Australian surplus auctions

[Bill Murray]

This thread will not go far, but I found the photos interesting.
Ca. 1945 at two different locations.
Bill

[Bill Murray]

And the second, vehicles in better shape!!
First one was at Alice Springs I am not sure where this one was.
Bill

[Keith Webb]

I reckon the second one was taken in Sydney, at North Ryde.

Here's one with a similar aspect from the AWM:

Caption: NORTH RYDE, NSW, WWII. VIEW OF THE 3RD AUSTRALIAN ORDNANCE VEHICLE PARK, NORTH RYDE. TAKEN BY JOHN GARDENER WHILE HE WAS CAMP PHOTOGRAPHER, OCTOBER 1943 TO NOVEMBER 1945.

[cliff]

here is another from the AWM. Captioned 'disposal park'

[Bill Murray]

Hi Cliff:

It is shots like these that make me wish I had a time machine with unlimited transport capacity and a ton of money. Or, that somewhere, someone forgot about a disposal lot in the wildest part of Australia and all the vehicles are still sitting in the desert in good shape. Somewhere I also have some shots of US disposal lots in South Pacific and Japan. If I can find them I will post them.
Bill

[alleramilitaria]

there is a french island someplace that was libirated by the US forces. when the war was over the french showed up and took over the island again. there was over $1,000,000.00 worth of trucks and jeeps on the island the french thought that they would get for free with the island. they eveh went so far as to refuse to let transport ships acess to the island to take the vehicles off. so the US troops one night took all the vehicles and drove them off a cliff into the sea then took the next boat home.
how is that for disposal
dave

[Lang]

Dave,

I think you are referring to Espiritu Santo in what is now Vanuatu (New Hebrides). This was the major US base for the Solomons/Gaudalcanal campaign and even beyond. It was one of those weird League of Nations deals that put Britain and France in joint control in a "Condominium".

The Brits got pretty much control of the Public Service while the French dominated commerce (Plantations etc).

I think the overnight dumping story is a bit of a myth. There is a HUGE dump of stuff in the water at Santo - it is even called Million Dollar Point to this day (I have dived on it....Fantastic!).

At the end of the war there was an unbelievable destruction program (The stuff on Santo took a year to get rid of, not just overnight). In places like Australia the motive was to avoid a glut on the market and allow industry to take up again giving jobs to the returning troops and build the economy. For the US to bring back millions of vehicles and equipment and dump them on her own market would also have been a disaster for industry. I suspect most post war US sales were from stocks already in USA and very few overseas items were sold in the country.

Most of the Australian sales were from Australian stocks, a vast quantity of US stocks in Australia was deliberately destroyed. I know for example that barges operated continuously out of Brisbane to deep water for more than two years after the war dumping US equipment. There is a massive pile of trucks, machinery and aircraft just off the coast - some of the planes have recently been recovered but totally corroded.

A fleet of Catalina flying boats was sunk deliberately off Perth and numerous other dumpings took place.

I have dived along the old wharves (about 2 miles long) at Finschhaffen in New Guinea and there are hundreds of trucks, jeeps, guns, barges, aircraft etc all dumped at wars end by US troops. The relatively small Australian stocks were sold at auction/tender sales both in PNG and Australia.

Milne Bay (also in New Guinea) contains numerous landing barges loaded with bulldozers and trucks which were just sailed out and had the plug pulled. In Bougainville it was all too hard and remote so they just left lines of trucks on the shore on the south west coast. A combination of Australian entrepreuneurs with landing barges and tropical weather reduced the stocks to nothing over the followng 10 years.

I am sure similar things happened all over the world.

Lang

[Max Hedges]

Those cabs look like inter cabs the same as the truck I have.
My father remembers his mob sinking amphibous jeeps off Wee Wak point, 5 would swim out and 1 would return.
Max

[Keith Webb]

The fleet of Cats is a sad story. They were predestined to have that fate, however as they were supplied to Australia to operate the incredibly long Perth to Ceylon route during the war. They were all destroyed as part of the agreement.

As for destruction of equipment, my father in law was involved in it on Morotai where the sport was to drive large trucks (he called them tank transporters) flat out to the cliff's edge, then jump off at the last moment onto a Jeep running alongside. Heady stuff to a 20 year old indeed.

[Lang]

Max,

I saw what could have been your amphibious jeeps at Moem Point at Wewak back in the 70's - think there were 4 or 5 of them. There is so much stuff on the shallow harbour floor there it is a diver's paradise - Australian, American and Japanese.

