Burner Unit, Portable Cooker Mk1, 1943

[Jordan Baker]

I thought you would find this an interesting piece of Canadian WW2 kit. I picked it up last week and got it working the other day.

Its the Burner Unit for the Portable Cooker. This unit was made by CLC in 1943. It has a 2 gallon pressurized fuel tank in it and a large cast burner plate. Once fuelled up pressure is added to the tank. The manual states to start off at 20psi until the burner plate is heated then bring the pressure up to 40psi. It runs on regular gasoline and burns about 4-5 pints per hour. The food trays were normally hooked up in a row of 5 units and would be used to cook and keep the food warm.

Years ago at a Caldwell Convoy BBQ, I was given one of the frying pans and food trays. Up until last week I figured I wouldn't see the burner unit.

If anyone has any of the trays and insulated containers Id be interested to hear from you.

This video is of the unit in operation while the burner plate is warming up. The flames are from raw gasoline being ignited as it exits the valve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq1gWS6XRfw

In this video the unit is now fully heated and vaporizes the fuel before ignition. Picture a very large Coleman lantern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbsgmepasPg

Pictures L-R.
Manufactures stamping on the unit, complete setup that I have, boiling water, GSW stamp on tray, GSW stamp on frying pan

[Jordan Baker]

L-R
Parts layout from the manual (the British made ones seems to have had a separate transport case)
Complete setup from the manual
warming up 1, warming up 2 (reminds me of the Adam West Batmobile)

The last picture is from a thermal imagining camera. I couldn't believe it got that hot. 1113 deg ferinheight.

[Jordan Baker]

Lastly these are some wartime pictures where I found the same style of cooker in use.

[Robin Grainger]

Originally Posted by Jordan Baker

Lastly these are some wartime pictures where I found the same style of cooker in use.

Hi Just made 4 repro cooker bases with the oval hole for a friend who is building up a Brit ww2 cooking display. He's pretty good, he cooked a 4 course meal for 42 people at the War & Peace Revival in 2015. A full on brit Mess dinner including port!!!
Regards
Rob

[Jordan Baker]

Found a few other threads via google on these items. Figured they would be of some interest here.

http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread...quipment/page3

http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/equipm...1938-a-663538/


Lastly Im almost done the restoration of one of my 6 gallon Insulated Containers. I replaced the inner liner with some stainless steel as I wish to use this as a cooler for living history events. It will look a lot better then a modern red plastic one.

[Ed Storey]

It certainly looks good! Nice work.

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Jordan Baker

If anyone has any of the trays and insulated containers Id be interested to hear from you.

There are a number of the insulated containers made by CSW and with wartime dates out at my favorite scrapyard. If summer ever comes to here, I'll get out there and snap a photo of some. Here is it mid May and we have weather warnings for snow this weekend.

[Jordan Baker]

Thanks Rob


I'm always amazed at what is still around. I found this burner unit sitting in a corner of a army surplus store in Toronto.

[Marc van Aalderen]

Wow, that's an impressive cooker unit. Never seen one of these before. Good you saved it and got it working too. I only use the small No2. cookers when doing events. Thanks for posting this.

Cheers,

[motto]

Here in Australia about 20 years ago there was a large quantity of WW2 40 man detached unit petrol stoves released. They still turn up today, often still crated. Most of them were manufactured by Chrysler Airtemp and dated 1945.
These are an excellent outfit that can just be handled by one man but much easier with two. Everything you need is packed inside them, chimney sections, jerry can adaptor, skillet, cooking vessels, comprehensive tool roll with carving set,ladle,can opener etc and instruction booklet.
I'm no kind of a cook but had to buy one of these units simply because they were such a magnificent WW2 artefact.
Some owners of these outfits have set them up at events and demonstrated their uses and they always attract a lot of attention.

David

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Here's one of these units set up to cook in Normandy, June 2014:

IMG_0410.jpg IMG_0543_resized.jpg

It is owned by friends of mine who regularly fire it up to cook for large groups

H.

[Alex van de Wetering]

Lovely find Jordan. I think I have seen one of these in action at the Longues-sur-Mer camp in Normandy 2014, but I can't seem to find a picture of it.

I think the Dutch army reproduced these sets post-war as well.

regards,

Alex

Edit: Ah....managed to find a picture...it's in Hanno's posting