[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Ah, Bruce. You have touched on another of the Great Mysteries in Life: Military Nomenclature. It never ceases to amaze me!

For starters, one practically trips over the letter ‘C’ in Canadian Army communications. In researching my 52-Set, I have seen communications between Canadian Marconi and the Canadian Army where Marconi identifies any wireless set they are referencing by its full name. In the return correspondence from the Army, these names invariably become,’C9’, ‘C9 MkI’, ‘C9 MkII’, ‘C52’, ‘C19’ and on and on it goes. One would think it was to denote the word ‘Canadian’ because the sets were designed and built in Canada

The 'C' prefix was to denote Canadian design or manufacture because not all of the parts would interchange with the British manufactured set (if such existed).

, but they were still doing it in the 1960’s when the Plessey 42 Set came over from England for use in the Canadian Army and became the C42. But nothing about the 42 Set was ever built in Canada to my knowledge.

No, that is entirely different: they changed the set numbering system from the original "Single digit refers to its distance from the sharp end, 2 digits mean the first digit is the 're-design' level, second digit is the role, so you get WS1 = front line set, replaced by WS11, then WS21 (except it wasn't); WS2 replaced by WS12, WS4, 5 & 6 were progressively higher power (only 3 WS6's were built, one for Aldershot, one for Gibraltar, and the third for Hong Kong as the Army Communications Chain).

The "New Range" after WW2 classified sets by their input power requirements, from 'A' - man-portable, runs off dry batteries, through 'B' vehicle mounted, low-power; 'C' medium power; 'D' high power in trucks, and 'E' very high power (static).

I've got the actual figures somewhere... Ah, decided in 1947 as the earlier nomenclature was based on the tactical role:

A - 0 - 10 Watts Dry battery operated.
B - 10 - 100 Watts Low power secondary battery sets
C - 100 - 1000 Watts medium power sets
D - 1000 - 10,000 Watts High power sets
E - above 10kW Very high power sets.

The figures following represented the frequency spectrum and version of the set.

10 - 30 MF/HF band 3-30 MHz
40 - 60 VHF band 30 - 300 MHz
70 - 90 SHF/EHF band above 300 MHz

"Thus a set with an input of under 10 watts with a frequency average of 3-8 MHz and the fourth in its series would be designated A14."

Then you have the British VAOS Directory, which adds a whole new spin.

Take this battery connector for example.

In a copy of the 1940 edition of the VAOS Directory I have, ZA 2270 is indeed a Connector, Single. But the similarity ends there. In 1940 it was a 12-inch cable of lighter gauge and the two end lugs were single hole items. Not at all like this heftier CMC product for the 52-Set.

The 52-Set Manual identifies this cable in the Parts Listings in the back of the manual as ‘Connector, Single #3 ZAC 2270’.

However, in the illustrations in the manual, this same part is identified as ‘Connector, Single No. C3’.

The 1945 and 1948 Master Parts Lists for the 52-Set both identify this part as, ‘Connector, Single No. C2A’ and make note that earlier ID of ‘Connector, Single No. C3’ should be ignored. No mention of the ‘#3’ version at all. But then to add insult to injury, this same part has a new VAOS Number, ‘ZA/CAN 4268’.

I am assuming the ‘C’ in all these part numbers probably refers to ’Canadian’ What I do not understand is if there is any real significant difference at all in the part if it has, or does not have the ‘C’ in its name. Usually, if something is changed significantly, it gets a brand new VAOS Number, and in this example, perhaps that is recognized by this heftier cable getting a new number moving from 2270 up to 4268.

I think the renumbering happened when they split the UK and Canadian VAOS to avoid confusion. As far as I'm aware the 'C' in 'C3' just means Canadian manufacture, ZA/CAN, ZA/US and ZA/BR are used to distinguish the different catalogues, and there are parts labelled ZA/US/BR.nnnn (cable clips) where the item from either catalogue can be used because they're interchangeable.

One final stir of the waters with a stick.

The VAOS Directory is a British thing, with quite a long history. Typically, if you see a number like ZA 2270, it tells you it is a British Army part at the very least. What is not clear to me is what a number like ZA/CAN 2270 means. Is this an identical part manufactured in both England and Canada?

If so, then what relevance to parts do listings have such as ZA/CAN/BR 2270? If it started out being made in Britain, and then Canada got involved, why did they bother going back and mentioning Britain again?

See above.

Very confusing. But on the bright side, after reading the VAOS Directory for a while, I always feel like going for a drink afterwards!

David

The VAOS was originally "description, specification, and price" only. The numbers were added just before WW2 because it was getting out of hand and they needed to streamline orders. (This is why the early numbers are allocated in (mostly) alphabetical order of stores description - as you can see in the 1940 VAOS.)

Best regards,
Chris.