fuel tank, selector valve and remote for MKII Carrier

[Robert Bergeron]

Got this in the mail this morning. It is British, not Canadian. The part number attests to this but what a beauty ! It smells good also. Polished leather ! I admit that the Canadian version his cardboard , fragile and hard to find in good condition. Someone went overboard when this version was designed and ordered . It is so well done that it could be passed for a lady’s handbag . But in wartime ? A disposable item ? Comments welcome.

[Ron Pier]

Over the years I've managed to collect a full contingent of Bren gun mag pouches for my carrier. I'd say these are more like Hog Skin than cow hide? But all war-time dated. Ron

[Robert Bergeron]

Thank you Ron . Here we have three different versions . One is pigskin, the other cowhide ( Both British ) and lastly .. drums & trumpets : Real Canadian cardboard ! The question remains , why such expensive material as in the first two examples ? Why not canvas like the utility pouches of the Pat 37 webbing or , like the Canadians did with impregnated rainproofed cardboard ? Guys , any other versions of this Mk II specific piece of kit ?

[Ron Pier]

I see that your cow hide and cardboard versions hinge at the front and with a single strap. I've never seen them before. Ron

[Mike Gurr]

I currently have a full set of the single strap bags in my carrier and have previously had several of the double strap leather ones also, which, as has been said are made of thinner leather. My take on why to use such good quality materials is simply to ensure the bags remain rigid. Soft flexible bags such as they would be if made of webbing material would be difficult to clip on to the rails inside the carrier body? Britain had a large leather manufacturing industry at the time but the British military did not use much leather so I guess it made sense to spread the work around the different industries.
What does surprise me is that having made these high quality bags they then made cloth liners to take the Bren magazines, why put one bag inside another?
These liners are now very hard to find and I am still looking for four more if anyone has any? Sorry about the pictures, whichever way around they are on my computer they come out sideways on the post!!

[rob love]

Perhaps the outer pouch was meant to be weatherproof and stayed on the vehicle, and the inner pouch was more of a jump bag, removed and left with the bren when it deployed onto position.

[David Herbert]

I agree with Rob, I wonder if the inner bag was used on its own when the gun was used in other roles. However if the rigid version was intended to stay in the vehicle, to protect the contents from the weather and damage, one would expect a metal box bolted to the hull. I suppose it is possible that this was just an intermediate solution to the problem, taken over from pre-carrier thinking in the same way that FATs were designed to directly replace horses, with the stores still in a limber, rather than a truck that towed the gun directly.

David