15-CWT, 2K1, WIRE 5 Body Details

[Grant Bowker]

WRT the outside connectors and the idea of a ground spike - why would the terminals be marked + and - ?
To my mind, without any proof of how or why, the +/- markings only make sense for transfer of DC power (either in or out of the body).

[David Dunlop]

Bruce.

The shroud for the Onan was covered on page 2 of RichCam's thread, before Robert suggested we push this detail info to a separate thread. We have asked the Mod to move those posts over here to keep Rich's thread clean for his fascinating restoration project.

Best regards,

David

[Robert Bergeron]

Bruce my friend,

7- Shroud , Onan generator.

David suggested earlier that the Onan generator generated a lot of heat and that a special shroud was needed when in operation so as to not to burn out the wiring wich ran very close. That '' shroud '' would be stored when not in use in a special bracket afixed to the front outside generator cabinet over the rifle brackets.We had discussed earlier you and i in another thread the use of such bracket.

9- Tool compartments under body, front , either side. Q. Were they metal or wood ?

10- Numerous little shelves with footman loops and canvas straps inside box .

Q. What are they for ?

Do we have a consensus that the plus and minus terminals on the left of the box under the cipher clerck's window were for a 12 V DC power source ?

Over to you gents.

[Robert Bergeron]

David,

As for your earlier comment on the exterior 12 VDC on the left side of the box , here is my real life experience concerning that :

When a contemporary ( meaning 1980's - today ) Signals truck is used in the field in a command post position for example , you have a tent or group of tents forming a work station for the Brigade Staff to hang around and do what staff do. I don't want to go into specifics because that is not the subject.

The Signals personnel would workinside the tent , dismount what is dismountaeble in order to be with the Staff in the tent and be close to pass on orders over the net.

A 2K1 box is may be not a Brigade level equipment but at Battalion or even company level i would see the ''penthouse '' house a few officers including a CO or his 2ic with signals personnel. Signal trucks are too small to accomodate so the tent would add space away from the elements.

So it would be logical to have a No 19 set or smaller unit on the table outside the box in the tent.The 12 VDC outlet would supply current from the batteries inside.

The Signals Van of today work pretty much in the same manner.I am not a Signals officer but an end user . I work at Brigade Staff level in those situations.

I hope my hypothesis will help advance the discussion on the subject and that a signals officer or NCO can chime in and correct me if i am wrong.

[David Dunlop]

Robert.

Hope you had a good sleep.

One other detail about the 110-volt system came to mind. The plug mounted up by the wireless table is an almost square steel electrical box with a single round two prong socket centrally fitted in it. Above it, screwed to the front wall is a small brass plate advising the plug is 110-volt only.

With regards to all the shelving, that is still largely a mystery. I do know from seeing all the boxes at Princess Auto, the canvas straps were all originally khaki tan in colour. A few boxes showed OD green replacements, probably done in later military life. The tan often bleach out over time to look white, but not so.

I suspect the large shelving unit to the left of the rear door, held the leather aerial tool bag, the two canvas penthouse assemblies and probably the crew's personal kit. The Chorehorse and Onan tool chests were stored on the top shelf inside the gen box. Spare fuses for the power system were stored in a little compartment inside the power panel. To sort out all the other shelving, I think we would need to find official storage layout info for the wireless box. The only obvious bits are the headset brackets on the front wall above the wireless table and the paper bin over by the Cypher Clerks station.

I need breakfast!

David

[David Dunlop]

Robert

You're awake!!!

The bins under the box either side are standard metal Chev tool bins to hold all the vehicular tools. They look externally the same as Ford bins but the front face of the inside shelves differ between the two, one is straight and the other dips in the middle. Cannot remember which is which at the moment.

Robert.

If you have the bracket for the little Onan Exhaust shroud still mounted, look closely around it, below or to the left, for traces of the Instruction Sticker. As I recall, it was plain white paper with a glue backing, maybe 3 x 5 inches, vertical orientation. There was a red 16th inch border line around the edge and the printing was all red. I believe it actually referenced the Onan Model number installed in these vehicles. I have a slide picture of it from one of the Princess Trucks somewhere, but as Rob Fast can confirm, my photo organizational skills are not the best. If I find it I will definitely post it.

David

[Robert Bergeron]

Gents,moderators

I think this whole discussion is wireless oriented now and should be moved to that room as to not crowd Richard's excellent restoration thread.

Sincerlely.

Robert

[Robert Bergeron]

David,

Strange that they would use metal tool bins on an aluminium body that was devised to save weight ? But if they were standard on Chev trucks , standard goes a long way in production savings.

11- Blackout kill switch. On modern trucks there are kill switches that dim or shut off the interior lights when the access door is opened when in blackout mode . That was to prevent lighthing up the night and revealing your position to the ennemy .Was that in use in the 2K1 body ?

That pretty much sums it up for me. 2K1 bodies are pretty much the same i imagine as M-152 trucks of the 50's and CUCV radio trucks of the 70's and 80's for the routine of operation by personel. Shifts , maintenance, filling the generators, extending the aerials , telephone wire.

Then there is camouflage of the unit , remote antennae in order to prevent homing on the transmitter, command post , CO, and getting direct artillery hits.Sentinels, guard duty around the bivouac and shell trenches have to be dug.

I do not think that a single shovel and pick axe in the front of the body would be sufficent for those purposes . That is why i think that there was a lot of stuff carried on top of the box strapped to the rails. Camouflage nets ( a necessity in war ) , extra shovels , picks , buckets for water ( firefighting in the bivouac.)

You should see the amount of equipment carried by a modern signals unit to sustain itself in a campaign.

Q. What would our beloved canadian soldiers have used for heat in the box ?

There was winter in NWE during the 44-45 campaign.

[David Dunlop]

From what I have read on the wartime 15-cwt metal wireless bodies, even with the complaints directly from the Army about the excessive weight issues with earlier versions, it took some serious arm twisting to get approval to use any aluminium at all for vehicle construction, since it was so critically needed in the aviation sector. What weight could be saved from the body skin change alone was enough to get approval.

Yes, two blackout switches are used in the 2K1 bodies. One is mounted on the inside rear door frame, upper left corner, viewed from the outside of the vehicle. The square ceiling lights/ventilation fan wiring channel extends back to the door to loop this switch into the circuit.

A second blackout switch was also installed on the inside door frame of the gen box in the upper right corner, when facing the door. I cannot recall the wiring run for it at the moment, but it was needed if the generators were running at night as the two ventilation doors in the right rear corner of the vehicle would be open and as you mentioned, if somebody opened the gen box door from inside the body to check something, it would not be a good thing.

I would love to find photos or film clips with these vehicles on the road during the war to see what they looked like. There was very likely some sort of 'official standard kit' they all carried, but signals equipment options above and beyond that are enormous and like you, I wonder how the crew dealt with that? On their own, support vehicles or what?

It would be interesting to run a wireless set inside a fully restored 2K1 and test for the amount of radiated signal produced and detectable from outside. One of the first things I noticed on the outside of mine was the amazing number of grounding straps installed between the body of the truck, the frame and the cab. It was nuts! And then, when I pulled out the interior plywood, I could not get over the number of copper grounding clips used when the aluminium skin was riveted to the steel frame. When I finally got around to restoring the window assemblies I discovered the screens on all the windows were copper wire, not the steel wire I had expected. Showed it all to an electrical engineering friend of mine who has worked all his life in commercial and amateur radio and he said it was the closest thing to a Faraday Cage he had seen. Emissions were probably very low.

Cheers for now. Have to go and cook up a big pot of home made chilli for dinner!

David