Lang

[Les Freathy]

Hi Bill
A bit more interest has been shown in this thread than you first thought
How about expanding it a little to include vehicle parks as well as disposels i am sure we all love to sit for ages sorting out all the items within the photos i,ll see what i can add
cheers
Les

[Bill Murray]

Hi Les:
Good idea but I will have to start with a bit of a twist.
These are off of old ebay auctions and deal with car parks of captured mainly allied vehicles. I will have to scan in my hard copies of purely allied stuff as I come across them.
First is a car park in Belgium 1940.
Bill

[Bill Murray]

Another in France

[Bill Murray]

And the third, also in France and with more British content. ID away
Bill

[Tony Smith]

Originally posted by Lang
At the end of the war there was an unbelievable destruction program. I know for example that barges operated continuously out of Brisbane to deep water for more than two years after the war dumping US equipment. There is a massive pile of trucks, machinery and aircraft just off the coast........
Lang

And that's not all that's dumped off the coast.
This site details some of the thousands of tons of Chemical and Conventional Ammunition dumped just miles off the coast all around Australia. I had once found a site that gave coordinates and descriptions of all Defence dump sites off the coast detailing what was dumped there, 75x 3 ton trucks, 400 tons M/T spares, 55 tons 3in Mortar ammn, and so on but I CAN"T FIND THE WEBSITE AGAIN!

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

I remember an old issue of Air Classics which had many pics of brand new P-38s in the Pacific being bulldozed into junk then buried. Too expensive to disassemble and trans-ship I reckon.

[Les Freathy]

evening Bill
photo 3 as they run away from the camara
Albion KL 127 Bedfords acouple of Karrier Bantams in there and AEC Matadors

[Les Freathy]

Evening Bill
Aphoto of those lovely Aussie Ford artillery tractors in the used returns dump of 7 Aust Div ord field park at Tolga NQ in 1944. This unit apparently served in Syria
Les

[Les Freathy]

A couple of well oiled photos over the years but maybe new to some members
Vehicle park in the UK mainly Morris PU 8cwt Bedford MWC and Ford WOT6

[Les Freathy]

2nd shot Austin Tillys Austin 10 and Scammell Pioneer in the background

[cliff]

Les thanks for the photo of the Aussie Fords.

Here is another from the AWM showing 3 ton 'D' series Dodges in a vehicle park. Captioned 'RYDE, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA. 1944-02-09.'

cheers
Cliff

[Bill Murray]

Evening Lads:
I just got home from the shop so will type rather than post for a moment.

Les: Thanks so much for that photo with the roadster cab Fords, one of my favourite vehicles from an appearance point of view.

Cliff, and others from Oz:

I am not a student of the history of the deployment and eventual return home of Empire Forces and I absolutely do not want to seem politically incorrect, but did I not read somewhere that the Anzac and South African Forces contribution to WWII efforts were considerably drawn down and refocused after about mid 1944?

I seem to recall that it had something to do with the relatively small populations of those countries versus their very large levees of troops. As well, the Anzacs, who obviously carried on in the Pacific theatre, were more threatened by the Japanese than the Axis forces.

Part of this thought process is seeing on the AWM site photos of really huge vehicle parks starting already in mid 1944. Some were disposal sites, some were not but it seemed that Australia at least brought back from North Africa the bulk of their vehicles.

Just a query.
Regards
Bill

[cliff]

Most of the AIF units returning from the middle east did in fact bring their vehicles back with them. I have one or two AWM photos showing vehicles returned from the Middle East being un loaded and also refurbished here in Australia.

Then most of these same units were shipped to New Guinea and the Pacific and had vehicles allocated to them there as required. Most were Jeeps, US GMC-CCKW's and of course CMP's. The exceptions were the RAAF construction units and squadrons who took their own vehicles and construction equipment with them and bought it home again later. Also there were specialist units like survey units with map making equipment on vehicles and of course the Printing works carried on a few CMP semi trailers.

But all in all most of the Mid East vehicles ended up staying here in Australia. Most would have either been sold bit by bit to the civilian population or scrapped. Photos taken in Japan in 1950 show vehicles lined up ready to be loaded into ships and taken to Korea but the majority show US GMC-CCKW's 6X6 trucks and a few CMP's.

The Photo below is Bandiana Australia in 1946 and shows Studebaker US6 trucks of which Australia had a lot of. These would have been purchased out right by the Australian Govt. and not sent as Lend Lease as all Lend lease material had to be returned to the Americans or destroyed as part of the lend lease agreement.

cheers
Cliff

[Lang]

Bill,

The story on the Australian deployment was when Japan entered the war and threatened Australia, the Australian Government withdrew their troops from the Middle East Rommel Show to fight in the Pacific.

