boomerang in black and white. The background colour would therefore be the normal colour of the vehicle. When integrated into the desert camouflage pattern used by the 2nd Division, the background colour would have been Sand or Desert Yellow. "

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I do apologise for not remembering correctly. Here's some history:

James Alexander Holden’s grandson, Edward “Edward W. “Ted”” Wheewall Holden had been the Managing Director since Holden’s Motor Body Builders was registered late 1917, and incorporated 25 February 1919 as HOLDEN’S MOTOR BODY BUILDERS LIMITED. Amongst others Holdens’ were building car and commercial bodies for General Motors’ vehicles imported from the U.S. and Canada. In 1923, William Arthur Holden, Edward W. “Ted”’s younger brother, instigated a search for a site for a new purpose-built premises in the Adelaide area. His enquiries led to a tract of land in open countryside lying between Adelaide and the Port, and as a consequence, 22 acres of land near the railway line were purchased for the first purpose-built plant, which was intended to include a 10 acre factory: Woodville body Plant, which was to build Holden bodies for the various operations then in train such as Melbourne Tramcars.

In 1926, General Motors Export Company incorporated a new subsidiary, the aforesaid GENERAL MOTORS (AUSTRALIA) PROPERTY LIMITED, based in Melbourne and Sydney, and Innes K. Randolph was appointed the company’s first Managing Director: Randolph had been in one of the Indian Sales Offices with Graeme K. Howard and was promoted and moved by General Motors Export Company to Australia to head the new subsidiary. Laurence J. Hartnett and G.C. Sears had replaced Randolph and Howard in India. This was a proper assembly operation of chassis exported from U.S. Plants, Chevrolet kits being supplied from the Tarrytown-on-Hudson Assembly Plant which exported S.U.P. cars, with “22” prefixes [these were the special chassis with cowl as against fully C.K.D. until the 1929 Models which were sourced from Bloomfield Boxing Plant]. Holdens’ had started producing closed bodies for Hudson and Essex in 1925, and then for 1926 assembled bodies from imported packs which were virtually identical to North American bodies. From this point on, more and more local content was added. This work required the installation of a much larger panel press at Woodville, which resulted in the acquisition and installation of a 40-ton machine that could exert a pressure of 300 tons and process 160 panels per hour. Increases in demand and output in 1926 resulted in increases in floor-space, with the result that the company claimed that they were the largest of their kind in the Empire outside Canada.

Further upgrading of Woodville which totalled A£460,000 with the new company purchase cost, saw the installation of heavy presses for cowl and door panel stamping and an increase of floor space at Woodville to 23 acres to allow production of up to 300 bodies per day. A further result was the removal of work and the Head Office from the original Adelaide city building to Woodville. Speculation was then rife that General Motors (Australia), the assembly operation was to take over Holdens’ but Randolph and his counterpart Edward W. “Ted” Holden put down this idea.

In 1929 It was agreed that Holden’s Motor Body Builders Limited and General Motors (Australia) Pty. Ltd. were to be merged at last, which was achieved in April 1931 using General Motors (Australia) funds amounting to £1,111,600 which had been earned but not repatriated to New York because of currency restrictions then in force. Autocar 5 December 1958 stated that “Holdens” [the Holden family?] received 6% Preference Shares which normally carried no voting rights, in the new company, and the rest of the Capital was American. In its first year, the new company showed a record loss of A£561,000. The new company was entitled GENERAL MOTORS-HOLDEN’S PROPERTY LIMITED, with an headquarters in Melbourne, and ultimately assembly Plants in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and finally Perth, plus the Woodville body plant.

The GM-Holden's Plant addresses were:
City Road, Melbourne, Victoria
Bridge Street, Sydney, New South Wales
Wickham Street, Valley, Brisbane, Queensland
Corner Rann & Birkenhead Streets, Birkenhead, South Australia
Corner Buckland & Victoria Streets, Cottelsoe Beach, Western Australia

[Pedr]

"7th AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY DIVISION
(A.I.F.) ®

This division, along with the 6th, saw active service in the Middle East and Greece as part of the Commonwealth Forces. One of its Brigades the 18th also took part in the Defence of Tobruk. The division also fought against the Vichy French in Syria before being recalled to Australia in 1942. The division was then sent to New Guinea, were it was involved in battles at Finschafen, and Lae as well as operations in the Markham and Ramu Valley’s and in the Madang and Hansa Bay areas. The original formation sign, authorised by the Department of the Army on 20th June 1940, was a Kookaburra on a Boomerang in white and brown on a black background.

