[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Demand S/M 2019 was the first, I believe, serious order for CMPs for the Mid-East, together with contemporary but numerically higher S/M Demands for GTs etc.

My notes say:

LORRY 3 TON 4 X 4 GS MUST BE MIXED ORDER BETWEEN CHEVROLET 8443 AND FORD C018Q S/M 2019 CONTRACT 294/V/4288 F.60L
L 773980-7741532

The Chevrolets might include L 1304787 and L 1305132 issued to NZEF and AIF in Mid-East respectively and L 4624486 to the AIF

As regards Fords, these may have been for the UK only initially and were assembled here under 294/V/4288. We know that the Fords were built by April 1941 and included
2G-14877-F
/14658-F
/14881-F
/14685-F
/14909-F
/15125-F
/14474-F
/14564-F
/15056-F
/14463-F
/15165-F
/14682-F
/15058-F
/14855-F
/15149-F
/14349-F


because they were w/o in the train crash en route to the port!

Then: "S/M 2104 WAS SUBMITTED 2 JULY 1941 TO CANADA AND COMPRISED 10,000 3-TON LORRIES “SIMILAR TO SM 2019 FORD AND CHEVROLET” WITH 10.50 X 20 GENERAL PURPOSE TYRES PACKS CKD, NOTE CKD, FOR ASSEMBLY IN INDIA AND SOUTH AFRICA. THE DESTINATIONS MUST HAVE CHANGED BY AUTUMN 1942 - 150 UNITS DESTINED FOR SINGAPORE; 145 FOR AUSTRALIA; CUMULATIVE PRODUCTION AT 30 JUNE 1942: 9,641
[FOR EGYPT] and 9,695 BY OCTOBER 1942

This I believe was a 60% Chev/40% Ford for 10,000 3-tonners, but Australia ordered 9,828 for the A.M.F. Australian Order No. 828, sent to the War Office.

So you can see the Australian requests bore fruit and 2104 was lodged 2nd July 1941, probably fortuitously as it then took well into the following year to get production and deliveries under way and by then Pearl Harbor had been and gone and priorities changed.


However I can now confirm that the very first Australian orders for CMPs were included in orders placed in Canada for Australia on 2nd August 1941:
FORD 112" Passenger cars...12
3-TON 4 X 4 134" W.B........2025
3-TON 4 x 4 158" W.B........1731
FORD 11T MCP.................306 including 300 already ordered direct by Australia though it must have been for US 6-cylinders.

However, the only one I know of must have been S/M 2106 which were all shipped direct to overseas, and 400 went to Basra, though a quanity went to Australia. I have no information yet on 2105 and 2107 but until proven otherwise I conject that these related to these first orders. Perhaps there is a record card for these? The next known Australian orders were S/M 2126 and 2127 which included F60S and C60S, produced around September 1942.