The 6th and 7th Divisions came home very early and and were bounced straight away to New Guinea while the 9th Division was left to do Alamein before returning. This enraged Churchill who totally in character was prepared to sacrifice Australia (and anyone else) to fight British battles. He even turned the convoys taking the Australian troops home towards Burma without informing the Australian Government.

As soon as they found out they turned them around again but Australia's relationships with Churchill were never the same again (We are bloody slow learners after Gallipoli!).

The 8th Division was captured in Singapore and spent the war as Japanese slaves - those who survived.

Strangely the Australians in the Air Force were left in Europe for the duration and 10,000 Australian air crew died over Europe.

Far from winding back Australia continued to increase their combat numbers by sending Militia Divisions to New Guinea and Bougainville alongside the AIF (Volunteer) divisions.

I think your pictures of field parks in 1944 give a wrong impression as they contain a huge proportion of obsolete vehicles replaced by mostly US and Australian built CMP standardised equipment.

Lang

[Bill Murray]

Morning Lang:

Thank you for the corrections to my impressions. I should have left it at "redeployed" as I am aware of the Australian campaigns in New Guinea,New Britain etc.

So much history to read and so little time.

I did do a little reading on Gallipoli after seeing the film with Mel Gibson and that gave me a little understanding of the relationship between England and the Colonies in wartime.
The words "cannon fodder" easily come to mind.

Not that that did not continue and does to this day. Hitler was probably outmatched in guile by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin as they probably spent as much time trying to get the other guy to take the casualties as they did on other aspects of the war.

Bush the Elder and Bush the Present also are quite fond of "Coalitions".

Anyway, to the vehicle points you raised, yes, I agree that those parks resulted in the main from the re-equipping of Australian forces with US and Canadian vehicles. According to some of the captions, some of those huge parks were more or less held in reserve or perhaps used for training and not released for sale until after the war.

The whole story of scrapping vehicles and other items is really quite fascinating, particularly in the Far East. The use of the Atom Bomb and Japan's subsequent rapid surrender rendered moot "Plan B", which envisioned a huge air sea and ground effort against the Japanese Isles. This resulted in huge stockpiles of virtually everything you can imagine sitting on islands and ships all over the Southwest Pacific. In a matter of a few days, it was all more or less redundant.

In Europe, it was possible to recycle most of this kind of stuff to the allies but in the Pacific, it was overkill on the one hand and too far away from allied countries to be economically feasable to transport it. Aside from Australia and New Zealand of course and to a degree the Netherlands forces there for a short while.

As a short footnote to this whole discussion, the US Marine Corps brought back as much as it could carry and stored it at a huge desert base, Barstow, California. So the story goes, they convinced the Navy that since all the ships were returning to the US West Coast anyway, let us fill them up with vehicles and other stuff. The Marine Corps leadership were well aware that President Truman was dead set to get rid of the Corps and that their budgets would be slashed without mercy from 1945 on.

This proved to be true and when in 1950 Truman sent in the Marines to Korea they were able to mount out within days with full complements of vehicles and kit thanks to this foresight.
Note here that many of those same vehicles were ex Army/Navy/Air Force vehicles.

Just some thoughts.
Bill

[Lang]

Thanks Bill,

Lang

[alleramilitaria]

a lot of the marine corps stuff is still at the same base in barsto CA. just about 4 years ago i saw WWII jeep trailers stored there not 1 or 10 but about 100. there is a fence line with all the test vehicles there too about 60+. and on top of that there are crated aircraft there, lots of them. the one that i saw (just the wing) still had the WWII star painted on it (NO RED STRIPE). that is the only place i have ever seen WWII gear in good shape in the military. but i did find a mounton of M-8 in hohenfelds germany, they were all pilled on top of each other and covered with dirt. i can guess that there were at least 20 or more, and none were shot up.

[Lang]

Les,

Just looking at your "tilleys" photo and am sure the larger car is a Vauxhall station wagon late twenties or early thirties. It would be worth a fortune today!
Lang

[cliff]

Here is a picture from the AWM data banks captioned 'Hiro, Japan 1955 disposal park'.

Now the equipment in front of the white buildings is stores and vehicles that the Australian Military is auctioning off in Japan but in the back ground behind these it looks like a whole park of vehicles similar to the Dodge WC command cars from WW2.

cheers
Cliff

[hairbear]

LES i live not far from TOGLA NQ in RAVENSHOE a lot of ex stuff was buried in old mine,s site,s plus dry gully,s so they may be dug up for reuse a few years after it was a big base the other side of TOGLA was ROCKY CREEK was a hospital base