Australian Army Vehicle Registers AWM126

[Mike Cecil]

Don't know off hand about which vehicles went to UK with the 6th, Tony, but the 'E' in the registers does not stand for 'England'.

OK, a final hint:

S = Sparrow FORCE on Timor
G = Gull FORCEon Ambom
(and Plover, Heron, Lark, etc.... are all FORCE code names)
E = ............ in Malaya.

Mike

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Mike Cecil

Don't know off hand about which vehicles went to UK with the 6th, Tony, but the 'E' in the registers does not stand for 'England'.

OK, a final hint:

S = Sparrow FORCE on Timor
G = Gull FORCEon Ambom
(and Plover, Heron, Lark, etc.... are all FORCE code names)
E = ............ in Malaya.

Mike

Mike,
a stab in the dark .........Endau ?? (or Pdg. Endau)

[Ken Smith]

Thanks for the information Mike, and once again thanks for so freely sharing your knowledge.

Could E be for Emu considering the 8th Division had the emu as its formation sign.

Ken

[Mike Cecil]

OK, enough fun, time to solve the puzzle .......

The AIF code name for the force in Malaya (it's why my clue had the word 'Force' in bold) was ELBOW. Don't ask me why. It pre-dates the 'bird' forces deployed later to the island-arc north of Australia, so that is presumably why it does not conform to the 'bird force' series of names (good guess about the 'E = Emu', Ken: I'd not thought of that one.)

So vehicles tagged with 'E' in the AWM126 registers were on their way to be offloaded in Singapore and supplied to units of Elbow Force. As Mike has already confirmed with his linking a known registration from an image taken in Malaya, with the registration as listed in AWM 126, the 'E' tagged vehicles ended up in Malaya, no question.

Nice one - always fun to solve a puzzle like that. Took me ages to figure out what 'E' actually stood for, even after I had done a similar linking exercise to Mike K!!

Mike

[Mike K]

Interesting the destination has been changed on this one. I have found a few of these: changes from G to S and also S to G .

I wonder if Rabaul received any vehicles ?

[Mike K]

An interesting one. 76125 Austin K2/Y Ambulance .

Found a few Ford Prefect staff cars !

78146 Morris Anti Tank Portee

76155 Bedford OY Lorry

76161 Bedford MWC water tank ex Z4578138

[Mike K]

Confusing because they refer to CVT 30 cwt water tanks ? These maybe Bedford MWC water tanks , makes three so far . With an OX number ? Wheel Base is 101" so must be MWC I would think.

76159 and 76160 ex British Z4578229 and Z4578152

Not found any Morris CS8 yet.

76154 A Leyland breakdown lorry mixed in with a CVT sedan ? Seems to be two vehicles with the same ARN ? Seen this mixup more than once.

76115 Chev and Thornycroft with same ARN ??

[Darryl Jones]

This is my first post.
I have prepared a listing of the serial numbers in numerical order and the corresponding ARNs of the 1192 US6s (1093 Studebakers and 99 Reos) purchased by Australia towards the end of WW2. Confirmation of the figure of 1192 appears in AWM MT1131/1 (procurement of Studebaker spare parts) and is mentioned a couple of times.
The serial numbers in the digitised AWM books presented a few challenges. Sometimes the numbers were faint or comments had been written over them. Whenever a vehicle was disposed of or written off a red line was drawn across the entry which sometimes made it difficult to differentiate between a 1 and a 7. Occasionally the record clerk must have nodded off as the numbers ran into one another. Two vehicles appear to have the same serial number (99960) and one vehicle did not have a plate. By enlarging the numbers and using a magnifying glass I managed to read all the numbers except those for six vehicles.
Two attachments are included:
Serial numbers for US6 - listing is in numerical order
ARNs for US6 - identifies those books which record US6s
Serial Numbers for US6.pdf

ARNs for US6.pdf

[Ken Smith]

I am having a break from driving to Roma Qld every weekend, to help family out there, it is too wet to do any farming and too cold to work in the shed, so I thought I would sort out my 8 Studebaker ARNs, plus the 2 that I dismantled.

Out of the 8 only 4 have matching chassis number plates and dash nomenclature plates. I have been documenting dates of delivery, ARNs etc. to make it easier to check the large number of photos that are being put on fb and the forums these days.

This has all been made easier with the work Darryl Jones did for this forum with his documentation of all the Australian Studebaker and Reo trucks.

I would like to confirm Darryl ARN 144487 is chassis number 43516X. I have this 1943 Studebaker with the correct ARN and it's USA number on the bonnet. It doesn't have the nomenclature plates, somebody put lovely, neat, chrome strips across that part of the dash, but it does have the chassis plate.

I also have a chassis plate 95315 which which came off a bare chassis, that was at Prices Spare Parts and was being sent to Ken Hughes at Kingaroy for scrap. That chassis number doesn't appear in the ARNs.

One of the things that I have noticed as I go though the AWM books is the 123 Studebakers, ARN 169000 to 169122 that have post war British registration numbers. I am guessing, not assuming these trucks must have been delivered to the British Army first. Did they actually go to Britain and get registration numbers stamped on the packing box or the trucks assembled and registered and then sent to Australia? Britain would have had to have had something to do with them, to allot them registration numbers. It must have meant something special for the Australian Army ledger keeper, make note of them all.
There are a lot of trucks where the USA number is noted and I do assume that these trucks were delivered to the US Army and, then lend leased to Russia, but sent to Australia as the war came to a close in Europe. Those trucks didn't come with Russian registration numbers though, is the point I am trying to clear up.
I can't find anywhere this has been discussed before, but I would be interested to read if it has.
Cheers Ken