Note should be made of the fact that this stencil was originally made in two parts, one for each colour, when finally made as a single stencil (second recognized sign) the person applying the sign was meant to touch up the appropriate areas with brown paint. Due mainly to a lack of time, materials, and tradesmen the sign was normally applied in outline only, white on a black ground (third recognized sign).

The fourth sign is an unauthorised stencil depicting a Kookaburra in flight above a boomerang, both in white on a black background, and is based on an actual photograph, (AWM Negative No. 071312). The sign was painted on a few of the vehicles belonging to the divisional headquarters as a joke. The reason for this is thought to be connected with the fact that for a short period, during operations in the Markham Valley of New Guinea, the division commanded the American 503rd Parachute Regiment. Who along with a small section of divisional artillery took part in an air insertion operation at Nadzab; full details of this operation can be read in the official war histories of the period."

[jim sewell]

Thanks for the additional information gents .

Yes Mike I would like Andrew's address , PM me , thanks .
Some more data from plates on the truck , note that under the bonett is 1942 , assembly date was 1943 and no WO model number just the name on the model ie, wiress signals van .

ARN is 67834

Regards
Jim S

[jim sewell]

data plate

[jim sewell]

1942 under bonnett , assembled in 1943

[Pedr]

"A little scrap of metal"

Olive Drab Magazine Vol2 No1 Aug/Sep2002
Official magazine of the Military Vehicle Collectors Society of South Australia and the National Military Vehicle Museum of Australia.

By Julie Baird
Senior Curator
The National Motor Museum – Birdwood

When most people think of the National Motor Museum’s collection, large vehicles spring to mind. The museum has over 400 vehicles on display in Birdwood including the 1898 Shearer and the 1908 Talbot, the first car to cross Australia. What is less well known is the museum’s broad collection of Automobilia.


The term Automobilia covers a wide array of transport related objects from oil bottles and toys to brochures and jewellery – and identification plates.

In 1856, four years after emerging from Staffordshire England, James Alexander Holden began his saddle making and leather working business on King William Street, Adelaide. German immigrant, Henry Frost joined Holden in 1885 and the company expanded during the nineteenth century. By 1914, Holden and Frost were still leather workers but also ironmongers, horse drawn coachbuilders and repairers, motorcycle sidecar body builders and car upholsterers.

Most international car manufacturers developed from blacksmiths, bicycle or armament manufacturers or coachbuilders. Holden and Frost began building car bodies in 1914. In 1917, the wartime Australian Government restricted the importation of complete cars, because they were seen as luxury items. Only one complete car could be imported for every three chassis. Holden and Frost were able to move into the car body market on a large scale. Holden Motor Body Builders was created as a separate division of Holden and Frost in 1918 and produced 587 car bodies in their first year. Local body building on an imported chassis was an international phenomenon and accounts for the variation between cars of the same make, model and year worldwide. Coachbuilders used plates attached to the bodies of cars to identify their work. Customers may buy an American Dodge but the plate signifies a South Australian made Holden Body.

It is at this juncture in time that the object pictured finds its significance. A winged figure representing industry sits towering in the foreground cradling a car in his left arm. He holds a sledgehammer in his right arm, its head resting between his feet at the lower centre of the plate. Six factory buildings belch smoke in the background. Classical columns surround the scene. The base of the scene has bold capital letters HOLDEN BODY. It is a perfect example of image portraying “industry as god and saviour”.

This ornate badging was not suitable for small pressing and was expensive to produce. As car body production numbers increased, the company found the design increasingly unsuitable and in 1926 began searching for a new symbol.

The now familiar lion replaced the winged figure of industry in 1928. It was designed by George Raynor Hoff, a leading sculptor and based on the Egyptian lion used to symbolize Britain’s Wembley exhibition in 1924. The original sculpture remains in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Today’s corporate symbolism for the company is based on the Hoff sculpture.

As fashion for historical illusions changed and the need for faster and cheaper production methods triumphed, we are left with a small scrap of metal with an idealistic vision of industrialism as a reminder of the beginning of a South Australian car manufacturing giant.

[Rod Diery]

Hi Jim, Is this the same van as this one which I believe was yours at Beverley WA a few years ago?

Cheers
Rod

[jim sewell]

Yes Rod , have finally brought it to Perth to start on it , which I am looking forward to .
Have sent you a PM .
Regards
Jim S.