[David Dunlop]

You may recall when I was working on the other two boxes/cases for the 52-Set, the presence of a tan/yellow paint on the front of these items kept popping up. Well this last case to be restored for the project, the Cases, Operating, Remote Receiver, should finally explain what was going on.

Subsequent to the original factory finishing of the three boxes/cases for the 52-Set by Canadian Marconi Company, this equipment went through several upgrades while in service with the Canadian Army, throughout the later 40’s and 1950’s. This typically involved a repaint in the new NATO green that had entered the system, and slight variations to the stencilling, which was still in white paint, but usually in different locations on the front panel of the box/case, and quite often included deletion of the CMC Part Number information.

Around 1960, when the new NATO Stock Number System conversion was in full swing, it appears that in order to completely remove all traces of any of the older stencil information, the quick way was to paint this old information completely over on the front panel with a thick coat of tan/yellow paint, and apply the new NATO Stock Number data in black paint.

So the first line on the stencil in this photo is the NATO Stock Number equivalent of the wartime VAOS Stock Number ZA/CAN 4729. I have no idea what the remaining information means. This would have been the item description in the old VAOS System, but what I see here, suggests that if one needs to know what this item actually is, you need to look that information up somewhere else.

The last line, hand written in black felt marker would have been written on the case when the 52-Set equipment was finally surplussed out of the supply system in the early 1970’s, in the Canadian Army.



David