Empire & Allied Armoured Vehicle Census Numbers

[Mike Cecil]

Tony Smith wrote many moons ago 'I had started to sift through the info relating to carriers, but have not found them all yet!"

And neither you will Tony, because not all of the carriers produced were recorded in the ledgers, only those issued at some time with C or AIF-T numbers. Once the carriers switched to their hull numbers as the registration (circa late 41/early 42), and carriers were transferred from both the C system and AIF system to carrying their hull number, all those carriers produced subsequently were not listed anywhere in AWM126. Likewise the 'imports' that retained their home country number (but usually with the prefix, like 'USA-W' removed. The T17E1 Staghounds are a case in point: they used the US Army number less prefix as their Aust registration. Matildas are another: T-XXXX became just XXXX as the Aust registration)

AWM 126 is a bit of a mixed bag: the C system commenced in 1939, and only those vehicles then on the Army's inventory with current DD registrations were transferred to the new C system. Hence, there are, to my knowledge, no WW1 entries, for example. I think the earliest are the tanks and A/C of the 1920s, which were still in use in 1939.

Also, the books only list Army, not Navy & RAAF. More importantly, there are some small blocks of C numbers missing from the Army entries that photographs show as being issued, but they don't make the lists. Engineer plant is a particular case in point, as are a number of post-war purchases. The books also have post war entries mixed in with wartime blocks - when Army went back and filled in the blanks, so to speak, so the issues are not strictly chronological - higher rego number does not always mean later issue.


Mike