Australian Army Vehicle Registers AWM126

[Mike Cecil]

Nice try Richard, and well reasoned, but not right.

'ME' meant any port of call that supplied Aust forces in the Middle East - Suez, Port Said, Kantara, Alexandria, with Suez at the southern end of the Canal being the most used for offloading ships outbound from Australia.

Mike

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Mike Cecil

Nice try Richard, and well reasoned, but not right.

'ME' meant any port of call that supplied Aust forces in the Middle East - Suez, Port Said, Kantara, Alexandria, with Suez at the southern end of the Canal being the most used for offloading ships outbound from Australia.

Mike

Well I am stumped now!

[Mike K]

I looked up V5202 reg number number of a AIF chev GS Van , the vehicle I spotted in one of the LIFE magazine photos, the photos depict vehicles in Malaya , some of the pics are in colour.

The said V5202 number in the AWM books has the vehicle being shipped to 'E' on the ship Montferland . I think E = Far East.

Looked up a few of the Chev GS vans shipped to ME and some of them were returned home and then passed onto other military units, the units are named in the LH side columns.

[Mike Cecil]

Hi Mike,

You had the destination correct in your first post - Malaya (delivered into Singapore), but not the actual meaning of the 'E' code. This code was just for Malaya, not other destinations in the 'Far East', which was only 'Far East' to the Poms - to Aussies it was the near north - too near on 19 Feb 1942, but that's a digression.

A clue are the vehicles in the AIF registers that are also delivered overseas to other single letter-code destinations.

I'm surprised there have not been any other takers to this challenge.

Mike

[Ken Smith]

Also as a nice double check of ship movements there is a site called "WW11 merchant ship movement records Australia" it is a scan of thousands of ships movements, it also lets you know if and when a ship was lost and how it was lost. It also shows where the ship left from, with my truck it was Melbourne, there is a little discrepancy in the AWM date and the ship log date but I have put that down to the AWM date is the loading date and the log date is the actual sailing date.
If you get real keen you can then google the ships name and in most cases there will be a photo of the ship some time in its life.
With the ship voyage that took my Chev AIF L16070 to S(ME), someone has written in pencil that the voyage was to Aden but I assume that was the ship's first port of call as it is a fair hike from Aden up to Syria. I also assume that the truck went to Syria as it left Australia in October 1941 and maybe the S part of the destination is Syria (to the 2/101 General Transport Company, wishful thinking).
The ship my truck went on was the Tricolor spelt incorrectly as Tricolour in the AWM ARN book.

Ken

[Mike K]

A few more destinations:

GULL , would this be Gull force on Ambon ? Ship in that case was the Bontikoe.

SPAR ?

SP. could be same place as SPAR ? Sparrow force ? Maybe S=Sparrow force as well ?

2747 another one for Gull force ?

[Mike Cecil]

You are on the right track, Mike.

G = Gull Force
SPAR/Sp/S = Sparrow Force

S(ME) is Suez (Middle East) (Not 'Syria'). Ken, I think Aden was penciled in as it was usually by-passed. Ports of call were usually Colombo and/or Bombay (sometimes to the African Coast at Mombasa, Kenya), then Suez direct, but occasionally ships were directed to Aden en-route for some reason, so being an unusual stop, it may be why it was penciled in.

As far as I can tell, the meaning of the dates vary: date of sailing/departure or date of loading (a day or two before the sailing date) and in some cases, the date of release/assignment from store. In several cases, this date pre-dates the sailing date by some days, as vehicles were driven from, say, storage in Melbourne to Sydney for loading onto the ship. Ricks Cove's staff car (AIF M-15 ?) was driven from storage in Melbourne to Sydney for loading aboard the Empress of Japan, for example (can't remember which date shows up in the register for that vehicle, but you get my meaning, I hope).

E = ??

Mike