Raaf cmp 1956

[Stuart Kirkham]

Can someone shed some light on these two vehicles. Any reason why the tyres are bald?

Photo taken at RAAF Mallala, 1956.

[Lang]

Stuart,

Standard 7.50x20 dual wheel conversion - as probably the majority of blitz's working commercially had done to them.

Could carry a heavier load legally. RAAF probably followed suit with highway tread tyres - cheaper, smoother and lighter on the steering for airfield use.

Lang

[Phil Waterman]

Hi Stuart

When I blew the picture up the tread in the drivers side tire becomes visible, and appears to be as Lang said a standard Highway tire. This is not uncommon even during the war. Take a look at some pictures of CMPs taken in British Columbia during the war http://canadianmilitarypattern.com/C...20Columbia.htm you will see that many of the trucks have regular truck tires. The picture below shows regular tires being used in less than ideal circumstances with predictable results.


One of the reasons for this was that the military tires use a lot more rubber and thus trucks operating in non-tactical areas may have been fitted with regular tires as a rubber conservation measure. Also as Lang points out regular tires may actually wear better when operating on hard roads or surfaces.

Cheers Phil

[Mike Cecil]

They appear to be RAAF Fire Trucks. The type started life as RAAF fire truck design and constuction project, but then the war ended, so the majority of the contract were transferred to Army for use as Ordnance Vehicle Park (OVP) 'self contained' fire trucks, so only a small number were actually used by the RAAF. Some (unknown number) were later transferred to Dept Civil Aviation post-war, when airfields were still government operated.

Civilian type tyres were a common feature on both wartime and post war vehicles when the tactical environment allowed it. The type often used in Australia was the Dunlop 'Silent 90'.

Mike C

[Keith Webb]

Mallala which is north of Adelaide was No.6 Service Flying Training School for the RAAF, teaching young pilots who had just graduated from elementary flying training on Tiger Moths.
On graduation at the end of this course they were awarded their wings. The aircraft used for the purpose was the Avro Anson.
Photo: Mallala Museum

[Keith Webb]

Here's another interesting one of an International from the Museum's flikr pics:




Incidentally that first pic in this thread is shown in the Mallala Museum's collection.

[Lang]

I think that photo of Mallala is a fake. Probably done for PR/propaganda purposes.

If you look at the aircraft they are all totally identical in perfect rows - nowhere for them to taxi past each other, same shadows and reflections. Down the back the artist even put one half of an aircraft on the dirt to keep his perfect spacing.

The only other explaination is it was after the war and every Anson in the Australian fleet was gathered there for disposal like they did with the Spitfires at Oakey etc.

Wonder how many aircraft they actually had in Mallala?

[Mike Cecil]

Is there a registration number visible?

Forgot to add: the dual wheels were part of the original RAAF design for the fire tender/crash tender, to take the greater loading of the fire fighting liquid.

Mike C

[Stuart Kirkham]

Thanks for all the replies.

I would think that bar tread tyres would be incompatible with tarmac and grass driving. Would be a heck quieter as well.

Anyone got photos of the entire vehicle?

The line up of Ansons does look very pricise. It may be that the aircraft have been positioned like this in antisipation of a disposal auction. During military service, you would normally expect one third of the aircraft to be in the hangers for repair/routine maintenance/repaint etc. This is not the case in the photo.

[Stew Robertson]

I noticed that the truck is sporting split rims also

[Stuart Kirkham]

Found a photo of the entire truck.