AEDB Design Record of Canadian-Developed Military Vehicles in WW 2 (1945)

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Having read many times about the famous Canadian Army Engineering Design Branch "Design Record", and seen some of its contents, this is the first time I have seen them in full.

Now I have thanks to "RCEME Archivist" who has uploaded all eight volumes of the AEDB Design Records on the Internet Archive from where they can be downloaded.
I have saved them on this MLU google drive folder as well: AEDB Design Record

Sit down and enjoy reading them!

During the Second World War, the Army Engineering Design Branch of the Canadian Department of Munitions and Supply was responsible for the design and development of military vehicles in Canada. At the end of the war, the AEDB produced an eight volume record that summarized the history and experience of the vehicle design projects. The volumes were:

Volume 1 - General and Index;
Volume 2 - Armoured Vehicles (other than tanks);
Volume 3 - Tanks and Tank Type Vehicles;
Volume 4 - Self-propelled Mechanical Transport Type Vehicles;
Volume 5 - Bodies and Non-technical Vehicles;
Volume 6 - Technical Vehicles;
Volume 7 - Trailers;
Volume 8 - Mud and Snow Vehicles.

[rob love]

What a treasure chest. If you go to the link you provided for "RCEME Archivist" he has downloaded many many of the publications. The old LORE and RCEME digests have a lot of articles on equipment, both what was in service then in the 50s thru to the 80s, as well as historical articles.

I have some of those issues in my library, but not all. Looks like I will have a lot of reading to do.

[Phil Waterman]

Hi Hanno

First, thank you for posting the links. As Rob said what a treasure trove of information. Over the years I have seen bits and pieces of the AEDB Design Record but this is the first time I seen the whole thing.

Now that I've downloaded the whole thing I get the the next question. Do I print out the whole think or read the PDFs on the computer?

Again thanks


Comment on Downloading- Before you download all eight volumes, play around a little with the file types of the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS to see which works best for your computer. I found that I wanted to use PDF WITH TEXT slightly larger files but makes it possible to do word searches. The plan PDF gives you an image of the pages and on my computer (Apple) will not search on individual words.


Cheers Phil

[Alex van de Wetering]

Hanno....again, thanks for sharing this!

I too had seen parts of the books, but just like Phil and you I had never seen the whole thing. It seems there is lot's of interesting material in there.

Comment on Downloading- Before you download all eight volumes, play around a little with the file types of the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS to see which works best for your computer. I found that I wanted to use PDF WITH TEXT slightly larger files but makes it possible to do word searches. The plan PDF gives you an image of the pages and on my computer (Apple) will not search on individual words.

Phil, thanks for that...I hadn't noticed those options. It seems there are two ways of downloading the books.....at the bottom right there is a list of "Download options"...and the top left when pressing the circle with the 3 dots it shows "Downloadable files", and only gives the option PDF or Epub.